She clicked the send button and signed off the net, deciding breakfast was in order if she was ever going to get out of the house. Yawning and tugging at the sleeves of her pajamas, she padded into the kitchen to start the kettle, only to find it full of water and sitting on the stove alongside her favorite coffee mug which already had a tea bag resting in it, waiting for her.

Fenny scowled at the mug as she turned on the stove. It was times like this that she hated Brad for not letting her hate him. He had come home after she had gone to bed, left before she had gotten up, left no explanation, but had made a kind gesture to let her know he was still thinking about her.

“Hey Jag,” Fenny smiled as he wandered into the kitchen. “Breakfast time for you too, huh?” She leaned down to pet the cat and the morning sunlight glinted off the diamond on her finger. It was still sort of surreal, the idea of getting married to Brad, and while everyone had told her at first that it would take a while to sink in, the concept seemed to drift further and further from her grasp the more time wore on. It seemed almost as if they were seeing less of each other as an engaged couple living under the same roof than when they’d been casually dating in different cities, and that idea just didn’t settle with her properly.

Jaguar nipped playfully at her fingertips as she stroked his ear. She pushed her thoughts back into the dark recesses of her mind again. “Ok, ok, I’ll feed you…”

Gina let a pleased hum escape her lips as she woke, the strong arm holding her close assuring her that it hadn’t been a dream. His heart beat gently against her back as they lay together. “Morning,” Greg said, his voice still rough with sleep.

“Good morning,” Gina breathed.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where my glasses are, would you?”

“Last time I saw them, you threw them across the hall when you pulled off my pants,” she giggled.

“That’s right,” he mused. “And I picked them up afterwards when we moved from the floor to the bed.”

“Oh, and then they fell off the table when I smacked it in the middle of round two,” she smiled, rolling over to face him.

“How’s your hand, by the way?” he asked, taking it and placing a gentle kiss in the palm before inspecting the bruise across the back of her hand.

“Just fine,” she grinned coyly as he leaned in to kiss her. “I should make some breakfast,” she declared, pulling away from him.

“Don’t suppose you have any coffee?” Greg asked, slipping out of bed to head for the bathroom.

“You should’ve told me you were coming,” Gina said, slipping into her pajamas and dashing out of the room. After stepping over his bag and the stray articles of clothing still in the hallway where they had been abandoned, she made her way to the kitchen. She leaned against the counter for a minute, realizing what had happened. He had done it again. Greg Proops had wandered back into her life, her heart, her bed—well, first the floor of her hallway, close enough—and she had just let him. Here she was, pining over her estranged husband, wanting to work through their problems, and she was fooling around with Greg.

Who had left his wife to be with her.

Fuck.

Fenny stuck her paintbrush in her back pocket and jumped off the stool.

“No no no, the music comes in before the door opens,” someone was saying.

“The door doesn’t open though,” someone else replied.

“Well that’s not my fault, where’s the props guy?”

“Lunch.”

“Well get one of the techies to do it already, come on, come on, we’ve got an opening coming up here!”

Fenny braced herself as someone came around the corner and spotted her in her little smock and pigtails as she rounded up her paints. “I’m not a techie,” she announced as he opened his mouth. “If you ask me to fix the door, all I could do is paint a peephole and tell you it should be back an extra three feet.”

The actor glared down at her in confusion.

“Look, I’m painting a backdrop here, leave me alone,” she barked.

He sneered at her and wandered off.

Fenny loved her job, but sometimes working with the prick actors who couldn’t do a thing for themselves aggravated her to no end. Heaven forbid an actor should get his hands dirty and pry a door open. With a sigh, she investigated her morning’s progress before heading outside for some fresh air – or as close as one could get in the heart of Los Angeles – and a phone call. Sitting on the sidewalk, back against the wall of the theatre, she dialed Brad’s cell phone and waited. And waited.

“Hey sweetie,” his voice cooed suddenly.

