“What is it now,” Paul sighed, pushing Freya away and trying not to give into the small wave of compassion that washed over him.

“I was, I was mugged,” Freya sobbed. “I was heading for my car when I left this little club, and this man jumped out from another car in the car park and knocked me to the ground and went through my purse, I thought he wanted to—it was awful, I was so scared, it was the worst moment in my whole life.”

“Not for long,” another voice murmured, and Gina wandered down the hall in her pajamas.

“What are you doing here?” Paul demanded. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I wouldn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t see the man. I was afraid to be alone, it’s so late and there could be anybody out there, and I’m afraid to go all the way to my apartment, what if he followed me?”

“You made it all the way from your car to here,” Gina scorned, “and unfortunately nothing’s happened to you. Yet.”

“Paul, will you come with me back to my apartment?” Freya asked, batting her eyelashes pathetically at him.

“No he won’t,” Gina declared.

“Please, I’m so frightened.” She was verging on tears again.

“Come on Freya, you’re a grown woman,” Paul groaned. “And besides, statistically speaking your chances of getting mugged again are a million to one. At least. Probably closer to a billion in one. That’d be six and a half people on the whole planet. Two of them would be in China I think, and the half would probably be from Los Angeles.”

Freya looked at him confused for a moment before the tears started again full force. “Then could I stay here? That would probably be safest?”

“I’ll grab your coat, Paul,” Gina growled, heading back down the hall.

“Stay here,” he demanded of Freya as she stood sniffling in the entryway and he bolted to the bedroom. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said hurriedly as he pulled on a shirt, “I’ll make sure she gets into her apartment without having a mental collapse and send her to bed with a bottle of wine and come straight home.” He leaned over to give Gina a quick kiss. “Promise.”

“You know that when I have proof this is a hoax to get you into her apartment I’ll have to kill her. They won’t like it at work,” she mused. “You might have to fill in as weather girl.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the one who slept with her in the first place, so technically it’d be your fault.”

Paul paused as he put on his jacket. “You’re right. I don’t have to wear the yellow skirt, do I?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“I’m going right now before you can come up with more punishments. Love you hon, bye.” And with another quick kiss he was out the door with Freya.

The ride to her apartment seemed to stretch on much longer than usual. Once in the sanctity of her car, Freya seemed to forget about the mugging and the trauma and the tears and chattered up a storm about how fantastic her new apartment was. “It’s just like old times, when we used to share your apartment there, I’ll never understand why you gave your place up…” Paul nodded noncommittally whenever prompted and tried to remember his reasoning for actually agreeing to this little jaunt.

She parked her car outside the familiar building and Paul reached for his phone to call a cab to take him home. “But you have to walk me to my door, someone could be waiting there for me,” Freya blubbered, “that man, he had my wallet, he knows where I live.”

Paul resisted the urge to tell Freya that he would probably let the attacker have her and slipped from the car with a sigh to follow her up the stairs to her apartment. She opened the door, muttering about making a pot of tea and Paul’s jaw dropped nearly to the floor. Freya had arranged her furniture almost exactly as he had arranged his. There was definitely something wrong about this woman.

“You like the new place?” she perked as she came out of the kitchen.

“It’s, uh, freaky?” he breathed.

“There’s just so many memories in this building, I started pushing around things and they just got laid out like this. Weird, hey?”

“Um, yeah.”

“You wanna see the rest of the place? You wouldn’t believe the bedroom.”

“No, I think I’m gonna head right on home, you’ve had a rough night and I don’t want to come anywhere near your bedroom.” He began backing away towards the front door.

“Aww, come on Pauly,” Freya cooed, the dried streaks of mascara doing little to facilitate the alluring pout she was trying to achieve. “You can’t honestly tell me you don’t still think about us, what we had before Gina was around.”

“Only because you’re always around to remind me how horrible it was and what a huge mistake it was to ever so much as say ‘Nice exhibition isn’t it?’ to you.”

“Oh, you remember the first words you said to me, how sweet,” she gushed, reaching for the lapels of his jacket.

“That’s not the point, you delusional mad cow,” he snapped as he pulled away from her. “I’m going home to my loving wife to collapse in bed to recover from a night of manic sports fans, watered down beer, and insane stalkers, and I would appreciate it if you’d leave me and Gina the fuck alone.”

“You don’t mean that,” Freya gasped.

