Greg stormed out of the elevator and stomped to the apartment door and pounded on it. After a few moments he realized it was futile gesture, and through the haze of anger, deception, and pain, he remembered that Fenny and Brad had gone to Australia.

“They’re not here,” Greg whined. “I have to listen to all their whining about all their stupid shit, but when I’m having an actual crisis they’re not fucking here. The least they could’ve done was invited me along, then I could be having naughty thoughts about Gina instead of having my couples’ therapist,” he banged his head against the door, punctuating the most painful points, “tofu-eating prick brag about playing hide the vegan sausage with my wife.” A final bang and he slumped against the door.

“Back again?” Jenna asked from her opened door across the hall. “They’re still not home.”

“I noticed,” he grumbled, not raising his head from against the door.

“I’m Jenna, by the way.”

“Greg.” He finally pushed away from the door to introduce himself properly.

“I know,” she grinned. “If you want to talk, y’know, I wouldn’t mind. Unless you want to keep hitting your head against the door. I’ve got coffee?”

“Got something a bit more numbing?”

“Fully stocked bar?” she shrugged.

“Then you can be my new therapist,” Greg nodded and followed her into her apartment.

When they’d gotten back from their picnic, Gina had headed straight for the kitchen to clean up while Paul disappeared in the shower and Brad and Fenny went to their room to tidy up a bit.

“So what’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Fenny asked as they headed down the hall together.

“Thought I’d help out around the house, help fix some of the damage.”

“You don’t help out around our house,” Fenny scorned, “even when the damage is your fault.”

Brad looked at the floor a bit sheepishly and decided to change the subject. “Actually the back yard needs some serious help.”

“You’re going to do the gardening?” she asked incredulously.

“Well yeah. I mean back home all I get to do is water the potted plants. And it’s nice to be able to go outside without the fear of breathing in carcinogenic LA smog.” Brad stepped outside and breathed in a hearty dose of clean, warm air.

“Yes, but there’s always the fear of carcinogenic Australian sunlight,” she pointed out as she followed him.

“Does that mean you’re not helping?” he pouted.

“I don’t garden. I’m a city girl, we don’t know how. My parents hired outside help for that so we didn’t risk getting eaten by the lawnmower.”

“Come on, a lawnmower isn’t—” He paused, remembering that a camera had almost killed her father, and Fenny could injure herself grating cheese. “Yeah, that was probably a good move. So what’re your plans for the afternoon?”

“I’m going to be a good little tourist and go to the beach,” she chirped.

“With your trusty companion?” He gestured inside to where her drawing pad had been dropped on the table.

“Of course, there might be hot guys to draw, can’t go without my sketchbook,” she smirked.

Brad rolled his eyes at her. “That thing’s such a part of your life it needs a name.”

“Fine then, Steve and I are going to the beach,” Fenny nodded.

“Steve?”

“Don’t like that? How about Gary? No, that’s a meowing snail. Lars? Um, Gene. Marcus.”

“Stick with Steve and just go to the beach already,” Brad chuckled.

“Who’s Steve?” Paul asked as he joined them on the back verandah.

“Fen’s sketchbook.”

Paul looked at them warily. “Sure it is.”

“You’re looking unnaturally groomed,” Fenny pointed out, changing the subject. “Where are you off to?”

“Rehearsals,” Paul shrugged. “Gotta go sometime.”

“Aww look Fen, he’s finally found a work ethic.”

“You’re the ones who wouldn’t let me go to rehearsals earlier,” Paul argued, “I was all raring to go this morning.”

“Are you saying you didn’t enjoy the emu maulings?” Fenny pouted.

“Nah, it was worth it seeing you and Genie rolling around in the dirt together.” Brad nodded enthusiastically.

“Right, I’m going to go get dressed for the beach,” she declared, shaking her head and trying not to smile as she headed back inside. “Don’t see me wanting them in a mud wrestling competition, I don’t see why they’re so into that stuff…”

“Not following the wife to the beach for some nice bikini action?”

“Nope, a) she doesn’t have a bikini and b) I’ve volunteered to clean up your back yard for you. Well, start anyway. You should call some government official and get this declared a disaster area.”

“Thanks mate, you’re a life saver, I refuse to tinker in the garden until I’m a geriatric and have lost all control of my bowels.”

