She reached up and pressed a button on the overhead console and the garage door yawned open. “You know what?" She pulled the car forward and stopped with a jerk in the empty garage. Her hands were fixed on the wheel, the car still running. "I had things totally under control. I always do. She turned to face him, challenge hot in her eyes. “If you can't handle it, then you have a decision to make. Stay or go; I don't care. But if we're going to work together." She paused, and looked through the windshield again. "If we're going to work together to get to where we each want to be, you are going to have to give me a little more credit than you gave me tonight." She turned off the car, pulled the handle on her door and stepped out.

And she was gone.

* * * * *

Reid sat in the car for a long moment, listening to the garage door close, letting her get ahead of him, letting the heat of his rage dissipate.

From experience, he knew he needed to give her an hour or so to seethe. Then he'd go to her and apologize; whether or not he had anything to apologize for.

* * * * *

Two hours later, the sky full of morning sun, Reid watched the back of the house from an old lawn chair. Years of blazing sun had left the chair tired and brittle. Eventually, he supposed, it would crumble to dust. It had been there when they rented the house as had had the frame to the waterbed he slept on and a comfortable and carefully worn brown leather chair that even though he knew he would have to walk away from this house and everything in it one day, he'd grown especially attached to.

The grass at his feet was wet; the sprinklers had run just before dawn. The air was still. The smoke from his cigarette rose up from his hand in a straight line like a jetliner vapor trail.

Noel didn't approve of smoking in their rented house. He didn't mind being relegated to the backyard. He knew it was a dirty habit. He should quit. And he would. Some day.

He let a long lung-full of smoke escape and looked up to Noel’s bedroom window. He pictured her as he had left her, sleeping up there, laying on her left side, part of the comforter tucked between her legs, her bare back facing away from the door. There were days when he loved the relationship they had, where it could consume most of his thoughts – days like this; when she let it be physical, or the days when they clicked professionally, working together on some project or job where they would move in unison -- one of them would think to do something and the other would instinctively move. Those were good days.

But not all days were good days.

He shifted his weight in brittle chair and pulled hard on the cigarette, filling himself again. He threw the butt to the ground. It sizzled briefly on the damp grass.
He needed to reign in the chatter in his head. He went back in to the house, into his dimly lit den. What he needed now was time on his computer.

*****