never-ending conversations

 

"Are you really sure about this?" Nora didn't want Zoey to rush into anything with Alfie. "Has he been pressuring  you?"

"What? No?" Zoey looked up from her coffee, but she pressed her lips tight as if she'd been a fool all along.

Nora sighed. "Look, he's just fine staying right where he is. We've got it all figured out." After she said that she knew it wasn't true because a part of her thought Gage would move back to the basement if Alfie moved. It wasn't exactly musical chairs. She gritted a smile thinking she had her own circus to worry about, but that was nothing that Zoey was facing with Alfie. "He's a little impulsive." OK, she thought he was majorly impulsive, but somehow they'd remained friends from work. "I'm just thankful.."

"What?" Zoey drew a blank. "Did you two date?" Zoey just about gave her the third degree right in Nora's own kitchen.

"No," she couldn't help but laugh. "Never." Oh, there was that time they went out for a drink and she regretted it terribly. Yes, something could have happened, but it didn't. She pushed her hair back then, thinking this was about Zoey and Alfie. Not her past with Alfie. "Has anything happened?" She didn't think anything happened the night Alfie brought her here when she was drunk.

"No." Zoey looked kind of sad about it. "I mean, yeah, he put me in the shower and I woke up in wet underwear with his hoodie on. He didn't sleep with me. He stayed up all night." She swelled a frown and took a sip of coffee. "I've got a problem."

"Oh, it's Alfie." Nora nodded.

"No, I'm the problem," she sighed. She nursed her lip then. "I think we'll try it, you know."

"What?" Nora looked at her blankly. 

"Moving in together." Zoey nodded.

"But, really..you don't have to." Nora winced. She liked the way things were now. She didn't want it to change. Even if it was just sleep with Gage.