Coward.

Alice smiled bitterly. "She's gone, Lara. She was sent back to Iraq."

Puzzlement.

"She's a soldier. She left months ago. And hasn't really written."

Then that would make this even more awkward. Lara hesitated. "So she's..."

"Oh, she was here recently. Didn't come to see me." Alice said flatly. "Go figure."

So once again she was the rebound. That made this a little more difficult.

Alice smiled faintly at Lara. "I came because I realized I was wrong to dismiss you so easily. Or my feelings for you."

Oh no.

"So there you have it." Alice told her. "You win, Lara. I had feelings for you. Even when you didn't love me."

Say it.

"Alice." Lara called after her, hesitating, but still needing to say this.

Alice turned back to her. "What?"

Lara sighed. "It's not past tense."

Alice looked at her blankly. "Huh?"

"Your question. You asked if I loved you." Lara said quietly. "It's not past tense."

Alice stared at her for a moment, before the dawn of enlightenment upturned the corners of her lips, her face breaking into a smile.

And as she stared at the redhead, Lara suddenly became sheepish, like she'd said too much, embarassed that she had said what she did.

Alice smiled at Lara. "So it's okay if I ask you out on a date?"

Lara smiled back, feeling more like herself than she had been for months.

But since the redhead said nothing, Alice kept talking. "But, you know, we don't have to do that. We can start off slow, you know, be friends first, see where that leads us, and if that's just being friends, then---"

"Alice." Lara cut in, grinning uncontrollably. "It's okay. It's very okay. The date. It's OK."

Alice grinned. "Great. Although San Francisco's a long ways away..."

Lara shrugged. "So we'll figure it out."

"Yeah," Alice nodded in agreement. She beamed at the chef. "We'll figure everything out."

The End.