Sharon hadn’t been sure what to expect when she’d gathered everyone at her apartment to break the news of her engagement. Even though Leticia had told her that they all knew she was dating Ross, and that she wasn’t fooling anyone, she had worried that they’d feel betrayed.

Apparently, she needn’t have worried.

“Happy six-month anniversary!” Tom said as he entered, carrying potato chips.

“What he said,” Melanie added, coming in behind him.

“I take it Leticia told you we’re no longer in denial,” Sharon replied.

“Oh, don’t look so upset, we all knew anyway.” Melanie gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Now we can just show you that we know!”

“Well, there’s something you all don’t know,” Sharon said, leading the twins into the living room where the others were already gathered.

“What, did he pop the question or something?” Debbie said, snorting into her drink.

When Sharon was silent, everyone stared—except for Leticia and Tom, who exchanged glances that looked suspiciously knowing. Jonas almost dropped his beer.

“Did he?” Leticia demanded.

Sharon took the ring out of her pocket and slipped it on to her hand.

Her friends, predictably, exploded.

Laughing, Sharon gave them a recap of Ross’s proposal. “I’m worried it’s rather sudden,” she admitted.

“It wouldn’t be so sudden if you two had admitted you were in love in the first place,” Leticia shot back.

“You don’t seem all that surprised,” Sharon pointed out to her, gesturing at Tom as well.

“How do you think that gallery happened to be open so long after its closing hours, not to mention conveniently empty?” Tom replied, winking at her.

“You’re lucky I was in on it,” Leticia cut in, “Tom here wanted to hide in the corner and take photos. I informed him that you’d strangle him with his own tie.”

Sharon opened her mouth to reply, but then she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. “Excuse me.”

She left her friends to their gushing and went into the bedroom. It was Ross. “Hey, everything okay?”

“I’m being called before the board.” There was more exhaustion in his voice than she’d ever heard there before. “Amanda was kind enough to send them a copy.”

“That bitch,” Sharon yelled before she could stop herself. “Sorry,” she added more quietly. “They’re calling you up?”

“Yeah.” Ross sighed again. “Tomorrow morning. Emergency hearing. So, I don’t think I’ll get to see you beforehand.”

“When will you finish?”

“I think around noon?”

“Then I’ll be there when you get out.” Sharon clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “We’ll get through this.”

They would get through this. They would. Even if she had to knock some sense into the board herself.

“What’s going on?” Melanie asked, knocking softly on the door. “Sharon? Everything okay?”

Sharon opened the door to see Melanie peering at her in what Sharon called her friend’s ‘therapy face.’

“Ross is getting called before the board because of our relationship,” she said quietly. “I was technically his patient and so this—this journalist, his ex-girlfriend, has turned it into some sordid doctor-patient affair thing.”

“What?” Melanie’s features hardened. “I should have expected this. Abusive partners try to find a way to get back into your life and exert control over you again. That’s what they want, control. Even if, rationally, they know that they’ll never have that power over you again, they can’t help themselves—if they can’t control you, they’ll make sure they have your attention at the very least.”

Sharon sighed. “You can’t predict what every asshole person is going to do, Mel, that’s not how being a therapist works.”

The hard set of Melanie’s mouth said, clear as day, that she should be able to predict what every asshole person was going to do, and that this was somehow her fault for not knowing.

Sharon pushed past her—not angrily, just restless and not sure what to do. This had to be fixed, somehow. She couldn’t be the reason that Ross lost everything. And maybe Leticia had been right that there were other hospitals, other cities, and other opportunities, but Ross didn’t deserve to have his life uprooted just because he’d had sex with the wrong girl at the wrong time.

And it was all her fault, wasn’t it? If she hadn’t been distracted and taken that turn too fast, she wouldn’t have crashed, and none of this would be an issue.

But you wouldn’t be with Ross, said the little voice in the back of her head that sounded annoyingly like Leticia. Sharon and Ross had gotten together again because of her surgery. He wouldn’t be in her life right now if that hadn’t happened.

Sharon didn’t know what to think or do. She felt torn between her irritation at herself, her fear for Ross, and a guilty sense of gratitude that she still got to be with him, despite the repercussions. Either her thoughts shown plainly on her face as she stepped into the living room, or it was Melanie hovering behind her like a concerned ghost that gave her away. The others could clearly tell that something was amiss.

“Hey, babe, what’s wrong?” Jonas asked, hurrying over and guiding her towards the couch.

