"Ned..."

He had been staring at his screensaver. It wasn't particularly interesting, just a set of frighteningly neon self-propagating pipes, but he had been staring at it anyway.

The city was beautiful this time of night, all amber streetlights and gleaming windows, but Ned couldn't spare the time to go look. He had his shoes off, but was still wearing the black socks, and he looked down at them with a sudden irrational burst of anger.

"Be right there."

Lynn had her hair pulled back and a pencil tucked behind her ear and her shoes off, which wasn't fair. He stared at her legs, trying to figure out if she was wearing pantyhose or not, and then asked himself why it mattered.

"Okay. So. If you were a Japanese businessman, what would you want to see in this presentation?"

Paul lifted his latest cup of coffee, the strongest batch they'd made yet, and announced, "Big-eyed cartoon girls."

"Thanks," Kent replied. "Yeah. Cause I'm sure I could find some clipart of that right now."

"You'd be surprised." Paul gave a mock toast.

"Yes, thanks," Ned said wearily, slumping at the conference table. "Because these pipes weren't giving me enough nightmares."

"Come on. We have to get this done."

Ned looked over his shoulder at Miller's door. The door was closed, the light was off, the blinds pulled. All around them were the blank dark faces of monitors. Kent's tie was off, his collar unbuttoned, his cuffs rolled up to his forearms. Lynn had brought a small tinny radio from her desk, in the outer half of the corner office, and now it was tuned to the local college rock station, and all of it was combining to make Ned feel, unanimously, one thing.

He wanted to be wherever Nancy was.

"What else can we do?"

He could see the rectangles on the screen, white boxes, trimmed and numbered, displayed on the opposite white wall. A forty-five minute presentation, followed by tours and handshakes and steak dinner and then commission checks and leather and a closer parking spot.

"More options?"

"I think that would make us look less than confident."

"Well, at least it's better than big-eyed Asian cartoons."

"Oh, come on."

Kent. Ned rubbed his socks together under the table. He'd heard Bess giggling in the background, and Kent looked none the worse for wear. He was keeping his distance from Lynn, though, which was good.

It wasn't fair. The presentation still wasn't for a few days, but here they were, hopped up on coffee, laughing at each other, when he could be at Nancy's apartment. Or back at his. Which was better, whenever he imagined it, because his apartment meant lots of making out, uninterrupted making out, and beer, and the knowledge that his bedroom was just one more shot, one more glass of wine away.

"I need some air."

His shoes felt clumsy and tight, unfamiliar, on his feet, as the elevator doors closed before him. He punched the button for the uppermost floor with his knuckle and weighed his cell phone in his palm. He was going to lose it soon, they were all going to lose it soon, blank boxes for a damn PowerPoint presentation.

No cars on the roads, not really, not this late. He could hear the distant swish of them driving by, but it was all disconnected. His head was light on his shoulders and she was number three on speed dial, and only after the first ring did he think to wonder if she was even still awake.

"What are you doing?"

He imagined her stretching, her face half buried in the pillow, her hair falling in her eyes, and smiled. "Wishing you were here," he said quietly. "Or that I was there."

Nancy chuckled. "You don't want to be here," she told him. "We split a bottle of wine between the three of us and listened to Bess try to convince herself that Kent isn't a bad guy."

"And had more pillow fights, I hope."

"Yes," Nancy said, all mock seriousness. "We put on these little pink frilly nighties and smacked each other with pillows until we were all so tired that we fell on top of each other on the floor."

He paused for a second too long and she burst into uproarious laughter. "I don't even have to try with you, you know that?"

"You should still try anyway," he said, shaking his head. "Do you even own a little pink frilly nightie?"

"And why would I ruin the mystery for you, like that?"

Ned rubbed his palm over his forehead. "Because I've been awake for twenty hours straight and all I've been hearing about the last few hours is Asian cartoon teenagers and how this is the single best thing, the single biggest account, and..."

"Yeah," she murmured, when he trailed off. "I can imagine."

"It's never like this, at your job, is it."

She laughed, and he heard, or imagined, the bedsprings creaking when she shifted. "It's... different," she said. "And I think that's all I can say on an unsecured line."

"I really wish we'd been able to go out tonight."

"Because anything's better than a work presentation," she teased him.

"Because I love the light in your eyes after your second daiquiri." He rested his forearms against the railing and stared out across the rooftops, into the starless night.

"George was right, you are just trying to get me drunk."

"I love it more when you're stone sober and you're just knocking on my door and you can't keep yourself from smiling at me, no matter how hard you try."

"And you never try to stop yourself, do you."

"Nope," he said, his smile in his voice. "Because I'm giving this a chance. And I didn't know... I didn't know that you would become such a huge part of my life."

"You say it like it's a bad thing," she murmured, but her voice was still light.

"There wasn't much else in it to begin with," he admitted, his voice just louder than the wind. "I want to get away from this. I want us to go skydiving."

"Tonight?"

"Yes, tonight," he teased her. "Actually, from here it would be more base jumping."

"I would call your bluff, Nickerson..."

"Too tired?"

Now the smile was in her voice. "Too afraid that you'd take me up on it," she murmured. "I would talk to you all night, but I want to hear from you again, and I think that means telling you to go back to work, and finish whatever it is that you're doing, making a slide show of Asian teenagers and stock projections..."

"If we keep at it much longer, I'm sure that's what it will end up looking like," he chuckled. "Okay, I know where I'm not wanted. I'll tell you good night, and get back to it, like the good little money manager you deem to date."

"Good night," she chuckled. "And... you are wanted. You know that, right?"

He was glad for the breeze, then, against his warmed face. "Sometimes," he said softly. "Good night."

Kent had another cup of coffee ready for him when Ned came back, and they all looked up from the conference table with matching, somewhat silly smiles. "Good?" Kent asked, but the expression on his face asked an entirely different question.

"I think," Ned replied. "For now."