“Hey hey hey!” Nadine called as she let herself in. “You in here Reese?”

“On the couch!” She replied weakly.

She had been stretched out on said couch all morning with an ice pack and a large pitcher of water. It was the only thing she could stomach. Thankfully she wasn’t nauseous, but she had a pounding headache and the idea of food was off putting. It wasn’t the greatest thing, calling in sick after already being out for several days, but the office seemed indifferent so she would get away with it. Why every dare Dean and Ollie came up with involved shooting whiskey she had no idea, but it was a good job that Sam was sensible enough to keep the bar snacks coming. It had mopped up some of the alcohol.

For a while she’d had Drake there to rub her back and generally offer sympathy, even if he did keep pointing out it was self-inflicted, but then he’d had to go to work. The sympathy had been counter balanced with a lot of laughing at her. She didn’t remember coming back home, but apparently after Clark had dropped her off she’d woken Drake up. (How her baby brother who’d barely been licensed for five minutes had wound up being the one they called to pick them up was beyond her sober self’s comprehension). According to her fiancé she had crawled on top of him, breath like a brewery, and done some kind of strange wriggling that was supposed to be a lap dance. The assessment of her skills had been unflattering to say the least, but suffice to say he hadn’t found it sexy. He’d never seen Reese that intoxicated and of course thought it was hilarious. He thought it was even funnier that he’d had to almost pin her to the bed to stop her amorous attentions.

When she’d commented that it was unlike him to turn her down if she was offering it on a plate, his response was that it ‘would’ve been like doing it with a stoned octopus.’

“Well you look brighter than I thought you would.”

Nadine bounded in and flopped onto the seat next to her, dropping her bags without ceremony on the floor. She kicked off her shoes and curled her feet up under her, making herself comfortable. Her red hair was hidden under a straw hat and with her t-shirt and cropped pants she was doing a fair impression of a farm girl.

“Eh, I’m living,” Reese gave a loopy smile, shrugging her shoulders up to her ears. “How’re you sweetie?”

“Good, good. So I take it you had a good time with the fam, apart from the stalkerazzi?”

“Yeah. God knows what that’ll turn out to be.”

Nadine actually had a fair idea, but no desire to talk about it. It surprised her that she would be at all unsure. It seemed obvious to her that if they were snooping around Reese not Justin the story could only take one of two forms. Either they were going to claim they were reuniting or they were going to claim Justin was having some kind of meltdown over the impending wedding. The two could even be combined. Oh well, she was pleased to know how mistaken they were. There was no way in hell that they were reuniting and Timberlake clearly only cared about the wedding so far as it could be used for ammunition in the flame war.

“How was your trip?”

“God…” Reese put down the ice pack, tossing it onto the coffee table. Pulling her feet in closer, she tucked her hands around them and rested her chin on her knees. “Still doesn’t seem real.”

“Harmony was the curly haired girl, right? The one who took you and me to that cocktail class when I visited?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“Yeah, she was really nice,” Nadine said. She reached out a hand and rubbed Reese’s arm. “I, umm… hope this isn’t insensitive but I took her and her boyfriend out of the seating chart. Figured he probably wouldn’t be up to the trip.”

“God I didn’t even think about that. It’s so sweet of you to think of it, thanks.”

There was another surprise – something happened that impacted the wedding and she hadn’t thought about it? Still, she supposed there was nothing like a death to give you some perspective. Reese had never fallen quite into the bridezilla stereotype but she certainly had been single-minded about the wedding arrangements, to the point of boring her maid of honour. Nadine suspected the obsession was part boredom and part determination to get the deal sealed as quickly as possible. For that reason she took it in as good a humour as she could muster, but she’d certainly welcome a bit of a step back at this stage. Even if there were only a couple of weeks to go it was better late than never.

“It was… in a strange way it was nice, you know? I got to spend some time with the girls, and the service was really nice. Tiffany and Steve did this really cute thing where we did a photo shoot of some of her favourite pictures of all of us, and we wrote messages on balloons and let them go.”

“That sounds really sweet,” she said.

“Yeah. In a weird way it was kind of friendly and social and that was her all over. I feel like we said goodbye right, you know?”

“I think that’s as much as you can ask for in this situation.”

“So how come you’re not at work, anyway?” Reese changed the subject before she started blubbing. Crying was cathartic and sometimes necessary, but she didn’t feel like indulging it now.

