This story is a (nearly belated, but not quite!) birthday present for the lovely and talented and wonderful rosabelle317. Happy birthday! I'm sorry I couldn't get Rusty to stop angsting within a reasonable word frame. :D

The Other Lives

Rusty hadn't dreamed of his mother in months, but over the past week it had happened twice.

It almost seemed like the farther he got from his painful past, the closer it was to his thoughts. After he'd come to live with Sharon, he'd spent a long time hiding from those memories. Now his mind went back to them almost constantly. Trying to process. Needing to understand. Looking for Alice had made him look back on his own life more than he ever had before.

Lately, the questions and the searching had been following him into his dreams.

...Dr. Joe would have a field day.

With a muffled groan, Rusty rolled onto his side, and groped for his phone. He squinted as he read the time on the screen. 06:04...Great. He had well over an hour left until his alarm was supposed to go off, but he doubted that he'd be able to go back to sleep.

Some vague discomfort from his dream still lingered. His limbs felt a little heavier than usual, and he was cold even though he never got cold, and even though the thick comforter was wrapped around him.

There was a heaviness in his stomach, too, that felt all too familiar.

He'd used to dream about his mother all the time. After she left him, almost every night for weeks. Later, he dreamed about her through three foster homes where he cried himself to sleep. And when he had to sleep in shelters, and bus stops, and the park, he dreamed about his mother still. Almost every one of those dreams turned into a nightmare sooner or later – and the very few that didn't were all the more bitter when he woke up, to a life that had been a nightmare.

He dreamed about her anyway.

Even after Sharon had taken him in, and all his other nightmares had dwindled, even when he'd stopped dreaming about being chased, or cold, or injured – the dreams about his mother had been the last to go.

But it had happened. He wasn't sure exactly when they'd started to become less frequent, but somehow, over time, they'd lost most of their power. Not that he never had bad dreams anymore – he still woke up some nights with his heart pounding, or the bitter taste of shame in his throat, or gritting his teeth against the ghost of a raging argument...but he thought that it wasn't much more often than most people did. And he wasn't so afraid of the dreams, anymore.

Still. He wasn't going to fall back to sleep, not with the uncomfortable echoes of shouts and anger still swirling inside his head.

(There was always that powerless anger, when he dreamed about his mother. There was often fighting, too, and tears, and frustration so hot that his dream-self felt like tearing his own skin off. He had nightmares about Sharon, too, sometimes, but they were different; he feared other things, in them, her absence, her disappointment, but he never feared her...)

Ugh.

Half-heartedly, Rusty tried to shut his eyes again, but it was a lost battle.

A gray dawn sneaked around the blackout curtains, almost ironic in its brightness.

Giving up on any more sleep, Rusty dragged himself to a sitting position. Sharon would probably be up in half hour or so. Maybe he could make her breakfast or something... make up for their argument from the previous night... If he got up now, he could probably have an omelet and toast done by the time she was ready to eat...

He pushed himself up a little more, then reached over to grab his computer from the nightstand, and flipped open the lid.

He squinted again at the sudden brightness from the computer screen. He blinked a couple of times while he watched the wifi icon showing a working connection, then he read the couple of email notifications that popped up below it. One an automated nightly news digest from SMC, the other a reminder from his Econ study group.

Nothing from TJ. Nothing from Gus. Nothing even from YouTube...which was kind of sad, but he guessed that he'd posted his last "Identity" video four days before, so the activity on it would've slowed down by now...

He didn't really know what to do with himself, now that his story of Alice was over.

It didn't feel over... but, objectively, it was, and everyone would be moving on, and so should he, he understood that, except...he didn't think he was done thinking about it. He didn't think he'd done everything he could do about it, either. Not yet. Paloma was still out there, and Gus wasn't happy with how things had turned out, and anyway Rusty wasn't sure that she was okay, and...

...this was probably why he'd gotten into an argument with Sharon, in the first place.

Well – it hadn't been an argument, exactly, but...Sharon hadn't reacted the way he'd hoped when he'd asked her for the names of Paloma's foster parents so he could google them. She'd gotten way too weird about it, and he'd told her that she didn't understand, and then she'd taken that tone, and...

The words 'moving on' had definitely been said.

And Sharon had cautioned him about closure, and crossing lines, and boundaries, and Rusty had told her that she sounded like Dr. Joe...which he was pretty sure she didn't appreciate because her lips had done that quirk thing that she did when she was unhappy.

