It was the final day of Gross Anatomy. We’d been working on the intricacies of the head for the last week and a half, and today was the inner ear. The very last piece of the human puzzle. Mandy, Jon, and I all had stiff necks from bending over our cadaver. I was starting to think my neck and shoulders would never feel normal again after this semester. There was just so much bending! Hovering over the intricate nerves and vessels of the hands, dissecting out each muscle of the feet. I was bleary-eyed and exhausted by the end of each lab day.

But we only had one more presentation to get through, and Jon had the lead for it, so that was good. When we’d decided on the workload at the beginning of lab, I’d shamelessly pulled the Birthday Card. My birthday happened to fall on our last lab day, and I was not going to let that opportunity go to waste. I pleaded with Mandy and Jon to get one of them to take the final presentation, and Jon caved. Victory for Emmy!

“So we’re going out celebrating tonight, right?” Jon asked, taking a momentary pause to stretch his neck.

“Hell yes,” Mandy said. “I am so ready for this semester to be over.”

“Best birthday present ever,” I concurred.

“Speaking of that, what do you think Beckett's going to get you?” Mandy said.

Jon began to wiggle his butt and chant, “Birthday sex, birthday sex.” Mandy laughed and began to dance with him.

That was one thing I was sure I wasn’t getting for my 23^rd birthday. “Ha ha,” I said. “I don’t know. We don’t really make a big deal out of birthdays.” It seemed like a good enough answer, considering I had zero expectations of my so-called husband. Last year, he’d gotten me a cement mixer shot at a bar for my birthday, which frankly I would have rather gone without.

“Let’s meet at your place at, what? Nine?” Jon said. “We’ll have a couple rounds before we go out.”

“Because you’re cheap?” Mandy teased.

“You call it cheap, I call it good economics.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Nine sounds fine,” I said, to distract them.

And that was the end of our chatting, because our professor arrived at our table for our final presentation.

* * *

That evening, Beckett and I were in high spirits. We stopped in our favorite little taqueria on the way home from lab and ate our fill of their amazing tacos standing at one of the high counters in the shop’s window, then we headed back to our apartment as a light snow began to fall from the sky.

There still wasn’t any accumulation on the ground yet, which surprised me based on my image of the Midwest from movies. But so far we’d only had a few days of light snow that melted on contact. Today was huge, fluffy flakes that made the little town of River Glen look like a souvenir snow globe. It was gorgeous, despite the cold. I tried to catch flakes on my tongue, and managed to get one in my eye instead, which had us giggling for the last block before home.

Back in our little abode, I decided to grab a shower. Get the smell of the anatomy lab out of my hair for the last time. It was back to my turn in the bedroom, so I could actually strip out of my clothes in peace and head for the bathroom with my towel wrapped around me. Beckett was in the kitchen when I passed through, scrolling through something on his phone. Just as I closed the door behind me, I heard the electronic chirp of his phone connecting to the speaker. Music began to play as I turned on the shower. The noise of the water made it impossible to tell what song was on, but the backbeat was enough to have me grooving as I hung up my towel and got into the spray.

I was shaving my legs—pointless, maybe, but it was my birthday and I wanted to feel pretty—when the door suddenly burst open, so hard it slammed against the wall and rebounded, slamming just as hard into its jamb. I screamed.

“Sorry—fuck—I cut myself—“ Beckett's voice was tense, even muffled by the sound of my shower. He had never, not even once, come into the bathroom while I was showering. I peeped my head around the curtain nervously and was greeted by the sight of blood.

Beckett stood at the sink, blood seeping out between his fingers as he squeezed his left thumb in his fist. Crimson streaks ran down his wrist and a thin trail of droplets dotted the floor. Absurdly, there was a bottle of champagne on the back of the toilet.

“Oh my god, what happened?”

“I was trying to get this ready to pop as soon as you came out and the fucking bottle opener…fuck.” He winced, leaning his elbows on the edge of the sink.

“I’ll help, just hold on.” I turned off the water and snatched my towel from the hook, wrapping it around myself and tucking in the end as tightly as I could. I stepped out of the tub and went to Beckett, putting my hands on his back. “I’m here. Let me look.”

“It’s not that bad.” He sounded annoyed, but I didn’t think it was with me.

“Let me see.”

He eased his fingers open and revealed an impressive slice in the pad of his left thumb.

I sucked air through my teeth. “Jeez, how did you do that?”

“It was the fucking bottle opener—” he cut himself off with a grunt.

“Why were you using a bottle opener on champagne?” The question was out of my mouth before I could think better of it. Probably not the best time to second-guess someone.

He gave me a sour look. “I was using the knife part to get the foil off.”

I let it go in favor of raiding the medicine cabinet for anything helpful. We didn’t have much in the way of first aid, other than standard bandages and an old tube of antibiotic ointment. I figured paper towel and ice was better than anything we had in here and turned to go for the kitchen.