“I switched with Lucy; she’s got some appointment tomorrow.”

“Did you hear about the team lead thing yet?”

“Not yet. They got another candidate so we have to do interviews.”

Nadine pulled a face, as if affronted by the audacity of anyone else to want the job. Slapping a hand against Reese’s knee, she bounced back up from the couch. She did that a lot, it was hard to get her to sit still anywhere for more than a few minutes. There was always something else distracting her. Trying to have a movie night at home with her was a waste of time for that reason – she was up and down like a yo-yo and the movie never got watched. Reese had long since resigned herself to Nadine being one of those friends you had to be doing something with, going somewhere with. The only place she could get her to sit for any length of time was at a restaurant.

“I’m making some of that mint tea, you want one?”

It was well established by now that ‘mi casa es su casa’ and kitchen raiding was socially acceptable between them.

“No thanks hon, I’d better stay with the water for now.” She rolled her eyes at herself. One of these days she would learn not to let Ollie ply her with extra shots. “You’ll ace an interview though.”

“They wouldn’t tell me who it was, apparently it’s some ‘external applicant,’ but I just figure that gives me the edge.” She rummaged through the cupboards and pulled out a mug. “I know the team, and they like me, and since I already know the place I could just get in and start improving things instead of having to learn exactly how it’s broken first.”

“Saving the world one invoice at a time?”

“Hey, you can tease me all you want,” Nadine turned around and shook a teaspoon at her in mock indignation, “but carbon dating would prove their accounting system predates the dinosaurs.”

“I will never understand why you love math so much.”

“Because there’s always a right and wrong answer,” she said with a laugh. “Math is simple; everything else is a big old screwy mess. Who wants to untangle all that when you can just deal with something that follows the damn rules and works like it’s supposed to?”

Reese stuck her bottom lip out, nodding slowly and pretending to be giving the idea deep thought. “I guess that kind of makes some sense.”

“But nah, I have a whole bunch of ideas of updates we can do and how to streamline everything, because we waste so much time getting out the invoices and it’s killing cash flow. I just need to find a way to shoehorn it into the interview so they know I’ve got a game plan.”

“I doubt you’ll need to shoehorn it in sweetie,” Reese replied encouragingly. She picked up her water and took a quick sip. “Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing they ask at interviews, what you’d do in the job?”

“How would you know, Miss ‘I got hired on sight because my dad knows the guy?’ When’s the last time you did an interview?”

Nadine was only teasing her and couldn’t have known what a sore spot she’d hit. Being away from her job for a few days seemed to have shaken her out of some kind of stupor. The way she was hired was fairly typical of the whole sorry story; it was careless and as an after thought. It almost didn’t matter who she was or what she could contribute, she was filling a chair. Until Tiffany had invited her to lunch she’d been struggling to fill the time on the trip, and she realised that was because most of her time for the last few months had been spent wedding planning. The next realisation was how much of that was work time. She had so little to do in the office once she got through the morning’s routine tasks that she’d been able to devote whole blocks of her schedule to the wedding. Almost every day was taken up with passing empty hours and the idea of having nothing to fill them with was starting to fill her with dread.

Tiffany had said she and Harmony were alike because they were both dynamic – Reese didn’t feel like she’d been very dynamic recently.

“Haha.”

Not for nothing was Nadine her best friend. The laugh had been light but even so she picked up on the subtext. Without looking she was able to open the cupboard and yank the teabags out, her gaze on Reese all the while.

“You know I’m only kidding, sweetie, so I’m guessing that slightly forced tone means something else.”

“Ugh. It’s not you.” That only confirmed what she had already surmised. “I just… you’re so upbeat and excited about this opportunity - and you know I’m gunning for you all the way – but you’re kind of making me wonder what the hell I’m doing in that job.”

“Paying your bills?”

“Yeah, but work used to be more than just a pay check to me. Now I’m stuck behind a desk being bored all the time, totally unproductive… you know hard the girls had to work to sound interested when I was telling them about it at lunch? Shauna was trying so hard not to give herself away she looked like she swallowed a bug.”

“Well fuck Shauna,” Nadine said, misunderstanding. “Who cares if she’s judging?”

