32. Scar Tissue

Maya sits in the captain’s office working on her incident report, the letters forming an incoherent jumble as she stares at the screen. Her chin rests on one hand while the other fiddles with a spare pen, tapping its end against the wooden desk. There is a lot to write up today – Travis’s injured nose, Vic’s bruised jaw, Ben’s assault; not to mention the whole team’s exposure to the drug paraphernalia that was lying around the house of the couple they were called out to help.

At the time, she’d had little sympathy for them as she had watched Travis try to stop his nose from bleeding while the mother-to-be, Gina, was swinging a baseball bat wildly in the air. Beer cans and used needles scattered around the front yard, Maya’s patience wore thin as the situation escalated quickly. She had not hesitated to call the police department to the scene thanks to the erratic behaviour of their two patients.

With some hindsight, she sees it differently. They were two people who desperately need help to get their lives back on track, for the sake of their new baby as well as themselves. She knows it is possible that her report will be used to press charges against one or both of them, and she wants to write it with some empathy.

Except, next to her right hand, her cell phone sits open with the last message that Carina sent her, regaling her with a story about the meal she is prepping for dinner tomorrow. Maya had been immediately riled by it. She can just imagine the state of her kitchen right now; it was bad enough this morning with her pasta hanging to dry and the smell of her stinky cheeses lingering in the air.

So she hasn’t answered the message yet, because she doesn’t know what to say that doesn’t sound rude or snappy.

That doesn’t sound like her father when he was annoyed.

Instead, she tries – and fails – to focus on her incident report, but it is not good. Giving up, she changes out of her uniform and heads to the station gym, annoyed to find it already occupied.

“Sorry Cap,” Dean says as he lifts a heavy dumbbell. “I can be out of here in, like, ten minutes?”

Maya shakes her head, figuring she can find some chores to do as an alternative. “Don’t worry about it.” She nods towards his right leg. “Your knee doing okay?”

“Yeah, good as new,” Dean says. “Ready to get back on active duty.” He stares at her pointedly and Maya shoots him a knowing smile.

“Fine, you’re off desk duty,” she says, laughing as he woops with delight. No firefighter likes being stuck on desk duty, even if there is good reason for them to be. “But only if whatever’s going on between you and Sullivan won’t affect your ability to work with him.”

She’s not stupid, she heard about the argument they got into when the team got back from their call, and she still feels the impact of Rigo’s death.

“It won’t, I promise,” Dean says.

Maya nods, trusting him, and walks out of the gym, heading towards the bunk room where Vic is putting away the rolled hoses – or trying to, since she is still trying to hold a cold compress to her jaw at the same time.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Maya says, leaning against the door frame as she watches her.

“I will when I get this done,” Vic says, with a heavy sigh. Something is playing on her mind, Maya can tell, and she waits to see if it is something she wants to share. It isn’t long before Vic looks over her shoulder towards her. “I wish you hadn’t called the cops on that couple so quickly.”

Maya raises her eyebrows, surprised that Vic would still have sympathy for them after getting clocked by Eddie’s elbow.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Maya starts, but Vic interrupts her.

“There’s always a choice.”

“They were unpredictable and dangerous,” Maya reminds her. “My team was at risk. Look what happened to you, to Travis, to Ben.”

“We were handling it,” Vic argues back.

“No, we weren’t. They need help that we can’t give them,” Maya says.

“And the police can?” Vic says. “You think they’re gonna turn their lives around in jail?” She sighs, knowing she is taking it out on the wrong person. “Sorry, I’m just having one of those days where I’m pissed we can’t do more.”

“I know,” Maya says. She steps inside the room. “You should go and rest, I’ll finish up here.”

Vic looks at her with surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. I need the workout.”

Vic doesn’t need to be told twice. She drops the hose in her hands and grabs her ice pack, brushing her shoulder gently against Maya’s as a sign of thanks as she passes her.

