“…F…L…Y. Butterfly. That’s too easy,” Chance said rolling over so that Juliet fell off him with a laughing yelp.

They had spent the morning making love in her apartment and were writing words on each other’s backs to pass the time away until they decided to stop being lazy, which didn’t seem like it would be any time soon.

“Here, let me give you one to make you work,” he said, leaning on his elbow on his side.

Juliet got into position, resting her chin on her crossed arms with a smile.

“Chance!” she yelled when he pulled the blankets right down past her ass.

“What? Now you’re getting shy?” He laughed as she pulled it back up to a respectable location. “You can’t even let your man see the goodies?”

“My man?” she asked with a raised eyebrow toward the headboard. Chance didn’t miss the broad smile that came to her face.

“At least for the next two weeks. Then I guess I’ll pass you on to your other part-time lover.”

“Chance!” she groaned with a smile in her voice. “Are you going to write or what?”

“Okay, Okay,” he said and brought his finger to her back.

“C…O….”

When he was done he leaned back on his side and watched her work it out, whispering the letters to herself again.

“Copacetic?” She twisted to face him, her arm crossing over her breasts demurely. “Where did that one come from?”

Chance fell on his back, his head on the pillow as he faced the foot of the bed with a hint of a smile on his face. “Somethin’ my dad and mom used to say after he came back from a game. She’d ask ’everything copacetic?’ and if he played well he’d respond ‘copacetic as hell, Katiebird.’ Then he’d take us all out for something fun.”

Juliet rested her head on the hand of her crocked arm, getting absorbed in the story. “Like to dinner?”

Chance gave a short chuckle. “Or the beach, or ice cream. There was that time in New York I told you about. One time, we even went down to Disneyworld. He just said to pack our bags and off we went, school be damned.”

Juliet gave an uncertain laugh. “Sounds…”

“Crazy, I know.” He smiled at the wall ahead of him, but slid his eyes toward her with a lifted eyebrow. Then the smile faded. “It was definitely different, but he was a great dad.”

“Well, he must have been if he raised you,” she said, then fell back against him to stare at the wall as well. “I actually kind of like it. A life of adventure.”

Chance slid down in bed until he was head to head with her. “Speaking of adventure, what shall we get up to today?”

Juliet let her hand slide down her waist to the covers and slid them down past her hip. “I have a few ideas.”

* * *

The two of them were on her small couch, her legs draped over his lap. They were sharing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Bourbon Pecan Pie ice cream as they watched Battlestar Galactica on her large T.V. screen.

She dipped a spoon into the pint Chance had in his hands and brought the mouthful back to her lips. She nearly choked at what happened next on the screen before them.

“Oh my God!” she yelped. “So that’s the fifth Cylon.”

Chance laughed out loud.

“Wait a sec,” Juliet said, the wheels in her head going to work. “That doesn’t make sense. How—?”

“Don’t!” Chance said in a warning tone. “Stop overthinking it and just enjoy the dang show.”

But—”

“No!” he said, firmly. “I won’t have you tear apart one of my favorite shows with that brain of yours, woman.”

Juliet laughed. “So you’re telling me that when—”

“Stop! I mean it! I swear to God, if you ruin Battlestar Galactica for me, I’ll walk right out the door this moment.”

Juliet looked at him, her lips twisted in a contemplative smile. Chance could see the debate in her face.

Her mouth opened once, then she thought better of it. He gave her a look to make sure she stayed on that path. She opened her mouth once more. Chance raised his eyebrows in warning. Juliet laughed and shrugged.

“Okay, fine…but this isn’t over.”

Chance dipped the spoon they’d been sharing back into the ice cream and scooped up a large spoonful. “Here. This ought to keep those plot holes out of your mouth.”

Juliet laughed and ate the spoonful.

* * *

“My favorite memory?”

“Yeah, you know mine. Tell me yours.”