“No, she wasn’t judging. It’s a boring job and I just wasn’t kidding any of us trying to make it sound good.” She ran a finger around the edge of her glass, lips pursed in thought. “I mean, I know not everybody gets to have a job they love, but I used to have that. Now I have one that’s sucking the drive out of me, doesn’t pay well enough to compensate, and I can’t help wondering why I’m bothering.”

“Okay, I can get that. So if it’s bugging you that much I guess the question is what do you want to do about it?”

“I can’t afford to up and quit before I get another job, but I seriously need to think about leaving. It’s not like there’s any opportunity for promotion or to try a different department if I stay. Maybe I should go back to advertising? Like, I look at you being so excited about going for this and I miss that. I should be taking a leaf from your book and doing what gets me going.”

Nadine was now leaning against the counter, stirring her tea thoughtfully. “How does that fit in with Drake?”

Reese looked confused. “How do you mean? What’s to fit in?”

“I mean all those plans you two have to settle down here and start mass producing small people? You are marrying the guy, remember.” What she didn’t point out was that she shouldn’t have to point that out.

“I can do that and be a mom.”

“Not around here you can’t, sweetie,” she pointed out as gently as possible. She didn’t want to be unsupportive but a reality check was in order. “We got none of those places. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of ad agencies in Memphis but they’re not going to deal with the movie industry. You’d have to move back out of state for that, if not back to Cali then maybe somewhere like New York? For which you should probably factor in Tall Dark and Oil-Stained’s opinion.”

“I thought we already discussed how you shouldn’t squash my dreams with all that completely reasonable and well thought out logic of yours?”

“Hey, hey, no dream squashing!” She smiled brightly, giving a low chuckle. “Just saying you’ll have to do some… strategic plan revision, that’s all. If you’re really serious about it.”

“Strategic plan revision…” Reese rolled the words around her tongue, tasting them. “You should use that in your interview, it sounds super smart.”

“Why thank you,” she preened, pressing a hand to her heart coquettishly and batting her eyelashes. “Seriously though, if it’s really bugging you that much talk to him about it. As much as I do not want to lose you so soon after getting you back you need to make yourself happy. And they need mechanics everywhere so it’s not like he’s geographically limited.”

“You are wise and benevolent as ever. Thanks for listening to me whine.” Reese slumped sideways against the couch and nestled her head against the cushion, smiling at her friend.

“You know whatever you want to do I’ll be standing behind you with the pom-poms. Just don’t ask me to do cartwheels because I’d probably break a hip.”

**

“Uhh… hello.”

Justin chuckled, looking at the lean body sliding onto his lap. He’d been so engrossed in what he was reading that he hadn’t noticed her approaching. She’d slipped one tan leg across and eased the rest of her body along with it, straddling him and forcing his hands apart. Her hands hit his chest and then slid upwards around the back of his neck, where they locked together.

“Hey baby,” Reese said. “What you doing?”

“Well I was attempting to read a script but then this woman just came and threw herself at me out of nowhere. Some people have no respect for personal space.”

Though his response was dry his hands betrayed him. They had already dropped the script and were currently going in slow circles over her hips and bare legs. As far as he was concerned the guy who invented short shorts was the greatest humanitarian of all time; it was certainly a service to mankind. As much as Justin loved seeing Reese dressed up and appreciated her dress sense, one of his favourite ways to see her was in her current state. She was in a vest and the shorts, barefoot and with her hair scraped back in a haphazard ponytail. It wasn’t so much the look, he just liked being the one who got to see her like that. You’d never catch her leaving the house that way. Somehow it felt like a Reese that was all his, like he was the only one she trusted to see her without the window dressing.

“If it bothers you I could find some other guy to go sit on.”

“Oh we both know you’re only sittin’ on me right now because you want something, so I doubt that’d work out for you doing it to somebody else. I feel so used.”

Reese raised her right eyebrow at him and gave him a pointed look. Clearly he was not at all bothered by her tactics because even as he said it his arms were tightening around her. His eyes were dropping to her cleavage.

“Maybe I’m just bored.”

“No, when you’re bored you pout at me until I pay you some attention. This is definitely the ‘I want something’ manoeuvre.”

“Geez. Do you have to make me sound so manipulative?” Reese laughed through the words, fingers twisting around the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Since we both know I enjoy having you throw yourself at me I’d consider it more of a negotiation than manipulation. What is it, peanut?”