Maya gets to work, the physical demand on her body a relief from the tension she carries. She pumps her arms as she carries each hose to its resting place, squatting in between moves and enjoying the feel of her muscles burning. She thinks only of the task in hand and pushes everything else out of her mind.

She doesn’t notice Andy appear in the doorway until her voice captures her attention.

“Captain doesn’t stack hoses,” she points out.

“Only one person allowed in the gym at a time,” Maya says. “I’m making do.”

She can feel Andy’s eyes on her as she continues to put the hoses away.

“That family. They, uh, they remind you of the mess you grew up with?”

“No, no,” Maya says. What they saw today was far from the suburban life she grew up with. “My dad raged and threw things, but only at the walls. Never at us and never in front of the neighbours.” She slides one of the hoses onto the rack. “I’m afraid to go home,” she admits.

“To Carina?”

“No! God, no. Carina’s a salve,” Maya says. “It’s me, I’m afraid of how much I'm like my dad.”

Andy looks at her curiously and waits for her to continue.

“You know, my brother and I chose such opposite ways of dealing with him. Mason buried his head in the sand like my mom. And me? I just wanted to please him.” She throws another hose into the rack. “I made myself into a perfect copy of my dad so that he wouldn't find a reason to be mad at me. I spent so many years learning how to read his sighs and silences, the hunch of his shoulders. So many years mimicking the tone of his voice.” She sighs as she realises what has been playing on her mind ever since Carina moved in.

“I'm scared that by protecting myself from him, I turned myself into him.”

“You are nothing like him,” Andy says quickly.

Maya isn’t so sure about that. She feels it, bubbling away inside of her, every day. She sees it in her reactions, hears it in the words she says out loud.

“And for my thirteenth birthday, I was allowed to have three friends spend the night. I didn't have three close friends, but some girls from the softball team came over, and we hung out in the basement. We painted nails and talked about first kisses, and I pretended like I only liked boys.”

They both laugh at that.

“And this one girl, Holly, she went to the kitchen during the movie and she came back with a soda, and I freaked out. I asked her where she got that because those were my dad's and no one else was allowed to touch those. And Holly shrugged because she was thirteen and it was a can of soda.”

Maya pauses, panting, a combination of her workout and the way she can’t stop the words from spilling out of her mouth. The hoses are all tidy and she has nothing else to distract her from everything she thinks and feels.

“And then, sure enough, a few minutes later, my dad came tearing down the stairs. ‘Who drank my last soda?’,” she mimics him, exhaling deeply. “I can still feel every muscle in my body tensing up. And Holly was terrified; and he pointed his finger at her and he said, ‘Who said you could drink that?’. And she just stared at him, suddenly this… this tiny, little girl. And he came lumbering over to her and he ripped the can out of her hand. And he went back upstairs. And she called her mom, crying, and her mom came and picked her up.”

Maya grabs one of the rolled-up hoses that she has just stacked away, desperate to feel the aching in her muscles, the physical pain a distraction from the emotional pain she can’t shake, no matter how hard she tries.

“This morning, I woke up in the apartment and I looked around at her cheeses and her pastas and all of her wonderful everything, and I could feel the rage building inside of me. I could feel the ‘Who drank my last Coke?’ rage. Because I'm so used to having control over every last inch of my space. And now she's here, and it's terrifying. I am terrified that I am gonna snap at her like him and that she is gonna stop loving me and…” She shakes her head, almost too afraid to say it. “Am I broken?”

She feels broken. She feels like her father broke her down and she is trying to rebuild herself, except the pieces don’t fit together properly any more.

Andy looks at her with an empathy that she isn’t sure she deserves.

“Look, I'm still working on this one myself, Maya,” Andy says, “but I think being afraid to be like your dad is the first step to not being like him.”

Andy steps forward and takes the hose out of Maya’s hands, putting it back in the cage from where she has just taken it.

“And you should talk to your girlfriend,” she says pointedly. “Because Carina loves you and she’s not gonna stop loving you if you let her in. You need to trust her. And you need to trust yourself too.”

