Dinnertime is critical for bringing the family together.

She'd run to the bathroom to brush dinner out of her teeth, traded her shoes for slippers, called her mother to check on her, and dumped her change jar on the bed to sort out the pennies. Forty-seven was a good number to parlay into a poker fortune. She put them in a clean sock for transport and swung it as she headed back to absorb the rules of bluffing and trash talking, and then her phone rang.

She hesitated since she'd already talked to her mother, and Missy was unlikely to call. Missy could be calling, though, but so could Max. He could call just to gloat over winning the bet, as if she needed to lose any more to the man.

The phone rang again, and she was a gambler now, wasn't she? She picked up the phone, practicing bold optimism. "Hello?"

"Someone took my picture."

Damn. She sucked at all forms of gambling. But she still might possess untapped skills at bluffing. "Someone took my picture, and I merely retrieved it. I didn't sign a release form, so the photo and any said likeness cannot be used without my express written permission."

Max paused on the other end, and she hoped he would be awed at her use of said likeness and give up, but bold optimism wasn't working for her either.

"I expect more from you, Gwen. You're not going to weasel out of it like that are you? Really? I'm very, very disappointed."

Okay, she sucked at bluffing, so she'd attempt trash talking. She tried to remember exactly the phrasing Jason and Bryan used against each other. "You think you're a winner, but you're going down. You are nothing but a fiery blaze of loserdom, my man--" She nearly dropped the phone when Steve appeared in the doorway.

"Are you tryin' to trash talk me, woman? You really don't lose well, do you? I had no idea. Again, the disappointment is deep."

"Steve." It had been two months since she'd seen the man she used to see daily, daily for nearly two decades. He was so familiar to her, and she hadn't realized how much she'd missed familiar, the sounds of her house, the sweet smell of the pantry where the brown sugar and vanilla seemed to dominate the rest of the dried goods. She wanted Steve to take her hand and walk her back into her life, but he peered into the room as if reluctant to enter a dark closet.

She knew that look, and while his mid-sized build, mid-brown hair, mid-green polo shirt, complete with embroidered pony, might lull a stranger into thinking he'd be genial, she understood he was there to get his way. She just didn't know what he wanted anymore. Her hand cramped, and she remembered the phone. She lifted it slowly to her face, "I have to go, sorry," and hung up.

"Am I going to get a sorry?" Steve crossed his arms over his chest, no longer looking like an insurance agent so much as a disapproving, pissed-off husband.

Husband. Well he wasn't, was he? She'd signed the papers he'd asked her to. And she could so bluff. "Don't even give me that look."

His chin came up in a move of irritated surprise. "Excuse me? What look would that be? The husband--"

"Ex."

"Gwen."

He said her name so evenly, so calmly, she wanted to be comforted but felt more irritated than anything. "Don't Gwen me." She didn't even know what that meant. It was a ridiculous expression, but she was standing, at thirty-nine, in a dorm room with forty-seven pennies in a sock, so ridiculous seemed appropriate.

Steve shook his head, a pretty strong show of disapproval for him. She'd seen him do it to Missy once or twice when Gwen had called him in for back-up, but she couldn't recall it ever being aimed at her. He didn't put on a strong show of approval either, but she'd always sensed his mild thumbs-up for how their life was going. Until, of course, he'd left.

"Gwen, I assumed you were at the house. None of the neighbors called me about mail piled up or any unusual activity, and then I stopped by."

"You stopped by?" That surprised her as much as his appearance at Belmar. He hadn't been home in months, and she felt she needed to brace herself. He must have tracked her down to tell her the papers were filed, and it was done.

"I know that the empty nest is difficult for women. You haven't been yourself for quite a while, but I assumed you'd take this time at home to think about your behavior."

"My behavior? You're the one who--"

He held up his hand, and she realized if it had been any closer, she might have bitten it. Wow, with that kind of impulse she could move out of the world of bluffing into the world of action.

"While it is true that I'm the one who moved out, it was, in part, to help you, Gwen."

She opened her mouth but only managed to suck air in.

"I don't think you've really come around in all this."

She wished she had a witness to give her some perspective on the craziness unfolding. She needed a solid witness not manipulated by language, like Guy. "What would that look like? Do I beg? Pleeeeease, Steve, I'm sorry you walked out. Help me make it up to you? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

He held up one finger and seemed to work at regulating his breathing. "I don't F do anything. I think things through, which is more than I can say for you right now. Women often lose perspective at your age."

Had he really just said that? Her perspective had been to give him most of her life, maybe all of it. "I have been nothing but--"

"Been is the operative word, honey. You are, right now, living here I assume."

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest.

He spoke very slowly as if every word was underlined in a speech bubble next to his mouth. "I went by the house. What did I find? No one lives there. Everything's in the house, mind you. I already knew my daughter had run off with a band..."

She felt a mother's instinct to defend her young, as flaky as her young might be. "She's not a groupie, Steve. She's in a band."

He looked up at the ceiling, waited out the interruption.

Even she didn't understand how Missy thought a Lynard Skynard tribute band was a good career move, but she murmured, "It's not like she joined the circus."

