Maggie dabbed at her eyes when she closed and locked the door behind Abner. “I’m really sorry, Abby. Some things are just not meant to be,” she whispered to herself.

Maggie drifted off for a moment as she thought of Abner Tookus. Friends for years, he’d bailed her out many times, just as she’d bailed him out. Their relationship was always professional. Except for that one time when she’d dumped Ted and thought that maybe something would happen with Abner. It had, but then she’d had a meltdown, and Jack Emery rescued her in the nick of time.

It was back in the day when the G-String Girls were in the States to perform, she’d gotten tickets, and Abner was going to be her guest. When she saw him standing in the hall waiting for her, dressed in a suit and with a fresh haircut, her heart had fluttered wildly. This was not the Abner she knew. The Abner she knew was a free spirit, who dressed like a bum and thumbed his nose at the establishment. There was that one moment in time when she had to decide if she wanted to step off the path and cheat on Ted. Not that it was cheating—she and Ted had broken up, and her heart was sore and bruised. Abner had given her one intense look, knew what she was thinking, and that it wasn’t going to work for them.

He was wrong. It would have worked because she would have made it work. Now she would never even know—all because she’d been gutless. Abner had touched something in her that day. She supposed that she would forever wonder about what might have been had she not had her meltdown.

Ted bounded down the steps just as Maggie came out of her semitrance and whipped around, a tired smile on her face. She looked at Ted. He wasn’t much in the looks department, but he was all hers, and she loved him heart and soul.

“You know what I was just thinking, Ted?” she lied. “Let’s turn the thermostat down to zero, build a fire, and have wild sex on that bearskin rug in front of the fireplace.”

Ted was naked before Maggie could turn on the house alarm and turn out the foyer lights. “I guess we’re going to forgo the fire and the zero temperatures, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ted said, smoothing out the pearly white bearskin rug.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about what my guy brought over here?”

“I’m sure. Boy, am I sure.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Maggie giggled. And she couldn’t help but think about Lizzie’s giggling and her comment about reunions with Cosmo. Well, who needs reunions, she said to herself.

Maggie rolled over and looked at the red numerals on the digital clock on the nightstand: 3:00. She rolled back over to her other side. Her leg snaked out, and she pushed Ted out of the bed with one mighty shove. “Wake up, Ted! I just remembered something.”