Andy reaches out and squeezes Maya’s arm in comfort, while pulling a face at her.

“Also, you need to go shower before dinner.”

Maya chuckles at that, comforted by Andy’s words, even though her stomach is still twisted into knots. She hasn’t thought about that memory for years and now it is all she can think about.

With the hoses in their rightful place and the bunk room tidy, Maya takes Andy’s advice and heads to the showers, before going back to her office to finish her report. As she steps inside, a familiar face waits for her.

“Diane.” Maya immediately reaches for the mask in her back pocket and hooks it around her ears.

Diane Lewis spins in her chair and stands up, although she keeps her distance. “Captain Bishop, it’s nice to see you.”

“You too,” Maya says with a small frown, surprised to see the psychologist in her office. “But I wasn’t expecting you, was I?” She walks around the desk and sits in her chair, wondering if she missed an email.

“The department asked me to stop by each station to check in with the teams, make sure everyone is coping with work and lockdowns and sickness,” Diane explains. “I was visiting Station 23 and thought I’d pop in to see if you were around. I just saw Travis sporting a swollen nose?”

“Yeah, we had a tricky call earlier today,” Maya says, twisting her lips regretfully.

Diane sits back down in her chair. “So, how’s it going here?”

That feels like a big question.

“I think everyone’s doing as well as they can, you know,” Maya says. “It’s busy, we’re seeing a lot more call outs, so everyone’s tired all the time – on top of worrying about their families and loved ones. I’m trying to go easy on them if chores don’t all get done.” She shoots Diane a wry smile. They both know she has high standards. “I’m spending time with B and C shifts too.”

Most of her shifts are with A team, as it has always been, but she switches it up every now and again, making sure to have 1-2-1 time with everyone under her care. It is exhausting, but she steps up because it is her role as captain.

“And what’s that like for you?”

“For me?”

Diane smiles kindly. “Leading a fire house in the middle of a pandemic can’t be easy. You have to take care of yourself as well as your team.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Maya says dismissively.

Diane looks at her with a look on her face that says she isn’t convinced by her answer.

“I am,” Maya insists. “I have a great team at work…” She smiles wistfully. “And I have a great girlfriend at home.”

Diane looks interested in that piece of news.

“Carina. She’s a doctor at Grey Sloan. We’ve been together for four months,” Maya says. She doesn’t know why she is telling Diane all this, but she has a way of getting her to talk. “I know moving in together is quick...”

“I don’t think relationships should be dictated by time,” Diane says. “Does it feel right?”

Maya smiles. “Yeah, it does. It feels good – really good.” The smile drops from her face quickly as she remembers the way she hurried out of the apartment this morning.

“But?” Diane asks, picking up that there is something on her mind.

Maya doesn’t know how to respond to that, so Diane waits and watches her, leaving Maya wondering if this is her ploy to get her to fill the silence. It works though, and Maya silently berates herself for falling for her trick.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever lived with someone,” Maya eventually says. “I mean, I’ve lived with friends, but Carina’s the first girlfriend – or boyfriend – that I’ve lived with. So it’s new – and different.”

“That’s a big step to take on top of everything else you’re dealing with,” Diane observes.

“I guess, but not being with her when everything around us is falling apart was hard – for both of us. We’re better together.”

Diane smiles. “Well then, it sounds like it’s the right move for you both.”

“Yeah, I just hope she doesn’t regret it.” She immediately wishes she had not been so open. “I mean…”

Diane tips her head to one side. “Why would she regret it?”

Maya rolls her eyes. “The last time you were here, I told you how broken I am.”

“You think you’re broken?”

“You don’t? I was jealous of Rigo for being dead. I dreamed of finding solace in the clouds.” Maya sighs. “My girlfriend is the sweetest, kindest person that I have ever met. She makes me French toast for breakfast and I want to run in the opposite direction before I ruin it all.” She shrugs. “Because I will ruin it. Because I’m broken.”

Diane twists her lips thoughtfully and Maya hopes that she has a quick fix for her broken thoughts.

