Saturday afternoon came, and Grayson had time to spare from store-opening preparations, so Ridley had invited him over to the Umbramoor Manor for some intimate socializing along with Emilio, Martin, and Silas. Alex had already gone out earlier with plans of his own to meet with the trio, and Ridley had told Grayson to come with his stomach at least partly empty, so he downed only a cup of coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, leaving the Prior kitchen mostly unbothered for much of the day.

When he arrived at Umbramoor and knocked on the front door, he heard an indistinct voice yell, "come in!", from the other side. As he entered through the unlocked door, the first thing he saw was Martin and Emilio dancing the Foxtrot in the middle of the hall. There was loud swing music wafting through the house, as well as the smell of pecan nuts.

Grayson walked up to them with a curious grin on. "What're you two doing?"

"The Foxtrot, clearly!" Emilio said.

"Good day to you neighbour," Martin said after a brief glance away from monitoring his and Emilio's footwork. Grayson smiled and nodded back a silent hello.

"I wanted to impress you with my dancing skills," Emilio went on, "but Silas' busy in the kitchen and Ridley's got two left feet, so Martin's my only other option, and he's decent on the dancefloor, at best."

Martin scowled at him. "Thank you, ever so much, for the kind, blessed, compliment, my dear comrade." Grayson tried to stifle his laughter, though it was hardly noticeable over the music anyway.

"Relax, gaffer. You've still got more rhythm than Ridley." To Grayson, Emilio said, "I bet you're quaking in your steel toed shoes right now, aren't ya? Wanna lesson? Free of charge."

"Maybe next time, but thanks," Grayson replied.

Ridley appeared at last, emerging from the kitchen and waving to Grayson. "Ah, Gray you're here! Come come, give us a hand in here and get first-hand experience of cooking with Silas Mitchell!"

Grayson beamed ear to ear as he followed Ridley towards the kitchen, carefully moving by Martin and Emilio while they trotted all about the space.

The kitchen was a mess with all sorts of ingredients: flour and pecan nuts spattered over the countertops; several pints of raspberries that were all half full; a myriad of sliced open passion fruits piled into plastic bowls; coconuts that were still fully intact crowding together on the kitchen island.

At the back counter, Silas was busy rolling away at a patch of dough. Ridley led Grayson to the throng of coconuts at the island, then gestured at the hammer and screwdriver laying together near one of the edges.

"Silas has been working on the pecan cookies, and I've been preparing the passion fruit pudding. While we're doing that, you can empty out and crack open these coconuts. Later we'll drink some rum from them and have a good time!" Ridley explained.

"Let's get to it, Grayson," Silas called without looking up from the dough.

"R-right!" To Ridley, Grayson whispered, "he's really into it, huh?"

Ridley chuckled. "He's been cooking and baking since he was a plucky middle schooler. I've never seen anyone work more seriously in the kitchen than him."

Grayson nodded. "I see. And...hey, just to let you know, I'm not really the best in the kitchen. I cook from time to time, but Alex was always the whiz there. Anyone else might be a better solution here."

Ridley shook her head. "Emilio hates cooking, and Martin's not very handy with tools either. Those two are quite engrossed in dancing anyway, and I'd hate to stop them. You'll do just fine. There's hardly any cooking on your end. All you need to do is stick the screwdriver into the holes to drain the coconut water, then you just take the hammer and-" she gasped a little as she caught a glimpse of a small cut on each of Grayson's hands.

Grayson glanced down, noticing what she was looking at. "Oh, don't worry about those. Just a couple of minor nicks. They'll heal up quickly. It usually happens at some point during work, though I never really notice them."

"Oh, 그건 안 돼요 (geu-gon an dwae-yo) you can't do that," Ridley cried. "Even the tiniest cuts can have a big impact on your health if not treated right away. Not to mention it could contaminate any food you touch. Come come, I'll fix you up. No buts."

Grayson allowed her to pull him towards a table in the dining room, where she sat him down and returned to the kitchen to retrieve a few items. She returned a minute later with a jar of honey, a popsicle stick, and a box of band-aids. Using the stick, she dipped it in the jar and started to spread a small amount on each cut.

"A handy method I learned from Silas a couple years ago," she said.

Grayson watched her, content with the contrasting smooth feeling of her hands, with his rough ones. "You...called me 'Gray' before."

Ridley looked up, a bit confused, but began to blush as realization hit her. "Sorry about that. Sometimes I just do something without even really thinking about it first, or I blurt out something to someone that isn't relevant to whatever we might be talking about. You see this?" She put a length of her dyed frontal fringe between her fingers and lifted it. "Two weeks ago I was passing by that bleached blue house while it was vacant — the house you're living in now — and I just thought, 'wow, that is such a beautiful colour for a house! I wonder what my bangs would like in that colour? Pretty too, I bet.' And then the next day I spent thirty-seven dollars to get some bleached blue hair. Batty, aren't I?"

