Condensed, Evaporated, and Whole

Girls Night

He took a deep breath as the letters on his computer screen started turning into an of indigestible soup right in front of his eyes and he leaned back in his chair, stretching his back and massaging the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache coming. With tired eyes he checked the time. It was barely past 8 o'clock.

Initially he had planned to pull an all-nighter, or at least to spend significantly longer working on his newest case than this, after all, he wouldn't be meeting Lisa tonight since she had some sort of appointment that they hadn't gone into any further.

But now, he realized that he had to accept the fact that their nightly escapades were slowly but surely taking their toll on him since the average hours of sleep he'd get had decreased dramatically since he and Lisa had started dating. Which was not just due to their favorite physical activity, but also due to the simple fact that more often than not they only really got to spend time together after she had closed the restaurant for the night, which rarely happened before midnight.

„Alright, Mickey... I'm heading out!", he hadn't even noticed Lorna standing in the door to his office. She was all dressed up and had apparently spent the last twenty minutes doing her hair and make up in the bathroom.

„Going out tonight?"

„How did you guess?"

„Well... call it intuition. Date with Cisco?"

„No", she whistled, attentively studying the wood of the door frame, „Girls night."

„Ah! Well then, have fun! Just not too much."

„Will do! And you? Staying long tonight?"

He sighed. „I thought about it, but... maybe I'm heading out too."

„Doing anything fun?"

„Just... meeting Lisa. The usual", somehow he didn't want to admit that he'd be pathetically sitting at home alone tonight, probably directly falling into bed as soon as he'd have closed the door behind him.

He saw the corners of her mouth pull up into a smirk and her eyes narrow as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. „Liar..."

„I beg your pardon?", he raised his eyebrows.

„You're not meeting Lisa."

„And how do you think you know that?"

She leaned forward savoring this moment of revelation. „Because I'm meeting with Lisa tonight."

„What? Like... my Lisa?"

„‚Your' Lisa", she rolled her eyes, „Yes."

She turned around, grabbing her coat and purse.

„For dinner?", he followed her to her desk, intrigued. And alarmed.

„Dinner and drinks, yes."

„Where?"

„I'm sorry, is this an interrogation?"

„Uhm... no, I was just... curious. I mean... just the two of you?"

„And Maggie."

He nearly choked on his breath.

„And yes, ‚your' Maggie, just in case that's your next question. She's back in town for the weekend, didn't you know?"

„No, of course I knew, I was proposing dinner with Hayley, but... she said she was busy tonight."

„Yeah, meeting Lisa and me. Does that... worry you?"

„No!", he replied, a little bit too quickly, „My two ex-wives meeting my new girlfriend over drinks doesn't worry me at all, no... Should it?"

„Not if you got nothing to hide! Alright then", she walked past him, patting his shoulder, „I gotta run. Don't stay too long!"