“Ross’s hearing,” Sharon told them, because they were her friends and she trusted them. Besides, they were going to ferret it out of her anyway, especially once they got some drinks in her—and they would, because she was feeling miserable and, like a responsible adult, planned to drown her worries in a fuckton of wine. “It’s tomorrow. Amanda, his ex, she’s a journalist and she sent them a copy of the exposé—the board, I mean—and they’re having an emergency hearing tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Debbie immediately perked up. “That’s sudden. Ross doesn’t get any time to prepare a defense.”

“They’ll kick him out,” Jonas said, always the gloomy one. “If they’re not giving him any time to prepare, it’s because they’ve already made up their minds and they just want it over and done with. Institutions will do anything to avoid a scandal.”

That had been her concern as well—that the board was calling this meeting so quickly because they just wanted to get rid of Ross and sweep this whole thing under the rug. Hadn’t Ross predicted something like this would happen? And had it really only been a few weeks ago that Amanda had walked back into Ross’s life? It felt like so much longer and so much shorter all at the same time. But then, Sharon felt like she could measure her time with Ross both in years and in a handful of days, and her first meeting with him seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago, or perhaps only yesterday. She supposed that was what it felt like when you were in love.

“Thank you, Jonas,” Leticia said, putting an arm around Sharon’s shoulders, “For your thoughtful comment. That was super helpful. Totally lifted our spirits.”

Jonas, by way of apology, passed Sharon a glass of wine.

“What exactly did Amanda write in this exposé that would make them consider firing Ross?” Debbie asked.

Sharon sighed, indulging herself by taking a gulp of wine. Melanie and Tom sat down together in the chair off to one side, watching her with identically solemn expressions. “Ross and I slept together the night that I had my accident—literally just before it happened. I was on my way home from his place when I crashed the car. Ross operated on me, but he didn’t recognize me at the time, so he didn’t know that I was a potential conflict of interest until afterwards. Then we started dating even though we shouldn’t have because I was still kind of his patient—”

“But did he see you regularly as your doctor?” Debbie asked.

“No, just once for a follow-up checkup. I’ve been working with the physical therapist, mostly.”

Debbie was opening her phone and scrolling through something. “When’s his hearing tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Sharon said. “I’d have to check—Deb, what are you doing?”

Melanie got a knowing smile on her face, her gaze flicking over to Debbie. “Sharon, darling, I think you’ve forgotten Deb’s profession.”

“Get me the time of the hearing,” Debbie said, tapping rapidly on her phone. “Technically I don’t think he needs a lawyer present, but they’re already setting a precedent by giving him such short notice, and it can only help.”

“Are you serious?” Sharon couldn’t believe her ears. And maybe that was just an expression, but she genuinely wondered if maybe she had misheard Debbie, or if she’d had more alcohol than she’d thought and was actually smashed right now, or if she was even asleep and having a stress dream about this. “Debbie, I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You’re not asking me, I’m offering.” Debbie continued to tap away on her phone. “And I don’t mind. You and Ross are engaged, for fuck’s sake. That’s a hell of a lot more than an affair. The prosecution’s argument is shaky at best.”

“There’s our little shark,” Melanie said fondly.

“Don’t you have work tomorrow?” Sharon pointed out.

“Not anymore, I don’t,” Debbie replied. She put her phone up to her ear. “Hello, Cynthia?” Debbie coughed, her voice sounding frail and wrecked. “Yeah, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think I should come into work tomorrow. One of those twenty-four-hour flu things, I think.” She coughed again, a great big one that made her chest shake. “Ugh, God, yeah, I just feel awful. No, of course, I’ll get plenty of sleep. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Haha, yeah, probably overwork from the Ladimeer case. I feel you.” Another cough. “Okay, thanks, goodnight!”

Debbie hung up and looked over at Sharon. “There, now I’m free tomorrow. Anyone else busy?”

“I don’t have clients until the afternoon,” Melanie said.

“I make my own hours,” Tom pointed out.

“I’m used to a lack of sleep,” Leticia said, which, considering her clubbing habits, was more than fair.

“Fuck it,” Jonas said eloquently.

“All right.” Debbie clapped her hands together. “Does Ross have a copy of this article that Amanda wrote? Because I need that.”

“I can get it if Ross doesn’t have it,” Leticia said. “I know someone in Amanda’s office. They’ve worked with me on articles about the museum.”

“Melanie, you’re a therapist, I need you to get all records of Sharon’s medical files. You know, as her doctor, helping her through the psychological trauma of this accident.”

“This is borderline illegal, you guys all know that, right?” Sharon pointed out.

“We wouldn’t have to do borderline illegal things to get this information if they’d given us more time,” Debbie said cheerfully, “But since they’re assholes, we do what we have to.”

“For a lawyer, you’re very willing to bend the law.”