“I don’t believe in the idea that people are ‘broken’,” she says.

Maya looks at her cynically. “You’re a therapist, isn’t that your job? To fix broken people?”

“I help heal people,” Diane corrects her. “Look, I think emotional scars are like physical ones – like Travis’s nose. Bad things happen and sometimes that trauma will leave a scar. Some of those scars are deeper than others and take longer to heal, but they do heal. And yes, sometimes those scars will leave a mark forever. But with some kindness and tenderness, it becomes a blemish. Something that you might notice once in a while, but doesn’t impact your life.”

She leans forward in her chair.

“Let me ask you this, Maya. Do you still look for solace in the clouds? With all the stress and craziness of the pandemic, have you thought about disappearing into those clouds to escape?”

Maya shakes her head. “No. I just…” She smiles to herself, understanding the point she is making. “I just want to be with Carina.”

Diane returns her smile. “It sounds to me like those scars of yours are starting to heal. And it takes time, you can’t expect trauma to disappear overnight, even when you take big steps forward. You need to be patient with yourself, you won’t get it right every time.” She smiles. “That’s what an apology is for.”

Maya nods slowly, lost in thought as she takes in Diane’s advice. They have never spoken about her father’s abuse, only his ‘eyes forward’ lesson, but Diane has been doing this job long enough to recognise a deep-rooted fear instilled in someone who worries they will never escape their past.

“I’m gonna go and talk to the rest of the team,” Diane says, standing up. “It was good to see you, Maya. Feel free to call me any time you want to talk, okay?”

Maya stands up to see her out, straightening her shoulders as she shakes off her moment of vulnerability. “Thank you, Diane, for coming stopping by to see us. I appreciate it.”

“You’re doing a great job here. Just remember to go easy on yourself too.”

Diane exits the office and heads upstairs to see who she might find in the beanery. Maya’s eyes drift down to her cell phone, Carina’s message from earlier still answered. She opens it up and types a quick message.

Spaghetti puttanesca sounds great. I can’t wait to spend a quiet night at home with you. I love you.

She can get used to the pasta maker and stinky cheeses,  right?

She is not her father.

Carina dries her hands on the dishtowel and picks up her cell phone, smiling when she reads Maya’s message. She is still getting used to Maya’s shift pattern and spending every other night by herself in her new home – more sometimes, when Maya swaps shifts to be with B team or C team – and she looks forward to the nights when Maya is home with her the most. She misses going out for dinner and especially those evenings when she can persuade Maya to go dancing with her, and she can’t wait for the day when everything reopens; but, for now, a quiet night with her girlfriend is the tonic she needs to get through each difficult day.

She looks around the kitchen at the mess she has created. Just because she doesn’t say it, doesn’t mean that Carina doesn’t know that Maya doesn’t like the chaos she creates in the kitchen with her homemade pasta and hanging basket of vegetables and assortment of Italian cheeses.

But she can’t give them up. There are some days she is barely holding on and looking around at these reminders of home keep her going.

When she was six years old, her Mama had taken her into the local town one Saturday morning. Andrew was just a baby and he had taken his first steps that week, and Carina had been feeling a little put out by all the attention he was getting. Mama knew that and had invited her to help with her chores, their first stop being the local deli. If she stood on tiptoes, she was just tall enough to peer into the cabinet, her sticky figures marking the glass as she tried to keep her balance. In front of her was more cheese than she had ever seen, more than the spread that her aunt and uncle used to put on for every family gathering. They let her try a few – some hard and nutty, some soft and creamy. Afterwards, Mama took her to get a milkshake and it had been just to the two of them, for the first time in a long time, and Carina had been so happy to have that time with her.