Grayson grinned, then a second later he lolled back against the chair as a merry bout of laughter was roused from him. "More like spontaneous, nothing wrong with that."

He recalled the many times he had crafted wooden gifts for Julia for birthdays and anniversaries and other special days, and though sometimes they had been last minute present ideas, usually he had planned days ahead what he wanted to make for her, yet Julia had often dismissed his efforts as 'spur of the moment'. Aside from a wooden vase, Grayson had kept all of the gifts he had ever made for Julia after the divorce. She didn't want them anyway. Now all the wooden knick-knacks had a new home in various locations of the bleached-blue Prior home, where they served as reminder — not of his marriage annulment, but of his own skill in woodworking.

"If we thought about every single thing before we did it, there'd be a lot of things that we would just never do or get better at," Grayson continued. "And, Gray is fine, by the way. It's a nickname I haven't heard in a long time, and it sounds nice coming from you."

Ridley stumbled wrapping the band-aid around Grayson's hand as her cheeks rushed pink. Grayson beamed like a teenager as he helped her to get the sticky strip on right.

"My, my."

Ridley and Grayson both flinched in their seats as they turned to see Silas standing in the kitchen entryway.

"I wondered where my kitchen staff went. I'll admit though," Silas continued, "I like it. And it's about time one of us started getting out there. You, Gray, must be quite proactive. And Ridley, you sly, Western-groomed pooch. I wasn't sure if you had it in you. Nice."

Ridley was flustered. "W-what, n-no! Silas- U-uh..."

Grayson chuckled, a bit flustered himself, and scooped up the honey-dipped popsicle stick to finish the job on his other hand. Before Ridley could catch her words, Emilio and Martin appeared next to Silas, and marveled at the duo at the dining table.

"¡Mira eso! look at that" Emilio cooed. "Some mingling going on in here? Guess we'll go down to just the single three — Mi Amigos!"

"Times are changing indeed," agreed Martin.

Grayson looked back at them, bemused. "Single three?"

"Maybe you've noticed, or maybe you haven't," Silas started, "but a lot of adults in Riviam are married, or dating or even common law. Hardly anyone lives 'singly', like we do. Granted, I'm just not interested in seeing anyone. Irrational Martin over there thinks someone's going to corner him into having kids if he starts dating."

"Well why would I need to have more kids when I've already got Ziro, Carsyn, Evan and even Alex now to raise!" argued Martin.

"Don't listen to him, Martin," Emilio cut in. "We all value your enthusiastic, layman co-parenting prowess. God knows I do. Veronika just up and left one night to Montreal to try and join the Olympic swim team. Not sure if she ever made it, and I don't care. Veronika's my ex-wife, by the way. Happily divorced for years."

Silas looked dejected as he said, "that's why I don't date. The possibility of divorce, all that legal business just to finalize one if it happens, and usually it isn't just you and your spouse being affected but other relationships get ruined too. Just doesn't seem worth it if you ask me...no offense," he said to Grayson.

"None taken," Grayson affirmed. "You have a point."

"Exactly," Silas said. "I've already got enough to deal with anyway — running a business and raising a teenager. Carsyn's been staying with me since she was fourteen. The fallout between her and her parents...just unfixable."

"What happened? Grayson asked, looking worried.

"...her father is my older brother, Darius. He's a priest at the city church, and his wife, Sheila is an organ player there too. They...had pretty strict views. And Carsyn, being the stubborn one she is, refused to conform to those views. One night I just saw her out on the front steps of their house with a suitcase. I cleared it with her folks so that she could stay with me, permanently. I was leaving the next day to head to Riviam and start up the Halcyon anyway, so it was a new start for a lot of the Mitchell's."

"I'm so sorry, for Carsyn too. It can't be easy being so young and shunned by your own family," Grayson said.

Silas shook his head. "Ah, don't be. Syn's tougher than you think, than even I think! And anyways, the point was that I just don't have room for romance right now. Marriage can be consuming and divorce can be shitty. Emilio and Ridley will tell ya."

"Ugh, Silas!" a frustrated Ridley nearly shrieked.

Silas threw one hand up in defense, feigning guilt. "What? You were next in this storytelling train."

"And I was going to smoothly integrate myself so as to take my turn!" she argued. Silas gave a guiltless shrug of his shoulders, earning a scathing stare from Ridley, but Ridley's attention was pulled away quickly as Grayson reached for one of her hands in a concealed embrace.

"So you...had a divorce?" he asked her quietly, though the other three men by the kitchen entryway still heard him.

Ridley sighed, and squeezed the hand of Grayson's that held hers. "Yes, but just so you're aware, my tale is not as heartbreaking as either of theirs," she gestured over Grayson's shoulder at Silas and Emilio, but Grayson didn't glance back.

