TITLE: House Arrest (30/35)
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Women’s Murder Club does not belong to me. The characters do not belong to me. They are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. I have no problems with that as long as I can borrow them for short bursts and use them in pursuit of my own enjoyment. I am not trying to infringe. Though, I don’t know why anyone has a problem with fan fic. After all, it really is a compliment. If anyone wants to write fan fiction about my book, feel free.

(1/3 Lindsay’s POV)

She had her apartment back. She had her life back. Exactly as it had been prior to Cindy’s unscheduled stopover in it. Exactly as she’d expected it to be when Cindy left. And in the time since she’d left Cindy standing in the hallway in the courthouse, she had figured it out, the rules of surviving this return to her former life.

Just act normally.
Be like you were before.
Go to work.
Breathe.
Eat and sleep and brush your teeth and solve murders.
Don’t think too much.
Don’t feel too much.
Pretend that you don’t miss her.

And, most importantly, whatever you do –

Don’t. Find. The tickets.

Because finding the tickets will send you over the edge for sure, and you’ll end up doing the emotional equivalent of drunk dialing your best friends, calling them up extremely late in a panicked fit of expressive lunacy. One won’t answer, probably too busy having noisy sex with her boyfriend. The other, however, will be too much of a mom not to assume a phone call that wakes her from sleep is critical.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Claire’s voice was a whisper, probably as to not wake her sleeping husband.

“She left the tickets,” Lindsay practically yelled into the phone.

“What?”

“Cindy. She left the tickets.”

“The tickets you bought her?”

“Yes. And she wants to be friends.”

“Well, that’s good right?”

“No. Yes. No, it’s not good.”

“Why isn’t it good?”

It was a completely leading question, and it worked like a charm. Before she knew it, she was telling Claire everything. She was telling Claire the part of everything that she suspected Claire already knew, and she was telling Claire the part of everything she probably didn’t want to know, and when she was finished, there was a long spell of silence in which her words must have been sinking in.

“Oh,” Claire finally said, with a satisfied tone that said she didn’t mind the details. “So, what are you gonna do about it?”

“What can I do?” Lindsay asked her.

And she instantly felt tired and incapable.

“What do you want to do?”

Claire was using her forceful voice, the one that suggested that Lindsay should know what she should do and take action.

“I just… I don’t know.” She sounded like a damn blundering idiot. “She said friends.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said okay,” Lindsay responded quietly. She knew the answer was going to get her into trouble.

“Did you mean okay?”

Lindsay squirmed. She could actually hear the look on Claire’s face through the phone.

“If that’s what she wants. Yes.”

“And did you give her enough information to accurately make that decision?”

Lindsay didn’t know how to respond to that. Could she really have changed the outcome if she’d gone on with what she’d wanted to say?

Cindy asked to speak first. She said friends. She’d seemed pretty certain about it. What could she have said to make that determination waver? And should she really have tried? She wanted whatever Cindy wanted. But she also wanted Cindy. She’d really thought that Cindy wanted her for a while, and not just in the fun-in-the-bedroom way, but for, like… ever. Or at least until she did something stupid to screw it up.

She deliberated for so long, Claire could have fallen back asleep, but then she heard Claire’s voice, so faintly over the line.

“You’re going to lose her, Lindsay.”

It struck Lindsay as truth. Claire was right. She was going to lose her.

And she was wrong, because there was no way in hell that Lindsay was going to let that happen.