“I swear to you that I mean every word,” he said sincerely.

“I’ll just call you a taxi,” she perked, reaching for her phone.

“If it’s all the same to you I’ll just go downstairs and flag one down, thanks.”

“At this time of night? It could take forever.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” he assured her as he stepped into the hallway and closed the door firmly behind himself. He let out a ragged sigh and headed home, hoping that Gina would still be talking to him.

“Think there’s a rule that states all plane trips must be made as painful as humanly possible?” Fenny mused as they finally made their way through what was probably the fourth set of metal detectors between the parking lot and their departure lounge and they collapsed into chairs. A crowd of weary-looking passengers wandered off the airplane to be greeted by friends and family in the terminal.

“I thought you were excited,” Brad said, concerned.

“I’m excited about the prospect of getting off the plane without getting blown up by terrorists or contracting some fatal disease and then getting to see Gina and Paul, yes. It’s those bits between driving on the 110 and landing in Sydney that I’m not so excited about.”

“Ever notice how every time we take a plane trip we come close to death?” Brad mused.

“Still safer than driving the freeways of LA,” she shrugged. “At least terrorists have some sort of goal. I’d rather be wiped out by one of them than some guy shaving while driving, or that woman who was on a cell phone and fiddling with her laptop on the passenger seat at the same time.”

“Yeah, and what about the evil viruses?” Brad asked.

“Eeh, I’m holding onto that theory that if I pretend they don’t exist they won’t notice me.” Brad raised an eyebrow as a woman had a coughing fit nearby. “Well it’s worth a shot anyway.” She dug around in her carryon backpack in search of her Jelly Bellies to keep herself occupied, and Brad took to people watching and waiting for their boarding call. After a few minutes, he began counting the number of people who seemed to be coughing. At 17 he felt a tickle in the back of his throat and couldn’t help but cough himself.

“Hey Fen?”

“Hmm?” She tore herself away from the pamphlet on increased security measures and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“What are the symptoms of SARS?” He let out another cough.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” she sighed, rolling her eyes as he grabbed her by the wrist and put her hand on his forehead.

“Do I have a fever?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve even got a brain,” she giggled.

“I go to all the effort of giving you a trip to visit your best friends, and what do I get? Huh? What do I get in return? Honestly. Sheesh. Um, I’ve forgotten where I was going with this.”

“Why did I ever marry a comedian,” Fenny groaned as their flight was called.

“Cause a doctor would be boring.”

“But he wouldn’t think he’s coming down with strange diseases.”

“He’d probably also advise against the amount of chocolate you eat,” Brad shrugged as they grabbed their things and headed off.

“You make a valid point for a change,” she agreed with a lopsided smirk. “He probably also wouldn’t drop everything to take me to Australia to visit a couple of psychotics. Thanks for this trip, you wonderful, stupid man.”

He glared at her playfully as they handed over their boarding passes, and retaliated by slapping her on the rear and half chasing her down the ramp into the plane.

Gina let out a groan as she was reluctantly pulled awake by a dull, persistent noise. She rolled over and slammed a hand on the alarm clock, but the noise continued. After a moment she opened one eye halfway and reached for her cell phone. “Whatever you want, the answer is no,” she grumbled into it.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, I’ve just been gargling ball bearings for fun and profit.” She sat up and finally got around to opening her eyes. “Giles?”

“Yeah, is it a bad time?”

Gina reluctantly pulled herself out of bed and wandered towards the living room. “Well, nine o’clock Saturday morning isn’t exactly a good time.”

“Sorry,” he breathed.

Gina waited a few long, silent moments before prompting him. “Is there a reason you called?”

“Oh, yeah. I, well, I feel bad about the way we left things earlier, and I was hoping we could get together and talk things through.”

Gina felt a pang of regret followed by a twinge of anxiety and deduced that talking with Giles would probably be her only hope of getting him to leave her alone, and she agreed that maybe they hadn’t gone about things in the best manner. “Sure,” she sighed. “Where?”

Giles rattled off the location of a small café near his hotel, she agreed to meet with him, and she hurried back into the bedroom to get dressed as cautiously as she could without waking Paul. Unfortunately, she half collapsed onto the dresser as she tried to get her boot on, and Paul raised his head reluctantly, not quite opening his eyes but his face still questioning. “What’re you doing?” he asked quietly.

“Going out for a little while. I’ll be back in a bit,” she said just as quietly.