His eyes were beginning to water from staring unblinkingly into the computer screen. He shifted against the headboard, and dimmed the screen brightness. The room around him grew a little darker again.

Maybe he really did need to move on. Especially if he was thinking about Alice and Paloma so much that he'd started dreaming about his mother and Gary showing up high and drunk at his first, horrible foster home.

The lingering anxiety in his stomach hadn't worn off entirely, yet.

He hoped Paloma would never have to deal with that sort of thing.

But he couldn't be sure.

But Sharon thought it wasn't his job to be sure...but Sharon didn't really get it...? But...

"Fell out of bed?"

A light blue IM bubble had suddenly blinked onto the screen. The words were followed by a winking emoticon.

Rusty stared at the text for a moment, his early-morning brain a little too slow to switch gears.

Then he rolled his eyes.

The clock on his computer showed 6:22. Figured. Ricky was an annoyingly early riser, and he enjoyed rubbing that in everyone's faces, apparently – because he clearly didn't understand that waking up at six a.m. did not, in fact, make him cool.

"ha, ha," Rusty typed back. Then he hit enter and added, "funny."

"I thought so." Another winking face.

Dealing with Ricky's weird humor this early in the morning really wasn't his idea of a good time.

More and more light had started to creep around the curtains (he'd really done an awful job pulling them shut the previous night), and between that, and the ghost of his dreams, and the vague unease from his disagreement with Sharon, there were way too many things to make him irritated already.

The quiet popping sound called his attention back to the screen.

"Everything good?"

Rusty stared at the new message for a moment.

And felt a little bit like a jerk.

Conversations with Ricky sometimes had that effect on him. One second he was put off and annoyed, and the next he felt suddenly grateful that Ricky cared enough to talk.

He supposed that that was what the sibling thing was all about.

"Yeah."

Everything was good. Sort of.

Ricky didn't really need to know about the dreams, or the whole argument over Paloma's foster care situation.

"Just woke up too early," he typed again. "Gonna go make breakfast or something." He'd remembered, belatedly, that that had been his intention.

"You're making the rest of us look bad," Ricky informed him.

Rusty smirked at his computer screen.

"Not Emily. Pretty sure Sharon still likes her."

"Ha, ha," came his brother's reply. "Funny guy."

Rusty very deliberately typed his next IM. "I thought so."

He could almost picture Ricky snorting at the other end.

The dream that had woken him up seemed more distant, now. The churning anxiety had slowly receded to a vague discomfort. And even though the memory of the dream still existed at the back of his mind, and Alice's sad story still weighed on him, it was easier, as he sat there in the near-darkness and typed snarky IMs to Ricky, to understand that that wasn't his life anymore, and it was never going to be again.

And he kind of forgot, for a moment, to ask why.

But the 'why's came back, as they always seemed to, lately. After Ricky had taken off for his 'running date' (Ricky was weird) and Rusty had shuffled into the kitchen and began peering blearily at the omelet ingredients in the fridge, he started wondering, again. About Paloma's home situation. About what Gus would do. About what would happen down the road, and what could have happened. To the two of them. To Alice.

To himself.

It was like his mind was in overdrive, lately. And he couldn't make it stop. He kept asking 'why's and 'what if's over and over again, and he really was starting to wonder if maybe Sharon and Dr. Joe weren't on to something with the whole 'over-involvement' and 'projecting' thing.

Although obviously, they didn't understand.

He pulled out the shredded mozzarella and sniffed experimentally at a tupperware container filled with mushrooms. Sharon liked mushrooms. But sometimes the varieties she brought home looked like something that grew in outer space.

He gave them one last testing sniff, then set them out on the counter, before turning to the pots and pans cabinet to look for the cast-iron skillet.

In his dream, he remembered, his mother had been rifling through kitchen cabinets. He had a vague memory of himself trying to push her out the back door, before his nasty so-called foster parents showed up. His mother hadn't wanted to go. She'd started to look through the cabinets, instead, and Rusty recalled urging her anxiously to not take anything, because he'd get in trouble. She'd laughed and ignored him while she snooped through the drawers. He'd yelled at her for spilling the cooking wine.

Then something weird had happened, because just as his dream-self had grown so painfully frustrated that he'd started to cry, he'd suddenly decided to give up and go back home – except that hadn't made any sense because he didn't have a home, except somehow he did, and Sharon was probably waiting for him for dinner, and... then his brain must've done some sort of weird logic acrobatics, and he'd woken up.