Brad scrunched his face up at him. “Yeah, thanks for that image. Got a lawnmower or a chainsaw or a bulldozer or something?”

“Genie, where do we keep the power tools?” Paul called into the house.

“We don’t, you’ll have to ask the neighbours,” she called back.

Paul turned to Brad. “You’ll have to go on your own, last time I went to talk to them I got sucked into a two hour discussion with Scott on oil filters and carburetors and I don’t even know what they do. Good luck mate, I’ve got to get going.” He patted Brad on the back and dashed through the house with a quick kiss goodbye to Gina.

The cab he’d called was waiting outside and he slipped inside with a heavy sigh before mumbling his destination to the driver. As much as he didn’t want to be, Paul was still upset about the last few days, but it was best to just play happy families if not for Gina’s benefit then for Fenny and Brad’s. They’d come all that way for a relaxing holiday away from their troubles, he didn’t really want them trying to sort through his.

At this point he wasn’t even sure it was the fact Gina had kissed her ex-boyfriend. And it wasn’t the fact that Gina continuously brought up his past infidelities. He wasn’t sure what it was. Probably the fact that Gina had felt compelled to kiss Giles and that he had infidelities to bring up in the first place.

Things never seemed to go as smoothly as they hoped. They hardly made it through a four-month period without an earth shattering argument; one of them was always doing something asinine that would rattle the foundation of their marriage. And certainly they’d always made up, come to terms with things, and he liked to believe in the old adage that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But they never seemed to learn from their mistakes, like lobotomized lab rats, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that one day something bad was going to happen and one of them would snap, the relationship would end, and they would be too far gone to reconcile again.

Paul glanced up out the window and was relieved to see the studio come into view. He couldn’t remember ever being so anxious to get to work. Even a few hours of reading an autocue would be better than being left alone with his thoughts. He paid the driver with mumbled thanks and headed inside, bracing himself for the inevitable tirade about not coming in sooner.

Fenny stepped out into the back yard and saw Brad on all fours pulling at some stubborn weeds. He’d taken off his shirt and was glowing with sweat already, and smelled of sun block. There was definitely something undeniably sexy about a shirtless man working with his hands outside. She suddenly felt compelled to stay and if not tackle him to the ground and ravage him, at least watch him work for a while.

“Oh, hey Fen, decide to stay and help after all?” he perked, settling back on his heels and looking up at her.

“No, the garden’s all yours, sweetheart,” Fenny smiled. “Gina’s giving me a ride to the beach, said she’s going into town to pack some more.”

As if on cue, Gina poked her head out the back door. “Be careful with the power tools, Braddles, I want my house to still be standing when I get back. Oh, and watch out for the neighbours, they like to spy on us, and, well, Vicki’s recently rediscovered her sexuality, so don’t let her see you all done up like a handyman from a bad porno flick.”

Brad narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know about porn handymen? I thought women weren’t into that sort of thing.” Gina rolled her eyes and went back into the house.

“Bye Brad, have fun, good luck, don’t hurt yourself.” Fenny kissed him goodbye and shot him one more glance as she went inside, smiling inanely.

Jaguar leapt up on Greg’s lap and sniffed at his shirt before turning around and settling down. He began kneading Greg’s thigh with his claws as he got comfortable. Greg let out a yelp and pushed the cat off. “For god’s sake, why do you have the pets?”

“Moch can’t be left in the apartment alone,” Jenna called from the kitchen where she was mixing drinks, “she gets lonely and barks. Last time Fen and Brad left her when they went on vacation, Mrs. Ruiz next door tried to shoot her.”

“Why’d you stop her?” Greg mumbled.

“And Moch misses Jag too, so the cat has to come with.”

“It’s true what they say about pets and their owners,” Greg mused, “the Sherwood neurosis is contagious.”

“They’re not so bad,” Jenna declared as she came back into the room and handed him a drink. She flopped next to him on the couch and Greg looked over at her.

“You know, you’re right. They’re screwed up and clinically insane, but their relationship is better than mine.” He took a grateful drink and winced at the strength of the alcohol in the concoction; she obviously knew what she was doing.

“What’s so terrible about your relationship?”

“What’s so terrible about it?” Greg gasped. “What’s so terrible!” He chuckled morosely at his situation. “My wife, to get back at me for cheating on her ages ago, has waited until we were all made up and I thought we were happy, then went and decided to fuck around on me.”

