"Are you sure you don't want me to order you some bacon and eggs, or something? You look like you're starving."

   "No thanks."

   We were lovers, once. Now we are former lovers, trying to be "just friends." It's easy enough to manage when one was not much more than a friend in the first place. Trying to bury the memory of passion and pretend that it doesn't matter that there was once romance and now there is no more, is another matter. At least for us, it is.

   We're still trying anyway, because as awkward as being "just friends" has proven to be, the thought of being enemies or, worse, ghosts of memories to each other is more painful.

   "I don't think you get to be angry at me for having dumped you for a man, after this." My ex-girlfriend stabs at a pancake with her fork. I must still love her, at least a little. Ordinarily I wouldn't even consider meeting a person for breakfast before a civilized hour – say, eleven o'clock. The only way I can even think of being awake at dawn involves an unhealthy amount of caffeine. It's a good thing the diner has bottomless cups of coffee.

   Those pancakes she's eating look delicious. Oh, well.

   "That was different. I was dating you at the time. We moved in together. I thought we were in love with each other. I thought you loved me."

   "I did love you. I still kind of do. Just not..."

   "Not enough?" I grimace. "You left me hanging for rent."

   "Get a roommate."

   "Easier said than done. This is me, remember? I have to keep the roommate after I get the roommate, assuming I actually do manage to get the roommate." It's been months, and not one person has followed up on my campus posters yet, so the point is moot. I suppose I'd have better luck if I paid for a classified ad in the newspaper, but I can't afford to do that. Working for the local newspaper as a telemarketer gives me a steady supply of free newspapers. It doesn't give me free classified advertisements.

   "You yelled at me because you said I treated my relationship with my boyfriend as more real than the relationship I had with you. You used to tell me that back when you actually had friends, your friends would leave you hanging when they got into romantic relationships, only to get friendly again when things didn't work out with their boyfriends, and they were single again. The last time you contacted me to hang out was last March."

   I hang my head. She's right. As it turned out, we were more compatible as friends than we were as girlfriends, anyway, for all that we had managed at some point to convince each other that we loved each other; and nursing resentment isn't exactly the best way to keep a friendship alive, any more than ignoring your friend is. But I've done one of the things I used to rail against: I've ignored people I call friends entirely and let myself get drunk on being in love.

   It's a great way to lose friends.

   And it's not like Magister wants me to do it. Every now and then, he asks me if maybe I'm neglecting the other people in my life, since he never hears me talking about them or sees me with them. I blow him off every time he asks because I never really know quite how I should respond, but it's a reasonable question.

   "I'm sorry," I say, looking up from the cup of coffee I've been toying with. I think it's my fourth, but it might be my fifth. She wanted to buy me breakfast, too, but coffee is about as much charity as I'm willing to accept from most people.

   "So, who is he?" she asks, amusement tingeing her voice. At least I think it's amusement; I'm not sure. I hope it is. "He must be pretty special if he's the reason you haven't even called me for the past ten months."

   "He's a librarian. He works at the downtown public library."

   "Well, that makes sense. Anyone you fall for would need to be all about the books."

   "We did meet in a bookstore."

   "Mmm-hmm. Is he cute?"

   "Um. I don't know. I guess. I mean, isn't that kind of subjective anyway, based on the things any given person finds cute? I think sometimes he's cute. He's good-looking. He has beautiful eyes and cheekbones. And his hair is incredible, all thick and wavy, black and silver. I love touching it."

   "Black and silver? How old is he?"

   I tell her.

   After spitting out her coffee, she says, "He's twice your age? Wow. Congratulations." She grins lasciviously. "He must be good in bed. You know what they say."

   "Oh, good grief. You actually expect me to answer that? That's an awfully personal question." Know what who says? About what? "Yes."

   "Mmm. I bet. You're glowing." Her eyes flick down to her wrist. "I'm going to be late for my shift if we stay here much longer. Can we get together sooner than another ten months from now, do you think?"

   "I'm going to be running a game this Sunday. Not a long campaign, just a one-off. Are you free?"

   Magister and I decided to try setting up a gaming group for me to help me make more friends and get a life outside of him. It's worth a shot. And I do miss gaming.

   "Does joining the party mean I get to meet your significant other?"

   "It does."

