"I'm being real. I'm not going to hide my love from my love." She walked over to Natty and took her hand. Natty let Candice lead her, whether because ...f her state of shock or because she was attracted to Joseph and enjoyed seeing her lover kiss him Joseph didn't know. Candice brought her to a stack of canvases leaning against the wall and removed the largest one, carefully lifting it over the others. She replaced a painting of Natty which had been covered on the easel, but was revealed when it. His mood dipped lower. Why did he bother to try and keep the intimacy between them going. Despite his best efforts she wasn’t that interested. As she had turned away that thought had screamed through his brain. Sure she made an effort to keep up her end, every two days like clockwork but even that had ceased to keep things going as every sex act devolved into a scheduled transaction, lacking passion or closeness. Twenty years of trying to make it work and she had dismissed him like an. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to uhhh put you on the spot or anything. I’m sorry.” “Ohhhhhh no, no that’s okay,” he said as he swiftly looked at them again. “It’s alright. I mean it. Girls will do that sometimes, I think.” She giggled and said she understood. She was one of those girls. She knew it and he did too. He would happily do it with her. She wished he would. All of a sudden the doorbell rang. The pizza was there. Thank god, he told himself. They sat and ate and talked, a. Aside from the chair he was sitting in, a duplicate of which sat just across the way, there was a large couch and an equally long coffee table. The latter of which doubled as a sort of buffet table and was filled with snacks and drinks. None of which Nicholas had dared to touch for fear he'd spill something on his suit. Hillary and Roger, the couple on the sofa, however, had devoured a large portion of the repast as if it were a last meal.To the far left of where Nicholas sat stood a wide.