“Okay, okay, you got me.” She sat back slightly, her hands now resting on his shoulders. “So I wanted to talk to you about this work thing.”

“Uh huh…” His brow furrowed slightly. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but if she’d approached him with that strategy it meant she didn’t think he’d like it. She thought she’d have to talk him around. That didn’t bode well.

“So they offered to let me help out with this big launch, it’s this huge client and it’s a really good opportunity to get my awesome organisational skills seen by some of the higher ups. You know how we were talking about me wanting to graduate a little and move up the food chain?”

“Yes, and being the emotionally supportive yet still dangerously sexy fiancé that I am I said I was totally on board with that. So what’s the catch?”

Damn him – this was the problem with being with somebody who had known you since first grade. There was no beating around the bush or gently easing him in. He knew everything about her which meant he knew all her tricks and how she operated. As far as he was concerned she was completely transparent.

“Right before things are going to be totally nuts, I’m barely going to have time to breathe… and it’s in March.”

“March, huh?” Justin tipped his head back and pretended to ponder that. “Hmm, I wonder what other event you could possibly have scheduled for March…”

“Well it’s really more pencilled in than scheduled.” The joke was weak.

“Yeah peanut, and it was ‘pencilled in’ for September before that.” Justin sighed and gave her a long suffering look. Her response was to run her hands up and down his biceps, looking guilty.

“I know, I know. That was why I wanted to talk to you about it before I said yes. I mean I really want to do it and I think it really would be a great opportunity, but I don’t want to make you unhappy over it.”

He shook his head, giving her a reassuring squeeze round the middle. “It would be pretty unreasonable to get mad at you for wanting to take a good career opportunity, like I haven’t postponed stuff on you before. I just…”

“What, baby?” Now she was stroking the side of his head, running her hand through his hair.

What he wanted to say was that he was getting frustrated at the constant set backs. Throughout his life he’d always been the kind of guy who got driven to make his move at particular times, had his gut instinct for when he needed to turn his attention to a particular thing. It told him when to make his next album, it told him when he needed to go work on one of his side projects, and it was telling him that he really wanted to get married soon. Besides, there were only so many times you could have people bug you about when the big day was before it started to grate your nerves. Since he had so many nosy journalists wanting to know that point arrived a little sooner for him than most. What Justin wanted to tell her was that he didn’t think it was a good idea to keep putting it off.

When he looked in her face it was no good though, he couldn’t do it. When she’d started talking about it she’d sounded excited, and even now there was a hopeful light behind her hazel eyes. He was a sucker for that light. After all, part of what he loved about Reese was the way she set her mind to achieving things.

“Can you blame me for being in a hurry to make you mine and have your babies?”

“I am totally available for practising in the meantime.”

“You’ll owe me a shit ton of practising in the meantime,” he threatened.

“Is that a yes?”

Justin inhaled, steeling himself for the answer he didn’t want to give. “If not March I don’t have a good gap until August, and I really don’t want to go any longer than that. August is my final offer.”

“Summer weddings are way better than spring ones anyway. Thank you thank you thank you,” she punctuated each one with a kiss planted on his face. “You seriously are the most emotionally supportive and dangerously sexy fiancé ever.”

“I’m a sucker is what I am. Don’t think I don’t know that’s why you played the lap dance card.”

“Please, that was not a lap dance. Though… since I’ve already interrupted you anyway…”

She waggled her eyebrows at him and gave him a naughty grin. It was a bit of a cliché to bribe your other half with sexual favours, but she honestly did appreciate the concession he’d made. She knew how eager he had been for a short engagement and she kept derailing that. Besides, sexual favours were usually as much fun for her as for him. She’d been bored before she came to talk to him. Reese took his face in her hands and started placing kisses around it again, taking a little longer and pressing her body flush to his. She shifted her hips just enough to tease at grinding.

“Ugh.” Justin sighed once more as he bent his head and started trailing his own mouth along her jaw. “I am way too frickin’ easy.”

“Shh.” Reese playfully nipped at his bottom lip. “How you supposed to concentrate on practising if you keep talking?”

“Okay, you just asked for it baby.”

Without warning he moved, lifting them both out of his seat and pinning her beneath his body on the couch with one smooth motion. She let out a surprised shriek before descending into giggles as he attacked her neck.