“Oh,” Jenna breathed, taking a drink from her own glass.

“Not only that, no, that wasn’t bad enough. No, she went and slept with our couples therapist. Our fucking marriage counselor! I’m calling the Better Business Bureau as soon as I get drunk enough.”

“Can you call the Better Business Bureau for something like that?”

“I don’t care, I’m going to, and I’m getting his license revoked. I should have known when the tofu eating, serape wearing, yoga nazi prick told me he was divorced that there was something wrong with him. And then he had the balls to call me down to his office and make me sit on his floor like an idiot so he could brag about banging my wife. What kind of a sick asshole does that make him? God, what does that make our marriage if she’d actually…do that…with that man…”

“Oh please,” Jenna snapped. “So your wife fucked her therapist, who hasn’t?”

Greg turned to her wide eyed as she casually took another sip. “What, you think that’s normal, that’s okay?”

“It’s better than a lot of people get it.” She took a heavy gulp of her drink. “My boyfriend hits me whenever he wants to, but you don’t hear me whining around it, do you?”

Greg’s head snapped up and he looked at her doe-eyed, not having any idea what to say. “Oh…um…”

“You look like you could use another drink.” She took his glass and headed back into the kitchen with her own empty glass.

Fenny had given up on the surfers pretty quickly as the surf was less than spectacular, and they weren’t doing much other than sitting on their boards waiting. There wasn’t much to do in the way of drawing, and the sun was beating down a bit unmercifully on her own skin, so she decided what she needed was another lathering of sun tan lotion and a nice dip in the ocean.

She walked straight into the water and dove in, trying to ignore the cold water against her heated skin. A new batch of surfers were paddling out, so she swam away to avoid them careening into her, and she promptly careened into someone’s leg. She surfaced sputtering in surprise and mumbling apologies as she wiped the salt water out of her eyes.

Fenny opened her eyes to find herself looking right at a pair of cute little blue swim trunks on a yellow surfboard. “Hi Dan,” she gasped, looking up into his face. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he countered.

“It’s sacrilege to come to Australia without visiting a beach.” She tried to shrug but it was a bit difficult when treading water.

“Brad not believe in that theory?” Danny asked, scanning the shore.

“No, he’s decided he’d rather risk Gina’s back yard than shark attacks.”

“Hey, if you want some company, I’ll just go drop off my board.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Fenny smiled. He grinned back and paddled to shore. Fenny tried very hard not to be disappointed that without her glasses she couldn’t see him walking up the beach with his shorts clinging to him and water droplets sliding down his skin. A pack of bikini-clad teenage girls swam past her cooing about surfers and some guy called Rex, and Fenny lost sight of Danny. Something brushed against her leg and she squealed until his head popped up inches from hers. “You’re evil,” she scorned.

“I know,” he said, raising his eyebrows. She knew what was coming and barely managed to take in a gulp of air before he pushed her down into the water. Taking advantage of her situation, Fenny swam under him and came up behind him, running her nails across the small of his back where she knew he was ticklish, and tried as valiantly as she could to dunk him. He was bigger than she was, though, and when he went down he took her with him, holding her around the waist so she couldn’t escape, not that she was trying all that hard.

They surfaced in the shallows and once Fenny disentangled herself from her hair, she spit out a mouthful of water at Danny who was giggling to himself. “You little prick,” she declared.

“Aah, but you love it,” he grinned.

Fenny raised an eyebrow at him, grabbed him by the hand and headed for beach again. “I don’t trust you in the water anymore.”

A renegade volleyball from a nearby game bounced wetly off the sand and headed straight for Fenny’s head. She dodged it, but got stuck in the thick syrupy sand and fell face first onto the beach, pulling Danny with her. “Sorry,” half a team of volleyball players laughed as they chased after their ball.

“Get off me, you oaf,” Fenny giggled, pushing Danny away.

“I’ve got sand in my shorts,” he pouted.

“I’ve got sand in more interesting places.” She shifted a bit uncomfortably.

“Need some help removing it?” She looked at him sternly. “No, I mean, there’s showers up, over there,” he flustered, turning to gesture down the beach.

