An eon passed, an era, and when it was over, Jules was clutching her knees so tightly her arms hurt.

Vivian still wasn’t looking at her.

Maybe Jules had dreamed that. She must have. Vivian couldn’t have just said she cared for Jules. She must have meant something else, something that didn’t so precisely match up with Jules’s daydreams like teeth on a zipper closing.

“What does that mean?” she whispered.

“What do you think it means? I invited you to stay with me. Twice, for God’s sake. I told you I’d do anything for you—”

“Wha—anything?” Jules sure as hell couldn’t remember Vivian ever saying that.

“Anything within reasonable limits.” Vivian waved her hand impatiently. She was still looking out of the window. “I even let you go toddling off to meet Monique—”

“Let me—”

She rounded on Jules with eyes full of fire. “Never do that again.”

A wheezing sound came out of Jules’s mouth. It was the best she could do.

“My point is, I care for you, obviously.” Her voice growled with disbelief at Jules’s thickness, and her glare got much worse. “But tonight’s little display ruined my entire evening. I had to talk to important people about important things, and I had to do all that in an extremely bad mood.”

Saying you started it seemed childish. “Um…”

“Which is when I realized that we had to talk,” Vivian finished. “Now. What do you think?”

Then she waited. She actually folded her arms and tapped one bare foot on the carpet.

“Think?” Jules shook her head hard. She couldn’t think. She might never be able to think again. This had just killed her brain.

Vivian rolled her eyes.

“Okay,” Jules said. “I know you hate explaining things, but you’re going to have to spell this one out for me. I do not understand.”

“We do not have to have sex,” Vivian said through her teeth, “to have a satisfying relationship. Is that clear enough for you, Julia?” Her face was bright red now.

Jules fell back against the headboard, utterly thunderstruck. Vivian wanted…Vivian was suggesting…proposing…

“Like a platonic thing?” she managed.

“Precisely.” Her tone said, you finally get it.

“You and me, we’d be…together?”

Vivian paused, then nodded, looking relieved that Jules was finally catching on.

Jules sat in the ensuing stunned pause. Then she said, “I’m going to need coffee for this, aren’t I?”

Ten minutes later, they perched on the kitchen counter stools while Jules clutched her mug of coffee and Vivian regarded her from across the island.

Jules took a long sip, grateful that her hands remained steady. “All right,” she said carefully. “You…care for me.”

Vivian nodded.

“But,” she continued, trying her best to piece it together, “not like a friend exactly?”

Vivian shrugged in an apparent effort to look cool. Then she ruined it by swallowing visibly. “Not exactly.”