Rusty set Sharon's cast-iron skillet on the counter, and let out a long sigh.

Dr. Joe wasn't going to be happy with him. Rusty distinctly remembered having snapped at him two weeks previous, when he'd demanded why Dr. Joe seemed to be so fixated on talking about Rusty's mom, when she was still safe in jail for another three weeks and anyway Rusty had wanted to talk about the chances of Paloma being in trouble in the foster system.

Retrospectively, maybe it wasn't only Dr. Joe who was fixated.

Rusty rubbed his neck, and went back to the fridge to see if there was any spinach or kale. Sharon had really weird taste in omelets.

It wasn't that he was 'over-involved'.

It was just that in order for the story to be complete, he had to understand.

It seemed to him that Alice's life and his had been the same, at one point, and Alice had done a much job better than him handling that life. And yet it was him telling her story, and not the other way around. And he couldn't understand why. And... he wanted to.

The familiar creak of Sharon's bedroom door broke into his thoughts.

He hadn't heard her alarm go off, but the oven clock read 06:48, which was just about right. He kept an ear out for her as he got the egg whisk out of an open drawer, and craned his neck to glance down the hall when he heard her footsteps coming up.

Sharon was wrapped in one of her fluffy robes, and though she must've heard him moving around, too, she still looked a little surprised to see his head poke out from around the fridge. She stopped near her desk and blinked a couple of times against the kitchen light.

"Rusty. You're up early...is everything alright?" Her voice was a little hoarse from sleep. And she had a pillow mark on her cheek.

Unexpectedly, he felt a knot in this throat.

He cleared it, and waved the egg whisk in her direction. "Uh...yeah. Just thought I'd...get started on some breakfast. Toast and omelet okay...? I can make something else too, I didn't – uh, crack any eggs yet."

"Oh." She stared at him for a second longer, with a look that still managed to be searching despite the fact that she was halfway down the hall and still not fully awake. "Of course," she said belatedly. "No, I'd love an omelet, thank you. I'll be ready to join you in about half an hour."

"Take your time...I'll make some tea, too."

She hummed her assent, then turned and disappeared back down the hall and into the bathroom.

Rusty shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and went back to inspecting the mushrooms for a second time.

Cracked eggs, indeed.

He grabbed a bowl and opened the egg carton. He stared at the four eggs inside for a long time... but even though they were extra large and grade A and cage-free, they didn't yield any answers.

Okay, so maybe he was being a little...single-minded. It was just that – it wasn't his fault that all these things in his life seemed to connect together. His mother, Alice, Paloma – all of it. It couldn't not weigh on his mind.

And he couldn't not try to make sense of his and Alice's different outcomes. There just had to be an explanation. He and Alice, and Gus, and Paloma, they'd all come from the same place. And yet Alice had ended up dead. Gus had been in jail for assault. And Rusty... He wasn't any better than them. He wasn't nearly as smart as Alice, or as tough as Gus, and yet it was he who'd ended up … good. Safe. Happy.

And Rusty just really needed to understand why that had happened, because the more he learned about Alice and her family, the more he couldn't help seeing just how easily things could've turned out differently for him, too.

He'd wondered, a thousand times, how his life would've been different if his mom had actually shown up that night at the bus station.

Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly optimistic, he'd tell himself that things would've gone...better, for the two of them, better than before, that she'd have found him worth the effort to stay sober, that they'd have moved into some small quiet place and had a nice quiet life. Other times he was realistic enough to admit that even if his mother had been on that bus, things would've probably ended up more or less the same as before, for him. The foster system again sooner or later, or maybe the streets. Maybe worse. (He'd asked himself, too, if he'd ever have had Alice's courage to leave. He thought not. His mother had been all he'd had. He'd probably have stayed with her and Gary, or whatever other loser boyfriend she'd gotten, until they'd ended up in jail...or worse.)

In his angrier moments, he told himself that he would've ended up dead.

Like Alice.

Hers was the fate he'd probably have met, if he'd stayed with his mom and Gary. He remembered the photo of where they'd first found her, and if he tried a little, he could see Lt. Provenza standing near the same garbage container, under the same white LAPD tent, wearing the same crumpled hat, looking down not at Alice's body, but at Rusty's...