Juliet’s head was on his chest facing the window and she gave a soft laugh. “Mmm, I know. My parents were big on road trips. I’ve been all over Texas and Louisiana.”

“Anyway, despite their bougie appearances,” Chance had been around enough to know what that meant, “my parents actually like to camp. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they did it up nicely. If camping could be a five-star experience, that’s what we did. I have to admit, there is something about a camp fire and the open sky that is just magical.

“There was one time, when my sisters were both asleep in our tent and I couldn’t for the life of me fall asleep as well. I wandered out to sit and enjoy the peace and quiet and vast emptiness surrounding us. The campfire had been put out, so it was just me and the night sky, which seems so much bigger out of the city. I don’t even remember which state park it was, but that sky…it was like a blanket of stars above me.

“Well, my dad apparently couldn’t sleep either and he left his tent and saw me. He came and sat down next me and it was just the two of us. We just talked and talked. He pointed out all the constellations, he even picked out Venus. I never even knew he was so well-versed on astronomy, but that’s my dad for you.

“When I got home, he bought me a pack of those sticky stars, you know the ones that glow in the dark? Exact replicas of the constellations. Of course, being a chemist he had to point out what made them glow. I put them on my bedroom ceiling. Each night as I fell asleep I pictured what that sky looked like from different parts of the world. Would the Big Dipper be upside-down in Australia? Would it seem closer if you were near the equator? Did—?” She laughed, catching herself. “You get the idea.”

Juliet gave a loud exhale and shrugged with a smile. “I know it’s nothing special but that’s it. That’s my favorite memory.”

It was a simple story that reminded him of his own happiest memory. Often, it wasn’t the grand events in life that struck people to the core, it’s the simple happy experiences that would never make for a best-selling book or movie, but stuck with people who held them in their hearts.

* * *

“Your tell is in your mouth.”

“It isn’t!”

They were sitting around the coffee table in her living room, as Chance taught her the proper way to play Five Card Draw. The fact that Juliet was down to a t-shirt, panties, and bra in their game of strip poker, while Chance still had on his socks as well as everything else, should have told her that she was fighting a losing battle.

Chance laughed. “It’s a dead giveaway. You twist it when you have a bad hand and press those gorgeous lips together when you have a good hand.”

“No, I don’t!” Juliet retorted, laughing as she looked up at him.

“You need to focus on yourself and your opponents, not the cards. Try this,” he suggested, even though the look on his face told her he was more than happy to let her lose the next three rounds. “It’s a trick my dad taught me when I was little. Focus on something that calms you, makes you get lost in it instead of what’s in your hand.”

Juliet rolled her eyes up to think about it. “Prime numbers,” she finally said. “I count them out as far as possible when I get angry or frustrated.”

“Perfect.”

Juliet went to work countering whatever her lips were doing that gave away her hand to Chance. He re-dealt the cards. Her first hand was nothing of note, and in fact pretty abysmal: Queen of hearts; ten of spades; four of diamonds; seven of hearts; three of spades. Still, she was cognizant of what her lips were doing. She got rid of the three lowest cards.

Two. Three. Five.

“I can see your mouth moving.”

Chance dealt her three new cards. Ten of diamonds; Ace of Spades; Ten of clubs. Even though her heart was beating fast at this fortuitous turn of events, she followed his advice.

Seven. Eleven. Thirteen.

“I raise,” she said. She watched Chance’s eyes crawl over her, focusing mainly on the mouth as he tried to read her.

Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three.

He gave her a small smile. “I raise.”

She faltered. Had she given herself away?

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re good, I just like calling people’s bluff, especially gorgeous ones who are only three rounds away from being naked.”

* * *

“I think I may have missed a step here somewhere,” Chance said, looking at his attempt at an origami butterfly.

Juliet gave his a look and tried to keep a straight face. “No, it’s….”

“It’s a disaster.”

“It’s good, especially for a first try. I should have started you on the crane. It’s the easiest.”

Chance laughed. “I’ll go ahead and assume you agree with me that this is a train wreck.”

