“If by strippers you mean go for a drink, I’m in.”

Dropping back in dramatic disappointment, Cora sighed heavily. “Fine. I’ll settle for that. Tonight?”

“Great. We have a plan. Now go, I’m extremely busy.”

Cora stared at her, unblinking.

“Well, then, I have to do a pelvic exam in, like, five minutes, if you want to join.”

She stood up quickly. “Nope, I’m good, thanks. Shall we say six, bar around the corner?”

“Sounds good.”

Lingering a moment, Cora gave her a look Frazer couldn’t quite figure out before she turned around and left, leaving Frazer staring after her.

Friendship was going so well. Friendly-type friends. Yeah.

* * *

The house was quiet, and for once it was unsettling.

Usually, Cora liked to sit in the house alone to enjoy the solitude. A book in hand, she’d get lost in the pages and at the last minute, be rushing around to get dinner ready for Alec. The lounge room was her space, bookshelves lined with classics and romances and everything in between. The wood was dark, the couch a cream colour that Alec had once sniffed at and said it proved they didn’t have kids.

Cora loved the couch. It enveloped her when she sat in it. When they’d first bought it, Alec had pushed her onto it and laughed when she’d pulled him down with her, their clothes scattered on the floor in a pattern slashed out of their carelessness.

These days, he stayed upstairs in his study, researching or planning or something. Those nights, she enjoyed the lack of interruption. Those nights meant they weren’t arguing or, worse, sitting on opposite sides of the couch with a prickly gap between them, one impossible to cross without one of them compromising something. Usually Cora was the one coerced across.

Today, the lack of movement made her restless. She’d been restless for days, since Alec left, really. This huge step, one she’d built up to for so long, was only half-taken. It was as if she had built herself up to jump, the tension coiled in her muscles, and then, just as she’d let go, the power pumping her up and outwards, someone had grabbed her back. All that adrenaline, and nowhere for it to go.

There was still nothing from Alec. And she had said nothing in return.

She traced the backs of her books with her fingertips. Who would move out? Would they both move out?

Would they go through with it?

Would Cora mean it?

God. She’d have to tell her parents. Her traditionalist parents. Her mother, whose parents’ South Korean tradition, culture, and expectations clung to her like lint despite her being born in Australia. Her dad’s two-generation Australian lineage on his father’s side made him the safer bet for this sort of news that required open-mindedness, but still…

Her chest heaved as she scanned the room almost desperately for something to fix her eyes on.

There was nothing here, nothing to distract her.