"Doesn't look like he could've made it over here by himself..." (Lt. Mike would be there, too, Rusty figured – Major Crimes usually got called out when kids ended up dead, or on city property). "But the hikers who found him say they didn't see anyone else around."

"Yeah. Well..." (Rusty could picture the Lt. Provenza's grim expression.) "People who dump bodies in Griffith Park in the middle of the night don't usually stick around for a friendly camp fire. Buzz...get the camera back over here... Do we have any idea who he is, yet?"

"There was no ID on him." (Julio would be in the tent, too, scowling darkly as he gave his own report.) "This was found near him," (Julio would hold up his backpack), "but there wasn't much in there, either. SID's got the contents. Sykes is looking through recent missing persons reports..."

Sharon had said that there hadn't been a missing person's report on him, when he'd first ended up in LAPD custody. If he'd ended up dead, he'd have been just another generic morgue photo, with a number in the top corner.

Rusty whisked the few eggs in his bowl a lot more strongly than strictly necessary. His heart had kind of started pounding in his chest, a little bit.

He felt a little better when he heard the shower turn off. It reminded him that Sharon was just a few feet down the hall. And if there was one thing that he knew for sure, it was that Sharon was never going to let him be another "John Doe" in a city freezer.

But in another life... in a life in which Sharon wasn't his mother... He didn't know what would've happened.

His fate, he knew, had taken a serious sharp right turn when he'd met Sharon.

He'd wondered plenty of times what his life would've been without her, but most of the time, he didn't want to imagine it. He didn't want to picture never having met Sharon. Well – never having found her, because technically, he supposed that he'd met her that night he'd ended up in Brenda's interview room.

He was never planning to tell Sharon that his impression on that first meeting was, "nasty old cop lady in a suit".

(In his defense, he hadn't remembered anyone's names except for Brenda's. Lt. Provenza had been "boring ancient cop" and Lt. Mike had been "bald Asian cop with the camera", and then there had been "Brenda's sidekick" who got him a hamburger, and Julio had been "the guy who probably runs fast enough to catch me".)

Weirdly, he'd barely even bothered to notice Sharon, that first time. He'd been too busy keeping an eye on Brenda. She'd been the boss, and she'd been the one who very obviously wanted something from him, so he'd focused all his attention on getting what he wanted out of her.

He wondered what would've happened if he'd ended up going home with Brenda, again, instead of Sharon.

Well – for one, Brenda would've never gone for it. Rusty probably hadn't read her as well as he thought he had, but it didn't take a genius to learn a thing or two about her priorities. (Among other things, he'd tried to get in contact with her like twenty times those first couple of weeks after Stroh. She'd never gotten back to him.) But he knew that someone might've just as easily marked that note on his file to concern Brenda rather than Major Crimes, and then he'd have ended up back on her radar for a little while, at least. And who knew by what rules he could've somehow gotten placed in emergency foster care with her, instead...

He might've still ended up meeting everyone in Major Crimes, eventually. Though it wouldn't have been the same. They'd never have really known him. He'd never have spent much time with them.

Although...

"...just this once? Look, I know you don't want to, I do, but... this is an emergency, I swear! I really need to go down to meet with the commissioner, and Gabriel's still in with that judge, and Fritzi's out on a case, and if I leave the boy unsupervised again that woman from DCF is going to have a cow...! Ohhh, I don't understand who made up this ridiculous rule that a sixteen-year-old needs constant supervision!"

"It's called emergency foster care." (Rusty could easily picture Andrea's deadpan tone, having been on the receiving end of it plenty of times.) "And I can't babysit your witness for you – for God's sake, I need to go down to the PAB to make a deal for a woman who clobbered her husband to death with dumbbells...!"

"Exactly! You're going to the murder room! There's gonna be plenty of folks there to keep an eye on him – and ohh, please? As a personal favor? He'll be out of this 'emergency care' soon, and I promise..."

Rusty smirked as he chopped up some cilantro. (Which was definitely cilantro, this time. After three years, he'd finally learned the difference between the herbs and decorative plants on Sharon's balcony.)

Maybe he'd have spent plenty of time in the murder room, either way. He'd have definitely spent a lot more time being foisted off on other people. Like Agent Howard. And Brenda's sidekick. And Hobbs. He doubted they'd have liked it, but they'd probably have helped out, anyway.