“No!” she said. She didn’t want him getting discouraged this early on. “It’s a…special butterfly.”

“As in, needs a blue placard when parking butterfly.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “It’s a cute butterfly. Especially since it’s your first try.”

“Yeah, yeah. What got you into origami in the first place?”

Juliet smiled. “It keeps me out of my head.”

She saw Chance’s raised brow and expounded on that. “It keeps me from thinking too much. With origami it’s just a direct line from point A to point B. No analyzing, just doing. Basically, it’s my escape.”

“You are definitely an over-thinker,” he mused.

“More like…,”Juliet paused, her eyes rolling up to find the right way to describe it. “You know those people who look at a car or computer and want to pull it apart, looking at every gear and gasket, just to figure out how it works? That’s how my mind works, except with data.

“Like the geode, from when we first met. I was spinning my wheels wondering about every facet of its existence. Like, are there geodes in the Amazon, or Antarctica, the Sahara Desert…outer space? Why or why not? Has global warming affected it? Or in the alternative, what impact will one or a number of outside forces have on it?

“There was this story I read in high school. A man goes back in time to the prehistoric era, steps on a butterfly and next thing you know the timeline of history is completely changed.”

“A Sound of Thunder,” Chance said.

Juliet gave him an admiring look. “Look at you, Mr. Know-it-all. Personally, I think the author was far too conservative with regard to the potential impact. I mean a single butterfly over the course of millions of years? First you have all the animals that didn’t get a chance to eat that butterfly. So they go after another poor insect. Or maybe they just starve and die. Then you have the flowers that weren’t pollinated by that single butterfly. Maybe over time an entire species becomes extinct because of that one butterfly. Then of course the eggs that it never got to lay. So those butterflies were never created, then—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Chance said, chuckling slightly as he put his hands up in surrender. “I get it, you like to think.”

Juliet realized she had become overly animated as her thoughts spiraled further and further into the possibilities. “Well, now you see why origami helps,” she laughed.

Chance nodded, then looked down at his work with an amused frown. “I think I may need to try this over again.”

* * *

“I always feel like I’m a teenager with you.”

“Well that’s fitting, because I always feel like a dirty old man with you.”

They both chuckled until it evolved into uncontrollable laughter. Then Juliet got off the beach towel next to his and ran into the waves. Chance was quick on her heels, picking her up when she was only knee deep and swinging her around.

That’s when she knew she might be falling in love with him.

That’s also when Chance knew he had a goal other than getting back into a life of poker.

* * *

They were at his apartment now. Chance kept the air conditioner much colder than she preferred so she had thrown on one of his button-up flannel shirts.

He crawled further and further toward her until he was practically on top of her. She fell back with a laugh and he crawled over her until he was straddling her prone body on all fours. She looked up into his eyes and saw the same hunger that was filling her.

“Unbutton that shirt,” he instructed.

She rapidly began to undo the buttons.

“Slower,” he urged.

She smiled and licked her lips which caused him to bite his lip with a groan. Slowly she unbuttoned one button after the other, working her way down, leaving the tiniest gap of flesh between the two sides to tempt him.

“Very nice,” he purred.

“I like it when you say that,” she smiled, remembering the first time she’d ever seen him mouth those exact words.

“I’ll say it every damn minute if it gets you underneath me lookin’ like this,” he said, grinning. His eyes trailed down the inch wide stretch of flesh from her collar bone to the slit between her legs.

“Now open it up…slowly,” he coaxed.

She trailed her fingers underneath the two sides, slowly slipping them across the swell of her breasts. Then past the hardened nipples. Then finally down to her sides until she was completely exposed to him. Having the shirt still wrapped around her upper arms and lying to the side of her, made it seem even more scandalous.

His gaze lingered over every inch of her. She felt totally on display for his roaming eyes, and the feeling was creating a veritable tsunami between her legs. If he didn’t act soon she was going to come just from those eyes alone.

