“Yeah. Why? You looking to change that?”
She smirked at his tone, shook her head and took another sip of beer. “Nope.”
Ty’s body cooled with disappointment. “Why not?”
“Well, mainly because it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Ty rolled his eyes. “Brilliant. Thanks for even bringing it up, then.”
“But I was just thinking how it’s interesting, about you and me.” She wagged a French fry between them. “I mean, we’ve managed to make all this work for three whole seasons now, under the most stressful conditions possible. But we’re both still totally useless with relationships.”
“Oh, cheers. And wait—so, indulge my fragile male ego a moment, but why’s it such a rubbish idea, exactly?”
“Because if, no, when we screwed it all up, we’d both have nothing,” she said. “And I spent a lo-o-ong time having nothing, and it sucks. I don’t plan on going back to it. And definitely not over sex.”
“We’ve survived tropical storms and quicksand and network mergers together,” Ty said. “You don’t think we could survive maybe drinking a bit too much and waking up next to each other?”
“Not a chance I’m willing to take, Ty. Plus I wake up next to you all the time and trust me, it’s grossly overrated.”
He put a hand to his chest, faking a blow to his heart. “You are stone-cold, Katie.”
She shrugged, eyes drifting to the TV above the bar. “It’s Saskatchewan.”
Ty leaned into the bar, mirroring her body. He made sure he kept the flirtation over-the-top, joking, always their way. “What if it was really good sex?”
Kate smirked and shook her head again.
“You don’t know what we might be missing out on.”
“I’ll live. And anyhow, I’d get strung up by tall women everywhere for poaching in their rightful territory.”
Ty switched tracks. “What if we weren’t all those other things? What if the show got canceled tomorrow?”
He saw thoughts forming, gears ticking behind Kate’s unfocused eyes as she chose what bones to throw him, picked whether to tease him or pull him up short. In the end she did both. “I dunno, Ty. And I don’t intend to find out… But if that day does ever come, and we can still stand the sight of each other, you have permission to make a pass at me—a real one. But not a moment before.”
She sat up straight and aimed her attention back at her food. Ten minutes later she slid her half-full second glass of beer back across the counter. Ty watched the barman take it away as if it were his firstborn being wrenched from his arms. Damn, he’d kill for a beer right about now. He let that craving replace the one that had taken up residence between his thighs.
“Bedtime,” Kate said with a satisfied yawn—a postcoital yawn if ever he’d heard one.
They walked side by side back to the motor court, hugging their bodies against the bone-deep cold. They mounted the outside steps to the second level of rooms and bid one another good-night under the yellow glow of the parking lot’s lights. Ty watched Kate’s softly swishing hips carry her a few paces to her door, watched her find her key and disappear into her room with a final smile over her shoulder.
He’d be good tonight. He was tired. He could make it—what, six hours? Ty searched his pockets for his own key and heard Kate’s dead bolt click. He knew already he’d hear it again before long, sliding back open to let him in. Who was he trying to kid, anyhow?
WHEN THE INEVITABLE KNOCK came at her door, Kate rolled over to groggily scan the digital screen of her trusty travel alarm clock. Three twenty-eight…dear God in Heaven. Already knowing what this would be about, she resigned herself to leaving the warm cocoon of the sheets and shuffled to the door.
She squinted into the jaundiced light. “Morning, Ty.”
A frigid breeze seeped in behind him. “Invite me in?”
“Yup. Knock yourself out.”
Kate had long ago learned that having a handsome, strapping man with an exotic accent turn up on her doorstep in the dead of night didn’t necessary mean what one might hope. She’d also learned to sleep with a bra on if Ty was staying in the same motel as her. It just saved a lot of time and modesty not having to scramble for one night after night.
As her guest strolled past in track pants and a bawdy T-shirt he’d purchased with her in Tijuana, Kate flipped the television on. She checked their channel’s Canadian sister just in case their show was on in reruns, but it was mired in infomercials. She heard Ty’s flip-flops land on the carpet and the rustling of the sheets as he made a space for himself on her bed. Those sounds shouldn’t still give her a charge after all this time, but they always did. And actually, why shouldn’t they? Everything she’d said in the bar still stood—she wouldn’t ever complicate what they had by throwing sex into the mix. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t think about it.
She sat on the edge of the bed, setting the remote by Ty’s elbow. He stretched out on his stomach, facing the screen, and Kate ran her hands through his messy hair, trying to establish some kind of order. This was allowed, another extension of their nearly all-encompassing whatevership, but God knew why. Unspoken understanding allowed them to do a lot of things that they both knew they’d better knock off if one of them started seeing someone else. Not inherently incriminating things, but ones no significant other could ever reasonably be expected to put up with.
She sighed. “You couldn’t wait another hour, Ty?”
“Can’t sleep over there. There’s a rattle in the heating vent or something.”
“Sure there is.”
He always had an excuse for turning up. Ty was a terrible sleeper, practically an insomniac, but Kate didn’t fully understand her own role in these predictable intrusions. Experience had taught her that Ty was useless at any activity that required him to remain still for longer than thirty seconds, but why keeping her awake seemed to cure his sleeping disorder remained an inconvenient mystery.
He groaned happily, settling in. That sound… It brought back memories Kate could have done without. It had been two years now since she’d accidentally walked in on him having sex with his then-girlfriend, but the pImages** of it were clear as day. Blissfully, Ty was still none the wiser.
Back in L.A., Ty lived in an apartment Kate had found for him after the first season wrapped, one far more to her taste than his. She suspected he’d be happy in some craphole studio by the freeway, but she’d snagged him what she felt an up-and-coming TV personality should have. He’d hated the wall-to-wall carpeting on sight, but to this day Kate said a little thank-you prayer whenever she laid eyes on it.
She’d had keys to his place and had gotten in the habit of coming by unannounced to go over rough cuts of the show or to drop off papers for him. She’d since gotten out of this habit.
When she came by that traumatic evening she’d let herself in as usual and followed the sounds of the television to Ty’s living room, just as she’d done a dozen times before. The hall light had been off and the maligned