Which is when the bathroom doorknob pulled off in my hand.

And I watched in fascination as the long, thin bolt that connected the one in my hand to the one on the other side disappeared from the small hole. Outside the door, the matching knob hit the door with a clunk.

“Well…crap.” I said.

“What?” Beckett asked.

“Um…” I turned, holding up the knob in explanation.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.”

He shook his head slowly. “We’re stuck in here?”

I was struck with inspiration. “Which pocket is your phone in? I’ll see if Ginny or Tom is home.”

“My phone’s connected to the speaker.”

Duh. The music was still playing. “Mine’s in the bedroom.”

He laughed. Just once and without humor. “Of course it is.”

“Never mind that for now. Let’s get your hand taken care of.”

Another run through the medicine cabinet and a search of the rest of the bathroom didn’t yield much. But I got his thumb wrapped tightly in Kleenex and helped him clean the blood off his hands and wrists before I made him sit on the closed lid of the toilet with his hand above his head while I figured out the next move.

We were trapped inside with no phones, no window, and the music playing too loud for anyone to hear us shouting for help. But on the plus side, I knew for a fact that our friends were coming over at nine o’clock. So, we weren’t going to die of starvation and be discovered when the neighbors started complaining about the smell. We weren’t even going to be in here for long. But Beckett was injured, and I was…well, basically naked.

“So, I have to ask,” I said when we had him situated. “Why did you bring the champagne in with you?”

He chuckled. “I didn’t even know it was still in my hand. I just ran in here.”

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious this is a sign, don’t you?”

He twisted to retrieve the bottle from the top of the toilet tank and held it out to me. “I think it’s safer for all of us if you do the honors.”

I pursed my lips, regarding the bottle and the bloody hand print that was still on the label. “Mmm, biohazard vineyards, my favorite.”

He grinned. “Oh, look who’s squeamish all of a sudden.”

It was hard to look intimidating in a towel, but I tried. “We have already established that there are many things I will do for you, Beckett. But I draw the line at vampirism.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “Rinse it off.”

The bottle came clean easily in the sink. But that still left me with one obstacle. “There’s, like, a 50-50 chance of my towel falling off if I have to work too hard at this cork.”

He tried not to let me see, but there was definitely a hint of a smile on his face. “You can have my hoodie.”

I helped him ease his bandaged hand through the sleeves and gratefully slipped on his big sweatshirt, zipping it up all the way to the top. I was still Porky Pigging it, but at least I wasn’t clinging to a damp towel anymore. And the sweatshirt was long enough to cover me to the top of my thighs. Better than nothing.

And good enough for me to perch on the edge of the tub and clamp the champagne bottle between my knees. I squinched my face up, leaning away from the cork as I always did. Opening champagne freaked me out. But the top popped out with only a little fuss, and barely any gushed onto the floor.

“Happy birthday, Em.” Beckett's tone said this was not exactly the champagne moment he’d had in mind.

But I tilted the bottle in his direction as a lame toast, said, “Cheers,” and hoisted it to my lips. Then I offered it to him.

He took it with his uninjured hand and peered down the opening. “So, blood is a no, but saliva is a yes?”

“You have put your tongue in my mouth,” I reminded him.

To my surprise and delight, red splotches rose on his cheekbones. He made a head tilt of acknowledgement and took a drink from the bottle.

“So now what?” he asked when he was done.

“Now we wait for someone to show up, and we kill this bottle of champagne.”

“I’m in.”

We had approximately three hours to burn before there was even the likelihood of rescue, and we quickly figured out there wasn’t a whole lot to do in the bathroom. The first half hour or so was easy enough to pass. I had to get Beckett's thumb properly bandaged once the worst of the bleeding stopped. I also decided to go ahead and dry my hair and put on some makeup. We might be temporarily trapped, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going out after we were rescued.

With nothing else to do, Beckett watched me. I was hyperconscious of my naked ladybits every time I raised my arms, but I succeeded in not flashing him.

“How do girls learn how to do that?” he asked as I carefully sketched eyeliner along my upper lids.

“I learned from watching my mom. And YouTube.”

“Huh.” He stretched his mouth open in imitation when I put on my mascara. “Does that actually help?”

I laughed. “Shut up.”

When I was finished, I turned to him with eyebrows lifted, as if he were the one to approve my work.

“Looks good,” he said with a shrug.

“Gee thanks.”

“What?”

“All that effort and all I get is a shrug?”

“I said you look good.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re beautiful, Em. You know that.”

My heart swooped into my throat. I wasn’t one of those girls people write pop songs about. You know, the ones who have no idea they’re gorgeous? I wasn’t super model material, but I knew I was okay to look at. But I didn’t think Beckett had ever had an opinion about me. So I stammered something like “Oh, uh…I…oh.”