“Very nice,” he said again, smirking down at her.

He reached one long arm over to the night stand and opened the drawer. He pulled out a condom and ripped it open with his teeth. Just as he was about to roll it down his cock she reached up and grabbed his hand.

“Let me,” she insisted. “I like the way you feel in my hands.”

Chance grinned and handed it over.

Juliet slid it down his shaft slowly, loving the way his eyes wandered over her exposed body. When she was done, he carefully settled between her legs, sliding into what was by now familiar territory for both of them.

“Yes,” she breathed, closing her eyes as she embraced the feel of him. “I’m going to miss this next week.”

“Don’t,” he said softly, then began rocking inside of her. That erased any thoughts of being without him as she felt her body respond.

“Oh, god Chance, yes, yes, yes!” she cried out as the tide rose and rose, eventually crashing into a shuddering wave of pleasure through her body.

The already sensitive parts of her were reignited as he continued on.

“That’s right, fuck me, Chance” she urged. “I wanna feel you come for me. I want to remember it.”

That spurred him on until he found his own earth shattering orgasm. With a loud groan she felt his dick pulsate against her inner walls. She embraced it, watching the pleasure run through him. Finally Chance fell on top of her in exhaustion. Eventually, he rolled off of her, still breathing heavyily.

“That one is definitely going into vault for when I’m back on the rig,” he chuckled.

* * *

The two weeks were almost up. Both of them could already feel the void of the other being out of their lives for another two weeks.

Chance was painting her toenails which was something no man had ever done for her. Juliet thought it was the most romantic thing ever.

“So what’s the plan when you get back?” she asked trying to think of something positive to focus on.

“I have a few darts. All we need is a map,” he said, not looking up from the red that he was layering on her third toe.

She laughed and kicked him with her other foot.

“Hey, I just finished those,” he protested.

“You have to let that one go. I’m not flying off to the middle of the Pacific on a whim.”

“Don’t knock it. There are some very nice places in the middle of the Pacific.”

Juliet nodded tilting her head to the side in acknowledgement of that. “But really, what do you want to do?”

“I’m serious. Jump on a plane and go.”

She stared at him with a half-smile. “You are aren’t you?”

“I think you secretly want to too,” he replied before blowing on her finished foot.

Juliet mulled that over. It was a crazy idea, but that’s why she was sitting here with him. Everything about this was crazy.

And she loved every moment of it.

* * *

“Time’s up, sweetheart,” Chance whispered in her ear.

She was settled into that comfortable and familiar space between his arm and chest, her face pressed into him. She gave a noncommittal, and completely unintelligible noise.

Chance didn’t need to understand the words to get the sentiment behind them. He was just as disappointed in having to go back.

“Two weeks and I’m right back here,” he promised into her head.

She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tight for good measure.

Once upon a time, he could have indulged this moment, letting it linger until another game of poker called to him. As it was, he had obligations, obligations that usurped even the feel of Juliet holding on tight to him.

Oddly enough, it made him that much more eager to go. Go and get this shit over with. Go and pay off his dues. Go and return to his old life, a life where he could wake up like this…and just enjoy the moment.

As if syncing with his thoughts, Juliet relaxed her arms, letting him slink out from underneath her. Chance knelt by the bed, watching her sleepy face as it bounced in and out of consciousness.

“I want to remember you like this. Two weeks and I’m right back here with you.”

She gave him a sleepy smile. “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks,” he promised.

“I love you, Chance.”

It took a moment register, taking in those half closed eyes, the utterance mumbled into a pillow. The purple light shining through the blinds hinted at the wee hours of the morning that would soon come. Most men would have taken it as the ambiguous musings of a woman coming down off the high of two weeks of pure, unadulterated hedonism.

To Chance, it was the God’s honest truth. And he responded in kind.

“I love you too, Juliet.” He leaned in to kiss her smooth brow then he left, mentally counting down the days until he could return.