“I’m sorry I pushed you,” he said. “It’s really none of my business. We’re friends, I should have let you be.”

“No,” said Laura, biting back what she’d been about to say. “It was good, I’m glad you did. It kind of broke the ice.” She sighed. “You know, Nina told me I should get a therapist and get my shit together, and she’s right. I want to stay here, I like it, and if I don’t move forward, I’ll have to move home.” She smiled slightly. “If you know what I mean.”

He nodded. “I do.”

Was it too late to kiss him again and see where it went?

It was. “Well, I’m across the hall if you need me.” He turned away and went into his room, the faintest “good night” floating across the space between them.

“Good night,” replied Laura faintly. She wasn’t even sure if he’d heard her.

Fall

THIRTY-EIGHT

Sometimes you recognize an important moment, other times it passes unnoticed. The night at Dodger Stadium fell somewhere in the middle; Laura was aware of how important a step driving had been, but completely failed to notice how her feelings for Bob had changed. In her defense, she had a lot going on, but as the proverb says, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Certainly, Laura was one of only two members of the Maggie Morse household who didn’t notice how close she and Bob were getting, and the other one was Oliver. Cats are notorious narcissists, bless their self-centered little socks.

Laura still found Bob deeply attractive, and would happily have admitted it, had anyone needed clarification, but he had also become someone she liked spending time with and looked forward to seeing. A friend, in fact. Several times she was tempted to ask him about that kiss . . . but she valued his friendship more and more and couldn’t bring herself to risk it.

As summer wound to a close and September got underway, the Nina-Polly Plan for Laura’s Enrichment (Polly suggested the name and only later revealed it was so she could refer to the whole endeavor by the acronym NiPPLE) moved into its second phase, which was new activities (indeed, Polly had suggested writing an Adventurous New Activities List, but Nina was onto her by that point).

Laura had started grad school, but only had classes during the day, which was extremely fortunate. It meant her evenings were free for Enrichment, and once a week she, Nina, and Polly would get together and try something Nina had come up with. This led to several major discoveries. The first of these shouldn’t have been a surprise, which was that Polly was an excellent surfer. As Polly was a Long Beach native, it made a certain amount of sense, but the biggest surprise was how shocked Polly herself had been.