“The best way to know how to break the rules is to learn what the rules are, and then you can break them strategically,” Debbie replied.

“We should make sure someone writes an article in rebuttal,” Jonas pointed out, getting his phone out of his pocket and starting to type rapidly. “Ross is being treated unfairly. If the rest of the world sees Amanda for what she really is, then she’ll stop, right? Isn’t that what you always say, Mel, that abusers stop when their actions are subject to public observation because they know what they’re doing is wrong?”

“That’s the gist of it, yes,” Melanie said.

“There should be music swelling right now,” Leticia declared. “Big, inspirational, go get ‘em music.”

“This isn’t a movie,” Sharon muttered, blushing. “Although you all seem determined to make it one.”

“Well where do you think movies get their inspiration?” Debbie replied. “Now, I want you to grab a notebook or a computer or something and write down everything that happened, in order, for the court. I’ll be editing it, by the way, gotta make sure that the phrasing is exactly right—”

Sharon’s head was spinning a little, and she knew it had nothing to do with the wine. She’d only taken one sip, after all. “Uh, okay, can we slow down?”

Leticia, bless her, took the wine glass from Sharon’s hand and then took Sharon’s hands in hers as she sat down next to her on the couch. “Honey, I know that this is making you feel a little like you want to vomit.”

Sharon nodded.

“And it’s all moving really quickly, and you’ve got all of these changes and new information flying at you,” Leticia went on.

Sharon nodded, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She felt like such a child, but Leticia was her best friend for a reason—more like family in some ways—and she knew Sharon better than anyone. Perhaps even better than Sharon’s own parents knew her.

Leticia sighed and pulled Sharon into a hug, while the other four quietly worked on their phones and jotted down notes. Melanie was on the phone with someone, speaking in a low voice as she moved into the kitchen.

“You two finally admit that you’re in love with each other, and the next thing you know, you’re engaged. Of course it feels fast,” Leticia explained, smoothing her hand through Sharon’s hair. “And now this stupid hearing is coming right on top of it, and it’s all just overwhelming, isn’t it?”

Sharon nodded.

“How about you just write down everything that happened,” Leticia said. “I’ll help, since you were telling me about it the whole time, and then we can bundle you off to bed.”

Part of her really liked that idea. She was tired. She had gone from the adrenaline rush of telling everyone about her engagement to the sick, swooping roller coaster feeling of learning about Ross’s hearing, to the strange, swelling feeling in her chest as she watched her friends literally call off their jobs so they could help her. It was a lot to process.

But she didn’t want to just go to sleep, not when they had only so much time before Ross’s hearing. She couldn’t just leave her friends to do all of the work for her. Ultimately, this concerned Ross and her, not them, and if they were going to stay up to get Ross through this, then she would as well.

She sat up, taking Leticia’s hand and squeezing it gratefully. “No, no I need to help too. I’ll write down the sequence of events, Deb, no problem.”

“Be sure to emphasize that there was a romantic connection,” Debbie said, not looking up from her phone, “And if there was any hanky-panky while you were in the hospital, feel free to leave that out.”

Sharon could feel her face heating up. Debbie noticed her blush out of the corner of her eye and looked up, scandalized. “Jesus, I was joking. Did you seriously get it on in the hospital?”

Sharon cleared her throat. “It’s not like I don’t know about you getting it on with the Klingon girl at Comic Con that one year.”

“Jesus Christ,” Debbie muttered, looking back at her phone. “Just make this report as sanitized and lovey-dovey as possible, okay? And mention the proposal: exactly what he said, how he planned it, all of that. We need to show the board that you two are in a serious and committed relationship. Also, you two have moved in together, right?”

“My name is the only one on the apartment, but yes.”

“Oh, we gotta change that. What time is it? Is your landlord awake?”

Sharon blanched. “Deb, you can’t go bother my landlord!”

“I think she already is,” Jonas noted as Debbie made her way to the door and slipped her shoes on.

“I’ll go with her,” Melanie said hurriedly, hanging up her phone. Debbie was already out the door, and Melanie had to jog to catch up with her. “Deb, babe, we agreed…”

Babe? Sharon mouthed at Tom, who shrugged. If Melanie and Debbie had finally stopped dancing around each other, it seemed that Tom hadn’t heard about it. Sharon looked over at Leticia. “She can’t possibly get the landlord to put Ross’s name on the apartment, can she?”

“If anyone can, it’s Debbie.” Leticia smiled comfortingly. “If anyone can do any of this, it’s Debbie. You’re our friend, Sharon. Let us help you out, okay? Lord knows you’ve always been there for us.”

Sharon nodded. Maybe, just maybe, they could all band together and actually pull this off.