“Okay.” He dropped his head back to the pillow and added, almost as an afterthought and without bothering to raise his head, “You were asleep, but I came straight home from Freya’s even though she wanted to take off my clothes.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I know you did.” Chuckling quietly to herself, Gina slipped out of the room and headed for her car and into the city.

Fenny had lost track of how long they’d been in the air, but she’d gone through all 8 of the CDs she’d brought along with her and hadn’t even bothered looking at the screen during the last movie. Brad had managed to sleep through most of the flight, which was probably a good thing. Most everyone on the plane was asleep, but Fenny and her paranoia were still wide awake.

She flinched and barely managed to suppress a squeal of fright as a hand lifted one of her headphones from her ear. “God, I thought you were asleep, don’t do that,” she hissed.

“Not asleep, resting,” Brad perked as he slipped the headphones from her head.

“I don’t know why men won’t admit to sleeping,” she mumbled. “What are you doing, those’re mine,” she grumbled as he donned the headphones and smiled at her.

“What’re you listening to?”

“Weezer.”

“Neat.”

“Neat?” Fenny questioned, eyebrows raised as he reached into her lap and pressed the play button on her CD player. He bopped his head to the intro before singing along softly, but loud enough to get scowls from a few fellow passengers.

“Let’s go away for a while, you and I, to a strange and distant land,” Brad cooed, grinning at her.

”Too distant. Why can’t Paul and Gina live closer than a 12-hour plane trip?” Fenny groused

“Where they speak no word of truth but we don’t understand anyway”

“I don’t think anyone understands Paul.”

“Holiday, far away, to stay on a holiday, far away, let’s go today in a heartbeat

Heartbeat, heartbeat.”

“Here’s hoping our hearts keep beating and we don’t collapse from SARS,” Fenny mused.

“Don’t bother to pack your bags, or your map, we won’t need them where we’re going.”

“We’ve warded off bad guys without luggage I guess,” she shrugged.

“We’re going where the wind is blowing, not knowing where we’re gonna stay”

“Yeah, ‘cause you didn’t tell them we’re coming.”

“Holiday, far away, to stay

On a holiday, far away, to stay

On a holiday, far away, let’s go today in a heartbeat

Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat

We will write a postcard to our friends and family in free verse”

“I thought we’d agreed to avoid all unnecessary contact with the relatives.”

“On the road with Kerouac

Sheltered in his bivouac”

“Terrible book, and you don’t even know what a bivouac is.”

“On this road we’ll never die

Heartbeat, heartbeat”

“Well we’ve managed to survive thus far, that’s points in our favor.”

Brad chuckled as Fenny pulled the headphones off him. “Excuse me, sir,” a stewardess hissed, her company policy smile still firmly plastered in place, “but other passengers are trying to sleep, could you please keep it down?”

“I thought we were landing in like ten minutes anyway?” Brad pointed out, looking at his watch.

“That’s beside the point, sir,” she huffed and wandered off again.

“I could die of SARS and she’s sucking out the last of our entertainment,” he grumbled, and a man a few rows ahead of them gave a hacking cough as if to punctuate the point.

“That’s if the guy in the blue turban back by the bathrooms doesn’t take over the plane with the plastic spork he was given with lunch. Or was it dinner?” Fenny asked.

“These could be our last moments,” he nodded solemnly. “Wanna do it in the bathroom?”

“I think we’re going to survive this plane ride, Brad,” she smiled, “and even if we didn’t I don’t want to go to heaven with a bruised back like you gave me last time, I’d be all cross and I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“Who said anything about heaven?” he asked innocently.

Fenny raised an eyebrow and slipped her headphones back on.

Gina settled down on a bench with her styrofoam cup of tea and donut, soaking up the rapidly warming morning sun while Giles hesitated a moment and gingerly sat next to her. He’d decided that the café was a bit too stifling and had suggested the park a block down the road. She glanced up at him as she sipped at her drink with the hope that infusing a bit of caffeine into her system would wake her up a bit more.

“I really loved you,” he declared suddenly.

Gina closed her eyes. This was not how she wanted things to go, not this early in the morning. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” she murmured.

“I wish you’d told me about your husband.”

“I was trying to get over him at the time. Talking about him breaking my heart wasn’t really high on my list of fun ways to spend an evening.”

“That’s why you left, isn’t it? Paul?”