"Circus?" He waved around the room. "My wife has run off to this ridiculous place. What ill-considered impulse is that?"

Ill-considered? Check. Impulse? Damn, he had her there. She hadn't planned to go to college or live in the dorm or pretty much anything else she'd done in the past month.

"I assumed you were at home, thinking about your life, Gwen. Because, I'll be honest with you, it's a bit of a train wreck."

She opened her mouth again, but nothing came out.

"Now, I think we can manage this, I do. But first, your use of Missy's college money is unacceptable."

The college savings account? Their college savings account? "I helped with that money too. And it's for education. That's what I'm using it for." She thought of the years she'd been so careful with the household money to make sure they were putting enough away for college. Why shouldn't she benefit one semester from that? Missy didn't even want it. And then she spotted Guy in the hallway, wearing nothing but boxers and one sock.

She met Steve's eyes, hoping she'd not clued him in that someone was behind him. But he slowly turned then took a step backward when he saw the skinny, mostly undressed boy grinning in the hall.

Guy waved and then rubbed his index fingers and thumbs together indicating he needed money. Clothes and pennies? What the hell kind of poker were they playing now?

She watched Guy set off towards his room, and Steve turned a horrified face to her, demanding, without words, some really good clarification. She just didn't have any to give. "Guy ran out of money at the poker game."

Steve seemed to think that through then headed down the hall in the direction Guy had come from.

She ran after him, but he beat her into the lounge where Annie sat at the head of the table, fully clothed and wearing Jason's hat backwards. Steve scanned the poker players one by one, and she followed what he was seeing. Jason, no hat, shoes, or socks. Hayden minus his glasses. Bryan in a t-shirt and camo green jockey shorts, and a shirtless Max.

She kept her eyes high and made a phone motion to Max, but he just shrugged, "Called from the lobby."

Steve seemed to finally take in the whole of it and zeroed in on the one person he could lose his temper over. "Max."

Max studied his cards, "Steve," and laid them out. "Full house."

Annie's eyes narrowed.

"Oh, yeah, sister. You're not playing with a bunch of farm boys anymore."

Bryan started to protest, but Max glanced at the olive green underwear out of the corner of his eye, and Bryan fell silent.

Turning to her, Steve waved his hand behind him as if everything was too distasteful to witness anymore. "Explain this to me..."

She sighed. "I made a roast."

Jason tried to help her out. "Elvis spanked that girl in Hawaii, and we played penny poker, and then Bryan thought about the time he played strip poker with... what was that girl's name?"

Bryan seemed to think about it while Max shuffled and dealt with speed and precision.

Steve ignored everything behind him and focused on her. "You are a forty-year-old married mother, and you're here. You're living in a closet." He whispered and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "He is here." He straightened and got louder. "And a bunch of half-naked kids are at your... family dinner?"

Jason jumped to her defense. "Venus said we shouldn't play strip poker. She's been pretty strict since the vodka hangover. We were playing for pennies until she left to, you know, get more pennies. And she had cider this time, said no Red Bull and vodka. It kept me up all night."

She pointed to herself. "It kept me up all night. Not Jason. I don't know if it kept him up all night."

Jason frowned and pointed to the couch. "Fell asleep right there, remember?"

She tried to smile at him for his assistance, however damning it was, but Steve reached for her arm and pulled her into the hallway. They stood in front of the elevators, and he dropped her arm to push the button. "I can see that this isn't a good time to have a conversation adult to adult. We will when you are."

They both watched the numbers light up, the doors open. Steve stepped in, clearly believing he had scored a major hit, and she focused on the wrinkles down the back of his slacks. He'd managed to iron the front of them, but maybe didn't realize there were two sides.

She watched the doors close, and then Steve's hand stopped them, and she waited. What more could he do? He seemed to consider what he was going to say, looking more thoughtful than he had in years. Would he say the thing, whatever it was, that would make her life okay again?

He shook his head. "This is something your mother would do."

She felt a sharp intake of breath and the heat of tears in her eyes. The elevator closed, and Steve was gone and right, so right she didn't even want to think about the last, terrible minutes when she'd been insulted six ways to Sunday by a man who, after twenty years, hadn't once mentioned love. And she hadn't until just then thought about it either. And who was an adult? An adult might be like the fabled unicorn, a good story but probably not true. And even if it were possible, who'd want to be one? It sucked.

She turned to hide out in her room, but spotted Max in the hall, leaning against the lounge doorway. He looked almost bored, but she had a feeling he'd been watching out for her. She didn't like the comfort she felt in that or the dark embarrassment that he'd heard Steve or the damning evidence that she was behaving like Ellen, especially when her eyes went right for his chest. And that man had a damn fine one. He'd clearly not stopped doing crunches in the two decades she'd last seen him shirtless, and last run her hands across... She stared at the ceiling. "So, I'm going to my closet now."

"Yeah, here's the problem."

She knew that tone, the casual one he had when he was in charge and knew it and was gloating in a jerk-somebody's-chain way.

"You lost a bet. And I am a collector."

