FISHER HOME

The half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich drops from Jason's indifferent hands. It lands back on the plate, scattering crumbs over the clean white surface. Jason leans back in the chair, exhales heavily, and brings his hands up to his hair.

He doesn't even have an appetite now. It's not that he isn't really hungry, but he just doesn't feel like eating. Just like he hasn't felt like doing anything else today. Thank goodness skating was such a bust today, because he wouldn't have been able to do much of anything, anyway. Trying to distract himself by cooking the grilled cheese was like pulling teeth. So why should eating be any different?

He groans inwardly when he hears the footsteps approaching the kitchen. His first instinct is to get up and out of there before he has to talk to anyone, but he knows he doesn't have the time to pull it off, and anything less than a smooth execution will just lead to more questions. So he stays put, hoping his melancholy will go unnoticed.

Fat chance. Paula stops in the doorway, appraises him worriedly, and then begins to come closer as she asks, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he says, knowing even as he speaks that he is not doing a very convincing job.

"So that's why you've been milling around all day like you're in some sort of funk?"

He can't think of any way to respond. Instead, he drops his shoulders in defeat and then rests his elbows on the table.

"What happened?" Paula asks as she settles herself in another chair at the table, across the corner from him.

His mind scrambles to figure out how much he can tell, or wants to tell. Finally it cracks under the pressure and it comes spilling out. "Courtney and I had a fight. She didn't even come to skating this morning. I haven't been able to get a hold of her."

Paula considers the information in that motherly way to which Jason has become so accustomed. Then she says, in an even but still very warm tone of voice, "This sounds like it was a pretty serious fight."

"Yeah." It feels good even to admit that much. He hadn't been able to do that this morning when Sandy wondered where Courtney was. He had given her some excuse that she probably hadn't bought anyway -- but at least it had let him prolong admitting how bad this might be for a few more hours.

"What happened?" Paula strikes that perfect balance between not pushing too hard and yet digging deeper. If not for the circumstances, it would probably make Jason bust into an amused grin.

"She found out something," he says slowly, but then quickly adds, "something I knew about that she didn't."

"So she's upset that you knew ... whatever this was, and didn't tell her sooner?"

"Pretty much, yeah." For a moment he is drawn back into yesterday, to that instant when he realized that Courtney had overheard him and Alex, when he looked into her eyes and knew that everything was about to explode. He drags himself out of it as best he can. "She totally lost it."

"Did she have reason to? Was it something that you should have told her?"

He shrugs and his frustration comes shining through. "Maybe. I don't know. I mean, part of me wanted to tell her all along. I even tried to tell her without actually telling her. But she didn't pick it up."

Slow seconds pass as Paula thinks some more, trying to find the questions that will help Jason get the situation in order without rattling him into doing nothing at all. "Why couldn't you tell her whatever it was directly?"

He meets her gaze for the briefest moment and then drops his eyes to the plate. "Because it wasn't mine to tell. It was something about someone else. I was trying not to break that confidence without totally leaving Court in the dark. But now she thinks that I was just being sneaky or not caring about her."

"Then maybe you need to explain that to her. Courtney's a good girl. I think she'd be able to appreciate you being loyal to a friend, even if it meant keeping something from her."

"I thought she would, too. Or I hoped so. But I tried telling her that, and she didn't care. She thinks she had a right to know because it affected her, too."

"Did it really affect her?"

Another tiny shrug. "I guess so, yeah."

Paula hesitates before letting herself ask the next question, but she goes for it anyway. "So what was it that you couldn't tell her?"

One . Two . Three . Four . Five . Six

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