And if Brenda hadn't gotten fired from Major Crimes, he'd have probably ended up basically living in the murder room, just as he had with Sharon. Then, he guessed, he might've gotten to know everyone on the team better. Buzz would've definitely gotten stuck babysitting him.

He didn't know if he'd ever have met Sharon.

Although...

"– and I don't need a babysitter, by the way! Just because Brenda took everyone to some crime scene..." (He could easily imagine himself trailing her angrily, a box of files and folders in his arms.) "How about you just drop me off at the park and we won't tell Brenda?"

"Hmm. I'm afraid that that would qualify as child neglect, while you're under emergency care status."

"Oh my god, seriously? I. am. not. a. child." (He'd have been even worse with Sharon, Rusty thought, even though he didn't quite know why.) "And – you're not even part of Major Crimes. Are you like, even qualified to watch me?"

"Ohh, yes," (He could picture her lips quirking in that way of hers), "Inexorably so."

"Whatever...And what do you need all these papers for, anyway? And – why are you making me carry them? Aren't there like, child labor laws or something?"

"There are, yes. If you'd like, I can tell you all about them while you help me move the other case boxes down to my office."

Despite the still somewhat grim flavor of his thoughts, Rusty found himself snickering quietly into the whisking bowl.

Some of his 'what if' scenarios were better than others.

But if any of them offered any answers, he wasn't sure he understood them.

He was wrapped in all the same thoughts when he felt Sharon's gentle nudge against his shoulder.

"Are you sure you're okay? You've been quiet." She adjusted the steaming mug of tea in her hands, and he realized that he hadn't noticed her finish her breakfast and stand up.

"Yeah..." He could tell by Sharon's expression that this wasn't one of the times he could get away with that. "I was just... thinking. About – about Paloma."

She kept her face straight, but since he was watching her so closely he could see the slight twitch of her mouth that accompanied her quiet hum. It was somewhere between sympathy and worry.

But she didn't have to be worried.

"I mean, about this family," he added quickly. "That wants her." That clearly wasn't helping communicate to Sharon that he wasn't about to go stalking them, either. He didn't know why he was having such a hard time finding words. "What I mean is... I guess I was thinking about how different things are for Paloma, you know, compared to Alice. Or Gus."

He still wasn't getting to whatever he wanted to say. Sharon was still looking kind of worried, but she was letting him talk. She always did that.

"I guess it's like you said...luck matters...But, it feels like it can't be just luck, you know? There should be more to it that that." He rubbed his neck. "Alice was so close, Sharon. That woman she worked for, she wasn't so bad...and Alice probably only needed a couple more months to get enough money for beauty school. She was in LA. She could've found Paloma again..." He shook his head, "She almost made it, Sharon. That's what's so unfair. She was totally on her own, and she almost made it anyway." He paused, and looked down at the last few bits of omelet on his plate. "Except...she didn't." And he had.

He still thought that Alice had done everything right – better than him, in any event...she'd left her bad home, she'd gotten a job - a real job, she'd had a plan. She'd been braver, smarter, and more prepared than him at every step of the way, and yet Alice had died and Rusty had made it out, and luck – the only answer he'd come up with so far – was too simple, too little to explain it.

Sharon touched his shoulder. "You can't change what happened in the past," she reminded him gently when he looked up. "You did all you could for Alice. And think of Paloma – and Gus, too. They made it. They're both doing alright." She tilted her head to give him a warm look. "That was the best outcome we could've hoped for, from the start."

He sighed. "I guess. Yeah." It didn't feel like he'd done everything he could. But... he didn't know what other questions to ask. "I just... I wish I understood better," he admitted. "I don't even know why. It's... I think about Alice, and about Paloma, and even about Gus, and their lives are so... familiar. And not just because of the story I did," he swore. "It's like I can't stop asking myself all these questions. It's just...it feels like...I don't know, like their lives are..."

"The road not taken," said Sharon softly.

He looked up at her again. "What?"

Sharon sat back down in the chair next to him.

"Alice's life. And her siblings', to some extent," she added thoughtfully. "They're similar enough, in some ways, to your own past, that... I suppose, you could see each of their lives as the road not taken. A life that could have been – under different circumstances." She traced a slow finger along the rim of her tea mug. "It's very...difficult," she said, "to not wonder about the road not taken."