She motioned toward the elevator, reminding him she was in a delicate and pained state of... "You wouldn't."

"Would." He smiled. "Pack your bag for the weekend. Bring a bathing suit. Pink. I like pink. I'll be in the front of the building in forty-five minutes." He patted his chest, the conceited lout. "Gotta get my shirt."

He swaggered into the lounge like the alpha male asshole that he was, and she followed him because in the animal kingdom there may not be a female equivalent for the alpha, but superiority didn't need a label. "Hey, everybody..."

Max's head shot up, a beast sensing trouble.

"Max is taking us all on a road trip. Run and pack. He'll be out front in forty minutes."

The guys pushed back from the table like freshmen stuck on campus without cars and ran for the elevator in a herd.

Gwen nodded to Annie. "Would you grab Guy? He's still scrounging for pennies."

Then she gave her sweetest smile to Max and yelled down the hallway like a trucker. "Boys, bring your swim trunks! Max likes pink." She made an air kiss at him, and gave her hips a little extra sway as she headed toward her room. He wasn't the only one who could swagger.

Max's life - November 12th, Friday 1989 He'd asked Gwen. Only her. Not Justin, his crying, crying, cry-fest of a roommate. In fact, he'd invited Gwen so they could get away from Justin. Well, not so much away from him. He felt for the guy. As stupid as Justin had been to get serious in the prime of his life, heartbreak sucked, clearly. It could end badly with speed, like the we're done phone call from the saint Jen-Jen, or it could end badly like the slow-motion car crash of his parent's marriage. The dean and the ice queen. She'd literally been a Duluth, Minnesota queen at some winter fair. It hadn't surprised him even as a kid.

He turned onto the highway, heading toward the hot springs. He felt, or thought he could, the drag of six people crammed into his Corolla, but he did like having Gwen next to him on the console, could feel her thigh against his when he shifted. But Justin was probably just as close to her in the passenger seat. He felt a flash of jealousy, which was ridiculous. They were all adults and single and Justin wasn't even someone Gwen would like. She was too interesting, too funny, too full of energy to go for steady and dull.

He watched Gwen mess with the radio, trying to pick up a station in the middle of nowhere and heard Justin sigh over the static. He didn't really want to leave the poor guy behind, but he didn't need to bring a whole freaking carload along. He'd said that to Gwen when she'd taken pity on Justin. She'd snowballed right into dragging along her roommate then Rob, who was already half-drunk and really was only a basketball buddy.

And how in the hell had Mandy, Gwen's bitchy R.A. gotten in? Barely. She'd squeezed in the backseat and shared a seat belt with Molly. Gwen was plenty nice to her. She was nice to everybody, but he didn't know why. Mandy didn't deserve it. Even Gwen joked once that it would be just her luck, years down the road, to get one of Mandy's kids in her classroom.

Gwen found a station, rock, and turned it up. He felt her softness against his arm, hoped that whatever was between them was just sex. Shit. The way his luck was running he'd never know. He'd end up in the hotel bed with Justin and Rob. One would cry and the other would snore.

She smiled at him as the song cranked up. "I know you love this one."

Back to U...

The boys sang Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird from the back, and after a couple of rounds, she'd stopped thinking of Missy singing it in a bar and just let herself be amused. She'd let herself not think about anything involving Steve or the cooking program either. Her ex and Nicola Gaspard weren't going to ruin her weekend. It was shaping up nicely since she'd stuck Annie in the front between her and Max. That move, she knew, was more entertaining than was good for her.

She didn't know exactly what the man had in mind when he'd called in the bet, but she was pretty sure it didn't involve the two of them on a road trip with a passel of freshmen, and she shouldn't underestimate Max's capacity for revenge. She looked over Annie's head and studied his brooding profile as he drove down the dark highway to who-knew-where. She may have lost the bet, but she couldn't help point out how successfully she'd allowed him to collect and still protect herself. "It's great you have an SUV. Wow, seven people. Not every vehicle could take the whole gang."

Max ignored her, and the boys sang louder about the freebird needing to keep traveling on.

She gave him her best innocent voice. "Wasn't that one of your favorite songs?"

He stared straight ahead, but she thought his lips thinned a little.

She held up her hands, thumb and pinkies out in Hawaiian party sign language. "Man! Freebird. Man, I love that song!"

Max's lips twitched. She was sure she'd seen it.

The boys kicked it up a notch, declaring that they were birds that couldn't be changed.

Guy, in a rather high-pitched monotone added something to the chorus that sounded like gratis fugel.

Max turned to her, and they both struggled not to laugh.

She felt tears build up from the effort of holding it in.

Max drove, then turned to her again, tears in his own eyes. "It's always been my favorite that gratis fugel." He concentrated on driving, but Gwen could see his body shake. She stared out the window and laughed as silently as she could while the boys sang another round.

She'd suspected it about thirty miles into the trip, knew it at forty, and had it confirmed at sixty. Max had taken them on the ultimate college road trip, cheap natural hot springs. The two of them had been to the Curtis Hotel several times before. Good times before.