“Hi Brad.” He only called her sweetie when he was in trouble, and he’d been calling her sweetie a lot recently. “You were out of bed pretty quick this morning.”

“Yeah, I had some stuff to do.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Meeting.”

“With whom?”

“Huh? Oh, um, my agent.”

“Oh. Well I was thinking, you wanna get together for lunch or something? If I don’t get out of this theatre I might just stab someone through the heart with my compass.”

“Don’t do that,” he chided with a short laugh. Her heart leapt at the sound of his laughter. “Look, I’d love to, but I can’t.” Her heart fell back into her stomach.

“Oh. Alright…”

The pain in her voice was not lost on him. “It’s just, I’ve got this appointment I can’t miss. I’ve…it’s stuff for the show. Whose Line.”

“Yeah, okay.” She fiddled with her shoelaces. “What time will you be home? Should I bother to make dinner?”

“Fen look, I’m sorry,” Brad began, beginning to get the feeling she was upset. “It’s just—I’m not sure when I’m gonna be home. I’ll pick something up on the way, Chinese, maybe?”

“Ok,” Fenny breathed. “What’s going on with—”

“FENNY!”

“Shit,” she murmured, “hold on. What?” she yelled back at Larry, the lighting director.

“Little Mister Holier Than Thou Cos I’m the Star wants your ass because he got green acrylics in his hair.”

“This is my fault why?”

“Cause he ran into your backdrop.”

“Which is set up against the back wall of the theatre where no one but me really has any business being.”

“Yeah, he says you should have a wet paint sign.”

“So he can head-butt my stuff when it’s dry?”

“Just get in here before someone ends up dead.”

“Fine.” She took a deep breath and held the phone back up to her ear.

“Crisis?” Brad giggled.

“Yeah. I’ll see you when you get home, ok?”

“Promise.”

“I don’t want to go to bed alone again, Bradley.”

He wasn’t sure if that was a plea or a threat. “I love you,” he said sincerely.

“I love you too.” She ended the call, put the phone back into her pocket, and stormed into the theatre to deal with whatever it was that had gone wrong.

“What happened to breakfast?” Greg asked, wandering into the kitchen dressed in a pair of jeans and a Giants t-shirt.

She jumped a mile and tried to look less disturbed. “It can wait. Can we talk?” she asked, grabbing his hand and guiding him to the couch.

“Sure, babe. What’s wrong?”

They sat together and he peered at her carefully, cautiously, as she looked everywhere but his eyes. She took a deep breath and decided to just dive in. “You left her? Really?”

“Yes, I really did,” he said softly, taking her hand.

“Because of me?”

“Yes. Well, partially. We’d talked about it before, we weren’t happy, not really. Neither one of us ever had the courage to do it, to leave, because we were comfortable where we were. You gave me the courage.”

“Don’t say that, Greg,” Gina sighed.

“Why not? It’s true.”

“What happens if something…happens. What if you decide you want your wife back instead of me? You’ll hate me for making you leave her.”

“No I wouldn’t,” he assured her. “I could never hate you.”

“Don’t count on it,” she mumbled under her breath.

“I love you,” he cooed, leaning over to kiss her cheek softly.

“I love you too Greg, but—” She stopped and looked down at her hands nervously. What could she say to him?

“What’s wrong?” Greg pressed, rubbing her knee in a comforting gesture.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Gina said softly.

“You don’t want me here?” he asked, beginning to get confused.

“No, it’s not that, it’s—I, you…”

She closed her eyes for a moment and then made the fatal mistake of letting his gaze capture hers. Those expectant, worried, loving eyes baring down on her, his hair still rumpled from their night together, knowing that he had made probably the biggest sacrifice of his life to be with her, she couldn’t take it. All the things she wanted to say, about loving Paul and still being married and being unsure that they could even make it together with their rocky past… All her words caught in her throat and she felt inexplicable, unwanted tears welling in her eyes.

“I—I was gonna go back to LA, visit Fenny,” she lied.