When she was eight years old, and Andrew was still a toddler, they had both come down with chicken pox – a gift from another child at Andrew’s nursery. Andrew had been cranky, he wasn’t sleeping and would cry for most of the day. Mama had tried to distract them with the television, back when they only had a few channels to choose from and no internet to scroll through, so they had to settle on something they would both watch. On day three, Carina developed some blisters in her mouth and had refused to eat, complaining that it hurt too much. Mama had sat them down at the kitchen table and they had chopped up fruit – soft fruit for Carina and Andrew with their blunt knives, apples and pears for Mama. They had made fruit smoothies for Carina to drink, adding ice to the blender so that the liquid was cool against her sore throat, and she remembers how comforted she was by the care they both showed her.

When she was thirteen years old, she’d had her heart broken for the first time. Everyone called it a silly crush, a boy called Bruno in her class who all the girls liked. Carina had been on top of the world when he had invited her to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon, except she had been left waiting for him, only to find out that he had stood her up to take another girl bowling. She had called home, sobbing down the payphone to her Papa, who had jumped straight into his car to come pick her up. He had taken her to the family restaurant run by Zia Alice and Zio Ricardo, where they had pulled her into the kitchen and let her help them make dinner for the early diners. It had been the first time she had ever made ravioli, filling them with lobster and ricotta and sausage meat, and her Zio Ricardo had praised her delicacy with the thin pasta sheets he had rolled out.

When Mama and Andrew left for America, her Nonna had turned up and dragged her into the kitchen to teach her how to make her famous minestrone soup, packed full of vegetables and beans and pasta. Carina had not cared much for it at the time, but the chopping and stirring and seasoning had distracted her from the gaping hole in her heart at losing two of her most favourite people in the whole world. It became her go-to meal during medical school when she was stressed by her studies and exams. It is the same soup her Nonna brought round every day in the week after Mama died, with fresh bread from the bakery, forcing her to sit and eat when her grief weighed her down so heavily.

As she looks around the kitchen now, these memories fill her mind and, if she closes her eyes, she is back in Italy, the sights and sounds and smells of home flooding her senses. Despite the aching in her heart from the distance between them, thoughts of her family also bring her comfort, knowing that she carries them with her wherever she is.

Her Papa continues to avoid her calls. He sent her a text message a few days ago, talking about a Covid research project that he is trying to start. He didn’t ask how she was, or how Andrew was doing, or what life was like for them in America. His focus was solely on himself and his work, like usual. In fact, Carina can’t remember the last time he expressed any concern for her or her brother, even though he knows about Andrew’s recent breakdown. Not that she is surprised. Acknowledging Andrew’s bipolar would mean acknowledging his own, and he refuses to do that.

It is too late in the day to call him, so she sends him a message, asking if he has checked in with the family lately. Her Nonna is sick, but refuses to leave the house to see a doctor. It is almost like she is resigned to her fate. If she is going to die, she is going to do it on her own terms and in her own bed. She has always been stubborn and, despite the grief she feels at potentially losing one of the most important women in her life, Carina can’t help but smile at how she refuses to let anyone else dictate her life – although it is a smile tinged with sadness, like so many are these days.

Every positive has a negative, and every negative has a positive – that is how life feels at the moment.

She shakes her body, as if trying to expel the negative feelings from her, returning to the kitchen to tidy up. She needs to keep busy on her days off when Maya is working to stop her from sitting with her feelings too much.

Dinner is a lonely affair. Maya video calls her from her office to say hello, but no sooner as she has answered, the station alarm goes off and Maya has to go. Not in the mood to spend the night in front of the television, Carina retreats to the bedroom to curl up under the sheets with her book. Reading has become a relief from the real world, escaping into in the lives of fictional characters who don’t have to worry about a global pandemic.

It is just after ten o’clock when her eyes start to droop, tired from reading. She perseveres for a while until it is no good and the letters start rearranging themselves on the page. She is about to turn in for the night when her cell phone rings. There are only three people in her contact list who have their own ringtone: Maya, Andrea… and Papa.

It is almost eight a.m. in Italy and she answers immediately.

“Papa, ciao.”