“Yeah. We had something of a reconciliation. I tried letting you down easy, I didn’t in a million years think you’d come to see me again.”

“I honestly thought we had something special, like we were meant to be together.” He paused, and she didn’t respond. “But you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Gina sighed.

“Don’t be,” Giles said, forcing a smile even though his eyes showed just how heartbroken he was. “I’m glad for what we had, the time we spent together. Too bad it didn’t end better.”

She smiled at him. “That sounds like a line from a bad chick flick.”

“I think it is,” he chuckled lightly. “Loneliness can make even the straightest of men break down and rent Julia Roberts videos. She looked really hot in Notting Hill.”

Gina couldn’t help but laugh. “You really are a sad little man, aren’t you?”

“Would you rather I told you I sat around watching porn?” he countered.

“That’d be a little less disturbing than Hugh Grant, I think.”

“See how much you leaving has screwed me up? You made me watch movies made for middle-aged housewives so they can hold on to the dream that love can conquer all. Even though it obviously doesn’t.”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t accept I was breaking up with you. I was trying to not leave you as a writhing pile of goo.”

“What, you thought I was that weak that I couldn’t cope without you?” Giles gasped, playful indignantly.

Gina raised an eyebrow mockingly.

“You’re right,” he smiled. “Sorry.” He crumpled up his cup and tossed it into a nearby bin. “I’ve missed you, Gina.” He hesitantly put an arm around her shoulders, and was infinitely surprised when she leaned into his embrace.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she chided, trying not to notice the alluring scent of his cologne and the memories of breathing it in between kisses back in London. “I’m not worth it.”

“You’re more than worth it,” he assured her softly.

Before she knew what was happening, Gina found herself leaning towards him, wrapping her arms around him neck and letting her fingers find the sensitive spot on the back of his neck that always made him shiver. She smiled lightly as he shuddered and captured her mouth in a feverish, almost desperate kiss, which she eagerly returned. Gina let out a soft moan against his lips, the familiar, welcoming feeling of being in Giles’s arms and the soft taste of blueberry still lingering in his mouth from the pastry he’d eaten earlier. Her fingers tightened around his hair and he pulled her even closer, crushing his body against hers.

Paul headed off down the hall with the new doorknobs they’d bought earlier to replace the rather sad ones currently preventing any of the bedroom doors from closing properly. Armed with an array of screwdrivers and the determination to get a step closer to the house being fully habitable and to keep himself occupied while Gina was out, he went to work on the door to his studio.

In no time he had the old fixture off, the rusted screws nearly crumbling under the stress of the screwdriver. He reached for a new doorknob, poking at the hermetically sealed package that would have been suitable for storing nuclear waste – there was simply no foreseeable way to open it. “First childproof aspirin bottles,” he grumbled to himself as he dug around in his art supplies for a knife, “then CD packaging, now bombproof hardware supplies. Why doesn’t anyone want you getting into anything.” With a few jagged cuts he managed to dump the knob, doorplate, a selection of screws and the set of directions onto the floor next to him. “Third world nations can get weapons-grade plutonium, but I have a hard time getting at a doorknob.”

He regarded the contraption for a moment or two before figuring out how to get it into the door. One half slipped into the hole from the outside of the door, and he carefully guided the other half in as well, but it wouldn’t go in all the way. This project was rapidly becoming more effort than he thought it was worth. He braced himself on his knees and shoved, and the parts moved together with a crunch, which he stoutly ignored as he reached for the latch and metal plate. His shoulders slumped as he realized the latch was supposed to have gone in first. Grumbling to himself he pulled the other components from the door, and winced when a few metal pieces tumbled to the floor, snapped off the brand new half doorknob.

“I broke my knob,” Paul pouted. He reached for another new doorknob and quickly set to work again, this time with a bit of added knowledge of how to go about working things but still firmly ignoring the instructions patiently waiting nearby.

He fastened in the last screw and regarded his work proudly. Sitting back on his heels, he pushed the door closed, pleased that it gave a satisfying click and not its usual groan of protest and grinding of rust on dry steel. He sat up and dusted himself off, gathering the packaging and broken knob, hoping to remove the evidence before Gina could find out, and reached for the door.

It was locked. From the outside.

Paul had locked himself into his own studio. “For Christ’s sake,” he groaned, dropping his things heavily onto the floor again and dug out the screwdriver to take it apart yet again.