There was no reason for Danny’s presence to turn her into a quivering mass of hormonal goo after all this time. It was like something out of a bad teen drama: a bit of splashy-splashy in the water and she was ready to do any number of naughty things to him. It was wrong and it was weak and it was foolish and he was covered in little droplets of water that were asking to be smoothed off with her hands, and her heart was beginning to pound a bit more frantically than she wanted it to, and this was definitely not the best of ideas.

When he turned back, Fenny was staring at him, and he couldn’t help but notice the painfully familiar look of desire in her eyes. He blinked, not knowing what to do, until she pushed him back against the sand and moved over him slowly, running her hands up his stomach and his chest. Her fingers played over his neck, remembering all the spots that made him twitch as she looked into his eyes and his hands moved across the skin of her back. Danny’s eyes were full of desire, uncertainty and, what scared her most, what she was almost inclined to identify as love. She took in a deep shuddering breath as she realized what she was about to do.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped as she scurried to her feet. He looked up at her like he’d just been slapped across the face. He sat up and watched as she dashed for her things further up the beach, casting an occasional glance in his direction as she pulled her clothes on over her bathers, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Shi—aah!” Danny yelped as the volleyball once again hurdled straight for him.

“Sorry man,” one of the players gasped as he whizzed past.

“Yeah, me too.”

Brad was feeling quite proud of himself and had had more fun than he’d initially expected. He’d succeeded in pulling out a huge chunk of weeds and a good portion of overgrown plants. Although the yard of the previously abandoned house had obviously been used as a dumping grounds for wandering drunks and he’d found countless shattered bottles and rotting beer cans, he was happy to have avoided finding the corpses of murder victims or animals that had gotten trapped in the dangerous suburban wilderness. For a place Gina claimed was suffering from a drought, the local flora certainly seemed to be flourishing.

After spending a good half hour cutting back a shrub that had probably at one time been a border along one wall, he began to worry that his corpse-free run was about to end. The hedge clippers he’d borrowed from Vicki, who had given him an approving once over before allowing access to their shed, met resistance as he began trimming the final stretch of overgrown bushes. Nervous and cautious, he prodded into the plant and pulled away branches.

“The irony,” Brad mused as he pulled away enough of the plants to reveal an ancient, rusted push mower. “Now I just hope I don’t find the gardener,” he breathed.

“So why d’you stay with him?” Greg slurred, well on his way to being plastered and enjoying a round of ‘who’s got the most fucked up life,’ which he was unnaturally pleased to find himself finally losing.

“Cause he’s cute and he’s a musician and he loves me and he wants what’s best for me, he’s only trying to keep me from doing something stupid. Well, something he thinks is stupid. Which is lots of stuff. ‘Cept stuff that gets me naked, he likes that. Oh, and he’s hung like a horse,” Jenna declared as if it was obvious.

“Not very good reasons,” Greg huffed. “Of course I didn’t see him in the buff, maybe they’re good reasons after all.”

“My turn,” Jenna chirped. “Oh crap, we’re out of scotch. Ah, we’ll make due with the gin.” She reached for another bottle across the table, where over the course of the evening they’d emptied her liquor cupboard. “I was asking you a question.” She poured a liberal amount of gin into her glass. “Oh yeah, why’d you cheat on your wife?”

“Be more specifish—specific,” Greg ordered. “Which time?”

“How many times did you?”

“You mean how many people or how many actual sex acts?”

“Both.”

“Do blowjobs count as sex acts?”

“Not if you’re President.”

“I’m not though.”

“Then they do.”

Greg cocked his head in thought. “Can’t count, too many with Gina. Once with Ritz I think, we were drunk. And three times with Fenny. So three girls.”

Jenna choked on her drink. “Fenny?”

“Yup.” He smiled in a vaguely proud manner. “She was the first. Ages ago, years and years. We’re friends now. All of us are friends, we’ve all seen each other naked. Not Fen and Paul though, Paul belongs to Gina, Fen and Paul haven’t seen each other.”

“Paul? I’ve seen Paul naked,” Jenna chirped. “When we had sex. Obviously.”

“That earns you another point towards having the most fucked up life,” Greg cheered, clinking his glass against hers.

“Actually I kinda liked—”

“I don’t wanna hear about it anymore,” Greg grumbled. “Paul’s a good guy but I don’t want to think about the hairy little troll’s naughty bits.” He blinked at her, trying not to think about naked Paul. “Speaking of which, do you have any tequila?”