Vincenzo DeLuca doesn’t bother with a ‘hello’. Instead, he launches straight into telling her more about the Covid trial he is trying to start. Carina tries to interject but he ignores her, and in the end she gives up, letting him talk at her instead of to her.

“So, are you in?”

“In what?”

Vincenzo sighs dramatically. “To help with my trial,” he says. “Me in Italy, you and Andrea in America. The DeLucas working together again!”

It is like he has forgotten how badly it went the last time when he came to Seattle with his external gestational sac project.

“I also have some contacts in England and Switzerland who are interested.”

“Do you have the money to fund this project?” Carina questions.

She hears him purse his lips. “Not exactly. I was hoping you and Andrea could…”

“No Papa,” Carina cuts him off.

“Carina!”

“Papa, are you staying safe? Wearing a mask and following the rules?” Carina asks, using the phone call as a chance to check up on him. “Have you talked to Nonna recently?”

Nonna may be her Mama’s mom, but the Rossi family had set aside their misgivings about her father to embrace him into their family when Lucia and Andrew had moved to America – or they had tried to. Vincenzo was resistant, of course, although he leaned on them to help raise his wilful daughter.

“This trial could help her,” Vincenzo says. “It could open up new treatment methods, maybe even a cure. Imagine it, Carina – the DeLuca vaccine!”

“Papa…”

“Are you willing to help me or not?” Vincenzo demands, growing impatient. “Or are you just going to waste your career delivering babies?”

It is a common trait with him, resorting to insults when he is not getting his own way. Carina – being the person who often tells him ‘no’ – is used to bearing the brunt of these insults, usually at the expense of her chosen field.

“I don’t just deliver babies, Papa, you know that,” she reminds him, but it falls on deaf ears.

“You have the chance to be at the forefront of developing medicine! To excel!” Vincenzo says. “You have the chance to do something worthwhile for a change.”

“What I do is worthwhile,” Carina says.

“Pfft. This trial could lead to accolades and awards. Money for whatever research projects you want to do in the future. You could move away from obstetrics and go into a proper speciality.”

Carina bites her lip. She knows that arguing with him is pointless when he is like this, and her silence aggravates him even more.

“Fine, don’t help me,” Vincenzo says. “I’ll call Andrea, he has always excelled greater than you anyway.”

Carina blinks back tears as he hangs up the phone. Maybe she should have been more willing to listen to him, to hear him out – to keep him calm. But there is no calming Papa when he is manic.

She sends Andrew a quick message to warn him to be wary if he gets a phone call from their Papa, then sends another to Maya to let her know that she is about to sleep and that she loves her, comforted when she gets a quick response, telling her she is loved back.

Carina turns off the light and closes her eyes – not that sleep comes easily. She is too wound up by her father’s phone call to be able to rest. She tosses and turns for the next few hours, wishing Maya was there to soothe her, until exhaustion wins.

Her alarm wakes her up the next morning after a disturbed night, marred by dreams of her mama and papa and family, that all start happily but finish with twisted endings where someone gets sick and dies, because that is what keeps happening to the people she loves right now and she can’t control it or stop it from happening.  

Maya is running late after her shift thanks to a late night call to a house fire, which upsets her even more, because it means they will only have a brief moment together before Carina has to get to work. She is packing the last of her belongings into her bag when Maya walks into the apartment.

“Hey,” Carina greets her, noticing the exhaustion in the way she looks and moves.

In the comfort of her own home, Maya removes her mask and walks towards her, one hand reaching out, and seeking a kiss.

Despite the desire for her physical touch, Carina leans away. “Ah ah ah ah ah, shower first,” she insists. She won’t break her own rules, always fearful that they might make the other one sick. It might be pedantic, but it is one thing that Carina can control.

“Seriously?” Maya questions her.

Carina’s skin prickles with irritation. Maya knows the rules, she knows how important it is that they keep each other safe. “Bella…”

Clearly disgruntled, Maya takes her bag from her shoulder and dumps it unceremoniously on the table with a heavy sigh as she strips herself of her denim jacket. “Okay, I'm sorry, but what is with our kitchen becoming a cheese cellar?”