Thank god for the bottle of champagne. I took a healthy swig just for something to do. And then I shamelessly changed the subject. “Who do you think is going to be the one to find us?”

We talked about that, and school, and our classmates, and California, and everything. There was nothing else to do. Eventually Beckett declared that he had to pee, so I stood in the shower with my hands over my ears and my eyes squeezed shut. It was totally childish; we had just spent an entire semester dissecting human bodies. I’d held a stranger’s bladder in my hands. But somehow we both knew this was a line we were not going to cross. I made him do the same a little while later.

“At least we’re not trapped in the bedroom,” I said after I told him I was finished. “I probably would have wet my pants.”

He laughed. “You’re not wearing any pants.”

The whole thing had given us a case of extremely immature giggles. Or maybe that was the champagne.

The edge of the tub was really starting to make my butt hurt, so I settled myself onto the floor in front of it. Not too long after, Beckett joined me. It was better having him next to me because I knew he couldn’t see up the sweatshirt to my bare butt. We were both cold on the hard tile—he was down to a t-shirt after giving me his hoodie—and I found myself leaning into his shoulder for a little extra warmth. It was the first time I’d let myself be this close to him since he’d started starring in my sex dreams and it was…nice. Good to be near him again. He was the only person in my life who knew our secret, and I needed that.

We passed the bottle of champagne back and forth until it was empty. My head was fizzing with the oddly buoyant kind of drunk that only came from champagne.

“You know if you had told me back in Bio Sci 93 that I would spend my 23^rd birthday locked in a bathroom, drinking champagne with my lab partner, I don’t think I would have believed you.”

“Is it the part about being locked in the bathroom, or your lab partner that you’d find hard to believe?”

“Yes.”

“What about the part where you married your lab partner?” He extended his left hand, displaying his ring.

“That, too.” I brought my left hand closer until our rings were aligned. Beckett stretched his fingers out, weaving between mine, then pulling them down for a brief squeeze. Like a hug.

“You wanna hear something I never told you?” he asked, releasing my fingers.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were so cute when you sat next to me in lab.”

“You did?” It wasn’t a huge confession, really, but it made my stomach feel warm and tingly.

“Yeah.” He made it sound obvious. “I mean, shit, Em, you look at anybody with those big green eyes of yours and they’re a goner.”

I rolled my big green eyes. It was always the thing guys said first. “Uh-huh.”

“That long hair, that face, that body…come on.” He shrugged. “When I left Arizona, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay with Emily.”

Now that was news. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. And then I saw you and I was like ‘This is a sign.’” He rubbed the back of his head with his good hand. “And I was honestly trying to figure out the best way to hit on you when we introduced ourselves.”

My heart fluttered and whirled in my chest. This was big time news. I couldn’t speak.

Beckett laughed softly. “Aaaand then you said your name was Emily and I was like ‘Oh fuck. This is a sign.’”

“Oh my god,” I finally managed to say. “That’s why you stayed with her?”

“That.” He nodded, not looking at me. “And I’m lazy, I guess. Or maybe that’s not the right word. I was comfortable. It was easy.”

The more I learned about Emily, the less easy their relationship seemed to me. But maybe it had been easy, as long as she was six hours away. “Wow.”

“Yeah, so there you go. I didn’t hit on your because of your name, then I married you for the same reason four years later.” He covered his eyes with one hand. “Pretty fucked up.”

“Beck—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he interrupted. “I probably shouldn’t have told you. I don’t want you to feel weird.”

“No, no, I don’t.” I put one hand gently on his wrist, leading his hand away from his eyes. “I’m just sorry my name is Emily.”

He looked puzzled.

“You wouldn’t have had to go through hell with Emily if you’d broken up with her freshman year.” I wondered what I might have said if he had come up with some kind of line to use on me that first day in lab. I’d thought he was cute, but I was very into keeping my options open in college. Would I have let him take me out? Would I have wanted to go out again, or would I have wanted to see who else was out there? Would we have ended up friends, and later roommates the way it really happened? It seemed unlikely we’d be here right now, married, on the floor in our bathroom, an empty bottle of champagne at our feet, and me wearing nothing but his sweatshirt.

Beckett's blue eyes met mine. “I think maybe things happen the way they’re supposed to,” he said softly.

“So we were supposed to get stuck in the bathroom tonight?”

“Maybe.”

The air around us suddenly seemed alive with electricity, and I felt as though I didn’t dare blink.

“I think maybe we were supposed to be friends…” he swallowed, “first.”

First? The word had such weight. Such consequence. Did he mean before we got married? Or something else? Champagne made it hard for me to think my way to the right question. I knew I should ask…something. Our situation was already so convoluted, there was no room for a word so open to interpretation as first. But what I wanted to do was see what he would do if I kissed him.

I flicked my gaze to his lips. What did he mean by first?

“Emmy?” A voice called from the other side of the door. “Beckett?”

My heart sank. Our rescuers had arrived.