I picked Lew up at three o’clock sharp the next day. “You sure you want to go? You still look tired.”

“Why thank you, Micah. I do love the way you flatter a guy,” he snapped sarcastically at me.

I held my hands up to fend off any more attacks. “Just making sure. I mean, you worked last night. If you’d rather stay home and sleep, I’d understand.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not really that tired. Tomorrow will be bad—that’s when it’ll catch up with me.” He gave me that look, the one that usually preceded some sort of lambasting. “But that doesn’t mean I need to hear how shitty I look.”

“You don’t look shitty,” I told him with a laugh. “Just tired. You always look good to me.” I wanted to lean over and kiss him, but I stopped myself just in time. Maybe in a week, or even a couple of days. Or maybe after he was back working dayshifts. “Did you still want to go?”

“Goats! I can’t miss the goats.” He grinned and rocked on his feet. “Maybe we can sneak one into the car.”

“Not this car. The rental agency would have a fit.”

We got settled in our seats and I turned the air conditioning on to keep it comfortable. “If you want to nap on the way up, I can wake you when we get there.”

“We’ll see,” he said and stretched. I caught myself watching and wishing and the thin sliver of belly that appeared when he raised his arms made me suck in my breath as I remembered being able to touch that stretch of skin. I wanted to be able to do that again sometime.

Which meant keeping my eyes on the prize. The prize being Lew trusting me again.

Damn, I had a long way to go, didn’t I?

But speaking of going places, I put the car in gear and pointed it in the direction of the highway north.

We didn’t say much for the first part of the trip. Lew hummed along to the radio and tapped his fingers on the car door, gazing contentedly out the window as the scenery passed. It occurred to me that we’d done drives like this before and I still didn’t know what he thought about when he went all quiet and smiley like this.

So, in my determination to turn over a new leaf and be more attentive, I asked, “What do you think about when we’re in the car like this?”

“What do you mean?” He cocked his head at me, still with that half-smile on his face.

“I don’t know exactly. Just, we start driving and you’re looking at the same things I see, but it’s like it’s different for you.”

He laughed softly. “I’m not thinking much, really. I think being in the car and not driving relaxes me. I like looking at the houses as we go by them and wondering what they look like inside, how the people living there have organized their lives. What color did they paint their walls, what does their furniture look like? Does it look like a house I’d like to live in?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just nosy.”

“I don’t believe that,” I told him. Now that he’d put it into my head, though, I was starting to wonder about those things too. “What do you think about that place there?” I asked, pointing to a pretty white bungalow with a garage and a stretch of green lawn in front of it.

“It’s nice.” Lew sat up and twisted in his seat to get a better look as we drove by. “The rooms look like they’d be small though. I like the yard. It would be a good place for kids to play.” He sat back down. “I can’t decide if I’d want a two story house or a one story.”

“Would it make a difference?” I asked, confused. A house was a house, right? As long as it had all the rooms you wanted, what did it matter?

He leaned back in the seat and stared out the window again. “One story keeps everything together, which is convenient for getting housework done. But you end up with people wandering all over everywhere when you have company, including the family sections of the house. And you need more land for the same size house. If you have two stories, it’s nice to have the bedrooms on a different level, kind of keeps the public and private sections separate, you know? So if the bedrooms are a mess, it doesn’t matter, because no one will go upstairs anyway. But then you have to drag everything up and down stairs all the time and if you have kids you have to worry about them falling down the stairs. And I can’t even imagine having the washer and dryer in the basement, and bringing laundry down from the second floor all the time.” He laughed. “You’re going to think I’m lazy.”

“Not at all.” If anything, he was a genius. Why hadn’t I thought of any of this stuff? Probably because I was mostly worried about headshots and camera angles. “None of that stuff would have ever occurred to me. I’d probably end up living somewhere I didn’t really like and never being able to figure out what the problem was.”

“I’m sure you’d figure it out.”

“I don’t know. None of that stuff was even on my radar. You’ll have to promise to vet any houses I start looking at and giving me your opinion before I buy them,” I said without thinking.

There was a long, awkward pause, then Lew said lightly, “Of course. I’d hate to see anyone living in a house they hated.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. We drove for another couple of miles in uncomfortable silence, then Lew said, “There’s a good idea for a house.”

Oh, yes, thank you for smoothing that over. I love you, Lew. “Where?”

“That one. Watch as we go by. If you can without putting us off the road.”

“I can do that.” I took a couple of careful looks as we went past it. “That’s different.”

“Hilly ground, right? So they built into the hill. That way you get something that’s like a two story house, but the front is only one story.”

“What do you do about the bedrooms?” I asked.

“It’s kind of flipped. Bedrooms are in the basement, the rest of the house is upstairs. Washer and dryer and the places with the most dirty things to put in them all on the same level.” He was beaming with his idea.

“You can’t put a washer and dryer anywhere but in a basement?” I’d seen them in apartments, though, when I’d first moved.

He shrugged and looked a little sheepish. “I know it’s not likely, but I’m paranoid about a flood. Imagine if a hose burst on the top floor of the house? What a mess that would be.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, struck by his logic. “So I should be looking for a place on a hill. When it’s time to buy.”

“Are there a lot of hills in L.A.?”

“Not really in downtown, but the land rises as you get farther from the ocean. Houses up there can be really expensive.” I kicked myself as soon as I said it, because I was trying to follow along with Lew’s dreams, not shoot them down.

He didn’t seem bothered by it, oddly. “I suppose, though, if you looked after your washer you wouldn’t need to worry about leaks. And you’d probably get a better view with a two-story house.”

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Probably. More floor space for less money, too. My apartment’s this little tiny thing on the edge of one of the expensive areas, just a bedroom, a bathroom and then everything else is one room.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling him that, except that I wanted him to feel at least a little like he was a part of my life. “I lived with a bunch of guys for a couple of years and it was fine, and then a friend was moving out of this apartment and asked me if I wanted it. And I was getting tired of that lifestyle. I wanted to focus on work and getting ahead, and most of them…” I let my voice trail off and made a face. “Anyway, I like this better.” Would Lew accept an invitation to come visit? I glanced over at him, then looked back at the road. Probably not. Not yet, anyway.

But if I followed his lead well enough, maybe at the end of my two weeks? One week now, I realized, and had to fight a sudden burst of unexpected panic. Relax, there’s such a thing as email and video chat. I stole another glance at him and his eyes met mine.

For a moment, I saw everything he was feeling, the hope, the wariness, the fear and even, I thought, the love that he still felt, somewhere down deep for me. Impulsively, I reached across and took his hand. “I promise you, I’ve changed. Or remembered myself again. I won’t hide things from you and if you start to worry about anything, I promise you as true and complete an answer as I can manage if you ask me about things. We both know you’re the one who actually thinks about stuff, but I’m trying to do more of that now. I just kind of suck at it.”

Lew smiled a little nervously at me and nodded and then the moment was gone. He pulled his hand gently out of mine and turned back to the window and I thought I’d blown it right there and then while I’d been trying to build a bridge.

But then his hand crept across the car again and his fingers curled around mine. And if we made the rest of the drive in silence, it wasn’t a bad silence, and I got to hold Lew’s hand all the way there.