Carina recognises immediately that she is trying to pick a fight, which is usually a sign that there is something on her mind that she is trying to work through.

“It reminds me of home,” Carina says, trying not to take the bait.

“Yeah, I know. You said that, but it is starting...”

Carina usually has more patience when Maya is like this. In the past, she would have insisted that they talk about it but she learned the hard way that pushing Maya to talk when she isn’t ready isn’t the right thing to do.

Except the lack of sleep and constant worry she carries means she doesn’t have any patience for her grumpy mood today.

“Maya, my home is really scary right now. It's worse than here – and here is really bad.” She thinks of the phone call from Papa last night. “I'm… I'm scared for my dad.” She steps back into the kitchen to create some space between them.

Maya’s shoulders drop, realising that she has slipped back into the pattern that she is trying so desperately to break.

“He was never the one to follow the rules,” Carina continues, “and I cannot be there to take care of him and to make sure that he does what he's supposed to. So, um…” Her voice starts to shake as she pours herself a coffee into her travel mug. “It feels good to look up and to be reminded of… of the good memories of Italy instead of the constant fear and worry.”

She wants Maya to get it, she needs her to get it. She needs Maya to have as much patience with her way of dealing with this messy world as Carina has for hers.

“I'm sorry,” Maya says eventually. Her body language tells Carina that she means it.

“You don't have to be,” Carina concedes, giving her some slack. She doesn’t want to argue with her about this, or anything. She walks back towards the table and places her mug next to her bag. “I’ve gotta go get ready to bring some babies into this terrifying world.”

She heads into the bedroom to grab her jacket.

“I did that today,” Maya calls after her.

“You did what?” She steps back into the hallway as she pulls on her coat.

Maya moves across the apartment to stand in front of her. “I brought a baby into this terrifying world.”

Carina raises her eyebrows curiously. “You did?”

It feels like a concession from Maya, like a way of finding common ground between the two of them after their sniping.

“I mean, brought – maybe more like caught,” Maya explains.

Now Carina is even more curious. “Tell me everything.”

“Well, first I'm gonna shower,” Maya says, turning playful, “and then I will tell you all about it – naked, in bed.”

If she is trying to make up for snapping, it works. She pulls Carina into the bedroom, making her laugh. “No. No Maya!”

Once inside the bedroom, Carina wriggles out of Maya’s grasp. “I can’t. I want to but I have to get to work.”

Maya pouts. “Tonight then?”

Carina nods. “Si.” She watches as Maya pulls off her t-shirt and pants, sees her relax a little from whatever caused her to snap when she walked into the apartment. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…”

She is pretty sure that Maya is about to tell her she is fine, but she stops herself, the corners of her mouth dropping.

“I’m trying,” Maya says. “Us, living together, sharing a space that used to be mine. I know I’m not very good at it sometimes, but I’m trying.”

Carina feels her stomach flip. “Do… do you still want to do this?”

“Live together? Of course I do,” Maya assures her. “I want it so much. I’m just… I’m adjusting, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Carina says. “You’re not the only one who’s used to living alone, remember? It’s new to me too.”

Maya smiles. It never ceases to amaze her how understanding Carina is with her. “So tonight? Me and you?”

Carina smirks. “Me and you – and Andy?”

Maya blushes. “Right, I forgot.”

Carina’s cell phone pings. “Ah, it’s Bailey, there’s a trauma coming in she needs me for. I’d better go.” She pauses. “We’ll find our hole, you know?”

Maya shoots her a look that tells her she didn’t get that one right, her lips twitching with amusement.

“Slit?”

“Worse than hole,” Maya says, laughing. “You mean we’ll find our ‘groove’?”

“Ah, si, yes,” Carina says, with a resolute nod. “We will.”

With a lingering look at her half-naked girlfriend, Carina steps out of the bedroom in search of her bag, smiling to herself when a cry of “I love you” follows her down the hallway.