   "I'll be there. I'll steal my boyfriend's dice since he has to work that day." She shrugs. "Well, I'd be there, regardless, but this gives me an extra incentive. So, what are we playing?"

   "I thought I'd have you do a little computer troubleshooting."

   It's a small party sitting around the card table we set up in the living room – the only other two players besides Magister and my ex-girlfriend are a couple of Magister's co-workers from the library, who I think I've bumped into a few times, because they look familiar – and that's fine by me, because it's easier to roll up canned characters for a one-day campaign when you don't have to create very many characters. Also, the living room can only hold so many people. I suppose we could squeeze in a few more players if they were willing to be very friendly with each other. We do have the couch. For now, though, it's just the five of us.

   "It looks like there's nobody else joining the four of you in the empty classroom. Suddenly, you hear a tinny voice coming out of the public address system: 'WELCOME, RED TROUBLESHOOTING TEAM ALPHA ONE ONE EIGHT POINT SEVEN. THE COMPUTER HAS A VERY IMPORTANT MISSION FOR YOU TO COMPLETE. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU PERFORM THIS MISSION TO COMPLETION AND COMPLETE IT TO ITS COMPLETEST MAXIMUM PARAMETERS. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND.'"

   "Is the computer always this redundant?"

   Magister has never played this game before. He's more of a fantasy and horror role-player.

   I smile sweetly at him. "A ceiling panel slides open directly above you. Suddenly, a beam of red light falls on you; you are vaporized within seconds."

   "What?"

   "Don't worry," one of the co-worker players says soothingly, "you have five more clones. This is normal in the game."

   "It is?"

   "The ceiling panel remains open," I say. "From the ceiling, your clone replacement drops to the floor, and proceeds to bounce around the room, ricocheting off the walls and floor like a rubber ball."

   "It does what?"

   "Mutant!" cries my ex-girlfriend. "Destroy the mutant! Down with mutants!" She looks at me and says, "I aim my laser side-arm at the bouncing mutant and shoot it in the chest."

   "Roll for – uh – roll for accuracy."

   She rolls.

   "Success. The mutant dies, shot through the heart, and continues to bounce around the room like a rubber ball, splatter-painting the walls, furniture, and floor as it does so. Meanwhile, a metal robot the size and shape of a bread box emerges from a wall panel at the other end of the room and proceeds to vacuum up the small pile of ashes that used to be a traitor. From the ceiling, a second clone replacement drops to the floor."

   "What?"

   "Is this clone bouncing?" asks another party member.

   "No."

   "I think we can assume this one's not a traitorous mutant commie," she tells my ex. "All clear." She turns to Magister and whispers, "You only have four clone replacements left. One of them is the one you're about to use right now. Let us do the talking for a while if you want to live."

   "Maybe that's for the best," he agrees.

   He learns fast.

   "A FOOD TERMINAL IN GREEN MAUSOLEUM SEVEN TWO NINE B IS MALFUNCTIONING. YOUR MISSION IS TO REPAIR THE MALFUNCTIONING FOOD TERMINAL. IT IS A VERY IMPORTANT MISSION. FAILURE TO PERFORM THIS IMPORTANT MISSION IS TREASON AND WILL BE PUNISHED BY DEATH. THIS MESSAGE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN THREE SECONDS."

    "There's a food terminal in a mausoleum? What?"

   "As Chief Happiness Officer, I think our new team member needs a Happy Pill to improve his morale. That, and I need to test them out on somebody."

   "Yes! Absolutely! Give him an experimental Happy Pill!"

   "What?"

   "Looks like you're being given an experimental Happy Pill. Don't worry, they're – " I roll – "orally delivered, as opposed to the last experimental Happy Pills, which were rectal suppositories. And within seconds, you are radiantly happy, and the pill failed to blow up on contact, which is great news for pharmaceutical research," I chirp. "The suppositories were a bit more explosive."

   "The last time I was in a role-playing game, I played a half-elven Druid," Magister mutters. "This is a little different, isn't it?"

   "Just a bit. Okay, you two," I say, gesturing to my ex-girlfriend and the co-worker of Magister's who hasn't said much yet, "if you could follow me into the other room, the Computer has an additional top-secret assignment just for you."