Rusty shifted in his chair. "That..." It sounded right. "I guess...that's kind of what I'm feeling." To put it mildly. He'd been thinking up why's and what-if's for a while. But...it made more sense, he thought, when he heard Sharon say it.

She gave him another small smile. "I think a lot of people feel that way," she said. "Drawing these parallels, with people whose lives took different paths from ours, it can sometimes give us new insight into our own lives." She gave him a warm look, and added, "The trick, I think, is knowing how far to take it. And when to stop."

"But...okay, but, how do you stop?" he asked her. "How are you supposed to stop thinking about what could've been?" It wasn't like he wanted to spend his entire life wondering about Alice. It was just...really hard, right now, to not keep...drawing parallels.

She bit her lips, humming lightly, for a moment. "I'd say... it helps," she nodded, "to keep in mind what I said earlier – that you can't change the past. Yours, or anyone else's. As for the present..." She looked away, pensively. "It's good to be aware, when you compare your life to other people's...that you can almost never see the full picture of someone else's life." She looked back at him, her expression serious. "Parallels only ever go so far. There's simply too much that goes into every individual's life. You can never completely equate your experiences to someone else's."

Rusty let out a silent sigh.

"I guess..." He toyed absently with his fork. "That's...yeah."

Sharon didn't say anything, but her hand reached over to lightly pat his arm. When he met her eyes, she smiled.

"I...I think I get it," he told her. "It's just...That's kind of a lot to think about."

"It is," agreed Sharon. "But... you don't have to figure all of it out right this second." He saw her amusement when he looked at her again. A second later she stood up once more, and, squeezing his shoulder one last time, she took her tea to the sofa.

After a brief hesitation, Rusty pushed his plate away.

Sharon shifted slightly to make room for him when he came to sit down beside her.

"I wasn't... I didn't mean to make you mad, yesterday," he said. "When I asked about Paloma's foster parents' names. I only... I wanted to know that she was okay."

Sharon dipped her head. "I understand." She sounded a lot less cutting now, than she had the day before – but Rusty didn't think she really understood what he was trying to say.

"It's not only the parallels thing," he told her. "It's...I didn't use to think that people like that existed. The kind of people who'd take Paloma in," he clarified, at her questioning look. "The kind who'd give her a real home. I guess... when I was in foster care, I just...stuff like that doesn't actually happen."

He'd made her smile turn sad again. "Sometimes it happens," she said softly.

"I never really thought that." He caught himself when her eyebrows rose a fraction. "No, I know, Sharon, but... you're... other people aren't like you," he tried to explain.

Sharon reached a hand over to touch his arm. "There are plenty of others like me, honey. Trust me."

Rusty turned his head and looked at her. She smiled when their eyes met, again. The steam from the tea had slightly fogged the bottom half of her glasses.

He turned his head back, and leaned slightly toward her, until their shoulders touched.

He guessed that Sharon was right about the road not taken.

Things could've gone differently for him... in a lot of ways.

He could've been Alice. If he'd stayed with his mother and Gary, or lived by himself on the streets for much longer, he could have easily ended up like her. And no one would've ever known his name.

He could've ended up in jail, too, like Gus. If Gary had gone too far again one day. If something had happened on the streets. Rusty didn't think he had it in him, but... people did a lot, when it came to survival. On his own, who knew what would've become of him?

But he hadn't been on his own.

And that had made all the difference.

He'd been lucky enough to find people to help him. And, he thought, even if those people had arrived into his life a little differently, maybe he'd have still been okay. As long as they'd been there, in some form or other. As long as they knew him.

That was the luck he wished Paloma, as well. The luck to find people who were willing to help her. The kinds of people around whom, one way or another, she'd turn out okay.

He turned his head a little to look at Sharon again, who still sipped her tea quietly next to him.

A lot of things might've still worked out for him, even if he'd never come to live with her. He might've found some friends, and he might've found a safe place, and he might have even gotten to know more or less the same people. But he knew – he knew – that he'd never have found another mother. That, he thought, was something that really never happened.

He leaned into her side more, nudging her just enough to show that he was doing it on purpose. "Just so you know, Sharon..." He ducked his head, because he could feel his neck starting to burn a little. "I'm pretty sure there's no one else like you."

He couldn't see her, with his head turned away, but he knew when he heard her smile. And then her arm went around his shoulders, silently, and she pulled him more tightly against her side.

Happy birthday again, Rosabelle :).

(And everyone else, thank you for reading!)