Instead, Grayson gave her hand a squeeze also, and said, "a heartbreak is a heartbreak. It's different for everyone. And we tend to make it a bad habit to compare it with someone else's 'heartbreak'."

Ridley smiled wistfully, then dropped it, then picked it up once more and tried to keep it afloat her lips. "Vincent..."

Grayson cocked his head, confused. "W-who?"

"My ex-husband...How do I even explain this? Vincent just wasn't very comfortable with me expressing my Korean culture. What with trying to make traditional meals from time to time, speaking Hangul, even my love for art — he didn't want to fall into that 'behavior', as Vincent called it. He told me he'd been tolerating it when we had gotten married because he thought I would eventually change. A few years ago he decided to leave and moved back to his hometown in America, he never told me where. Though he tries to contact me sometimes, to see if I've changed. Luckily Ziro's usually nearby to derail those attempts. It was only a year afterwards that we finally agreed to just divorce."

Grayson watched Ridley intimately; her brunette eyes cast downwards, her shoulders slumped, her very presence gloomy no longer glowing. His heart swelled, and so he scooped up her other hand in a safe grip, encouraging her to lift her gaze to meet his.

"Are you okay?" he asked her quietly.

She nodded vigorously. "Yes...yes I am. I wasn't then, but I am now."

"So...what about you, Grayson?" Emilio asked. Grayson pulled away from the pleasing sight of Ridley and glanced back at Emilio looking for clarification. "The story of your split with...what was her name again, by the way?"

"Emilio!" Ridley hissed.

"It's okay," Grayson cut in. "Everyone else has been sharing, it's my turn now. Julia, my ex-wife. Long story short, it was the usual 'walking in on your spouse cheating on you with your brother in our bedroom'."

"Ouch," Emilio murmured.

"Shit, man..." Silas muttered.

"...I'm so sorry, Gray," Ridley said softly. She shuffled forward a little on her seat as she leaned his grip on her hands.

Before Grayson could respond to any of them, Martin began to say, "adulting can be really life consuming, in many ways. So, it's important to know that the job can't be full-time twenty-four-seven. Adults, whether they're parents or not, need to take a break from the grown-up world. If you don't, you could end up regretful of choices you've made in your life and you'll walk out on everything and everyone."

"Way to go off the deep end, Marty," Silas remarked.

"I have swam so the rest of you could run," Martin coolly replied.

Emilio's hand quivered frenetically between Silas and Martin. "Swimming, walking — we should be dancing! And eating! I've seen inside that kitchen, and you guys aren't even halfway done with the snacks!"

Ridley released her hands from Grayson and shot from her chair. "Oh that's right! Silas, the cookies!"

"Shit," Silas repeated, "stove's been on for a while..." he disappeared back into the kitchen, meanwhile Emilio threw an arm around Martin's shoulders and started guiding him back to the hall through the kitchen.

"I gotta beat those passion fruits," Ridley said to herself. "And you," she hooked her arm around Grayson and began to tug him towards the kitchen, "need to start smashing and draining those coconuts. 따라와 (tta-ra-wa) follow me."

Grayson went along with her willingly as they strode to their destination. "The single three, huh?" he chuckled to himself.

Absentmindedly, Ridley said, "we used to be the single five..."

"Hm? What do you mean?" Grayson asked.

"Oh...uhm...There actually used to be someone else in our little group."

"Oh really? Who? What happened?"

Ridley stopped them both just before the kitchen threshold, and pulled him aside behind the wall so they couldn't be seen. "She uhm...still lives in Riviam, but we haven't been on speaking terms with her for a few months now. It wasn't anything she did honestly...It was our kids — my son and hers. They used to be so close along with Carsyn and Evan, but some time ago they had a falling out. Ziro still won't give me any details to this day, but ever since their friendship has been in shambles. Ziro never explicitly said anything, but he always seemed upset that I continued to visit Kaia — that's her name, by the way — so eventually she and I decided to distance ourselves until the two could work things out...If they can ever work things out."

"Sorry to hear that..." He cradled her, his burly arms wrapping around her. "A real shame to lose a friend." Ridley nodded against his chest. "Who's this other kid anyway? Kaia's son?"

"His name is Leven, but usually everyone calls him just Lev."

Something prickled across the skin of Grayson's arms as his grip around Ridley faltered. He couldn't quite recall if he had actually heard that name, Lev, before from someone...

"The kitchen's calling for you, lovebirds!" Silas shouted from the kitchen.

Their embrace ceased, and Ridley scuttled off first to her passion fruit station. Grayson followed, a bit slower, as his mind wondered about that name. Maybe it'd come back to him while cracking open coconuts, he thought.