   These two players are members of a secret society, and they have orders from their society to carry out. Actually, all the players are members of secret societies – for instance, Magister's character is a member of Save the Redwoods, which is a seditionist cabal in the dystopian future of this game – but my ex and the other person are in the same society, a different one from the one Magister is in and the one his other co-worker is in – so it makes sense to debrief them together. Besides, I've found that talking to players in another room where their gaming partners have no idea what is going on is a great way to raise levels of paranoia and general unease.

   As I lead them into the kitchen, a doorway materializes unexpectedly where it wasn't supposed to be – alternatively, my perception of the doorway is lacking, which is probably the more likely explanation – and I encounter the doorway with my hip, stumble, and land hard against the corner of the kitchen table on the top of my thigh.

   Unfortunately, the part of that thigh that crashes into the table is still recovering from last night. Other parts of me are still recovering from being pierced, engraved, and sliced, but they don't come into contact with the table. Small mercies.

   I let out a yelp, and add a few choice swear words for good measure.

   "Are you all right?" Magister calls out.

   "Yes. I'm fine. I just crashed into the table and landed on my welts, that's all." I walk back into the living room, because of course, I remember that my campaign notes are still in there, behind my GM screen. That's not a good practice to get into, even when one's players are trustworthy. Oops.

   A sudden silence fills the room.

   "You landed on what?" asks my ex-girlfriend, from the kitchen. "How on earth did you get welts?"

   "How does one usually get welts?"

   She gapes at me.

   The rest of the gaming party stares at me, then at him, then at me again. From the appalled looks on the faces of just about everybody in the room, it looks like there is concern for my well-being.

   Then my ex turns her head to stare at Magister, who also has an appalled look on his face, though for an entirely different reason.

   She gives me an astonished look again. "I didn't know you were into that. Wait. You aren't the dominant?"

   I have no idea what put that idea into her head. Then again, we did date one another for a while. Perhaps I was more of a character in bed than I thought I was. "I probably would be, if it was anybody else. It's a bit complicated to explain."

   I can almost hear Magister blushing, he's blushing so hard. On the other hand, at least now his co-workers no longer think he's abusing me.

   "You owe me lunch. And a copy of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty," says one of his co-workers to the other.

   "What?"

   "Oh. We had a bet going," she says, turning to Magister.

   Magister groans and covers his face. It doesn't help. He's blushing all the way down to his collarbone. "Can we get back to the game?" he mutters. "I think I'd rather be shot with lasers and fed mood-altering drugs for right now, if you don't mind."

   "No, I don't mind," I reply.

   I stand in front of the couch expectantly. He's been parked there since early this morning, going through a pile of books. I don't think he even noticed when I excused myself, walked to the local thrift store, and came back with a large bag. When he starts reading, he gets totally absorbed in it.

   "Happy birthday!"

   He looks up from the book he's currently working on – the collected writings of Marcus Aurelius, in the original Latin – and gets a bemused look on his face. "It is my birthday, isn't it?"

   Since he has his earplugs in, I assume he is having one of his more hypersensitive days. Sometimes noise bothers him, and if he doesn't protect himself from it, he gets wicked headaches. Bright light sometimes does it to him, too. He says some days are worse than others for him. I make a note to do my best to keep my voice down. He'll still be able to hear me through the earplugs even when I'm using a quiet voice – from what he says, the earplugs don't so much muffle all noise as drown out chaotic background noises and make it easier for him to focus on what one person is saying without getting overwhelmed, and they keep the "projection" level of the person he's focusing on down to a dull roar so his ears and head don't hurt. When I asked him what the difference was between noise level and projection, he gave me an odd look and asked if other people's noise didn't push at me or feel like it was jabbing me.

   I don't perceive sound the same way he does. I also don't seem to perceive light the same way he does. Then again, he doesn't perceive other people's ch'i through the layers of his skin all the way into his nerves quite the same way I've been doing since November. I guess we both have hypersensitivities, just different ones. His hypersensitivities seem more awkward and annoying than mine are. I deal with mine easily enough by not letting most people get anywhere near me, which is natural enough because I've never really liked being close to other people anyway. On his more sensitive days, he doesn't seem to have any way to escape the unpleasant stimuli at all – the best he can do is stay in the shadows and muffle the noises that bother him.

   "You just turned forty-two. That makes you the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Come on. We have to celebrate it. It's mandatory."

   "Hmm. It sounds like you have something in mind."

   "Absolutely," I say with a grin. "I have a present for you. Sorry I couldn't wrap it properly, but I did find a nice bow. Here's the bag." I hand it to him.

   He puts down the book and holds out his hands for the bag. When he opens it, he pulls out my present and turns it over a few times, looking at it from different angles.

   "A baby harp seal plush? Er. Hmm. Eromene, why a harp seal plush?"

   "I was originally scouring the thrift store for books, but it was cute, it was there, it was cheap, and I couldn't resist buying it for you. Isn't it adorable?"

   "Looks cuddly," he agrees.

   "There's only one catch," I say, trying valiantly to keep my face deadpan as I do so. "You have to earn it."

   "Earn the harp seal."

   I grab the stuffed seal by the tail and chamber it into position on my shoulder. "Turnabout is fair play!" I declare emphatically, and then I swing the harp seal at his head. It lands just hard enough to make a muffled noise.

   The look of sheer astonishment on his face needs to be captured for posterity. If only I had a camera.

   "Forty-one more to go. Hold still, this is supposed to be character-building, you know."

   Stuffed harp seals make great pillow weapons.

   After whacking at his head and various other body parts – both he and the harp seal survive – I hand him his seal back. "There. It's yours."

   "Thank you. That was probably the most surreal birthday present I think I've ever received." He smiles. "Although I'm pretty sure I didn't need the character-building. I'm enough of a character already."

   "I'll go start baking the cake," I say. "It's from a mix. I hope you don't mind."

   "I'm flattered that you even thought to bake me a cake," he replies. "And cake mixes are a very good way to practice baking cakes. After you get confident at it, you start playing around with the instructions by adding or substituting things, and from there, it's a short step to cooking from scratch. That's actually how I first started using an oven..."

   I kiss him on the lips in mid-sentence before he has a chance to expound anymore. "Hush. It's okay to just enjoy the chocolate cake. Really."

   He glances down at the seal. "I think I'll name him Approval."

   He gets a really cute look on his face when he's confused. I should find a way to get him to make that look more often.

   Later, as we drink mulled wine to chase away the cold January night, and cuddle together on the living room couch to watch Stealing Heaven (which seems fairly faithful to the written records Heloise and Abelard left of their affair, at least for the duration of their brief physical involvement) he whispers in my ear, "Of course, what I really want for my birthday is you."

   "You already have me."

   "Really? I had some rather specific ideas in mind."

   "You always have specific ideas in mind."

   "True," he agrees.

   "And you definitely have me. You had me before we even formalized our relationship."

   "I did?"

   "Good grief, couldn't you tell? Yes. You did."

   "And I have you now, do I?" He turns so that he is leaning on me, pinning me to the couch. I feel his hands close about my wrists.

   No matter how many times he does that, it never ceases to transform me into a puddle of molten want.

   "Oh, yes. Always. Even when you use cheesy, horrible lines like that." My mouth seeks his and finds it. "You have my heart always. So, what does this specific idea of yours entail?"

   "Unwrapping and enjoying you, of course," as he presses his weight against me, grinding me into the cushions. I moan in expectation. "Slowly." He thrusts. "And thoroughly. And very deeply." Another thrust, this one hard. I moan again. The things he then proceeds to do to my ear while he has me pinned under his hips, using his tongue and the tips of his teeth, make me writhe and thrash, crying out in need. I strain against his hands; they tighten, clamping me down, until I feel my own wrists and hands start to tingle.

   "Don't stop," I gasp, "please, please, whatever you're doing, don't stop, I'm so close..."

   "Oh?" He rolls his pelvis against mine, wringing yet another moan of desperation out of me, and I feel myself shaking. "Well. This seems like the perfect time to try something."

   "What?"

   "Come," he says softly into my ear.

   Body arching. Shaking. Convulsing. Burning in a fire of pleasure. White heat. I need to scream.

   Gasping for breath. Weak at the knees.

   He stares at me, flabbergasted. "I hadn't expected that to work," he says. "It's a BDSM porn cliché. It almost never works in real life. And when it does work, usually there is some suggestion and behavioral pre-conditioning first. I hadn't got around to that yet, with you." Then he smiles. "I hope you don't mind, but I have decided to make this a very long evening."

   "No," I manage to whisper, "I don't mind at all."