David leaned back against the headboard with his face buried in his hands, waiting for the inevitable blow to fall. He knew it was coming. She'd already pulled away from him and wrapped the sheet around her chest. It was only a matter of moments before she got out of the bed. A grand total of twelve hours had passed since their first kiss this afternoon, and somehow, he'd already managed to drive her away.

Hopeless, he thought. He could try to explain himself again, but there was no reason to think he'd do any better. Maybe there was a reason he hadn't been in a real relationship since back when he was her age. Dating was one thing, but actually getting serious with someone? Maybe he just wasn't cut out for it. Maybe some people were destined to go through life alone.

He let out a low groan, and he heard her make an unintelligible sound beside him. Was she crying? Had he managed to reduce her to tears again?

He pulled his hands away from his face and darted a sidelong glance in her direction. Her shoulders were shaking. She had one hand pressed over her mouth.

"Penny, don't-"

He broke off in mid-sentence. That sound she was making....

It almost sounded like....

Was she....

Was that a giggle?

She turned her face toward him and he saw her eyes brimming, not with tears but with laughter. Laughing at him as usual. He should have known. David felt his own shoulders slump with relief at the sight."Oh, OK," he muttered. "So this is funny?"

She had to struggle to regain her composure before she could manage a reply. "Wow, David," she said at last. "I'm starting to understand why you get cocktails thrown at you so often."

"Not that often," he growled back, all the while sending up a silent prayer of thanks. By some miracle, she'd headed back to their old familiar rapport - thinly veiled flirtation, disguised behind a volley of mockery and insults. He could work with that. He was a hell of a lot better at this game than he'd ever been at heartfelt declarations.

He stuck out his lower lip at her now in an exaggerated pout. "All you ever do is laugh at me."

"First, you write me a recommendation letter, and then you run financial models on me," she replied. "I had no idea you were such a romantic!"

David's pout curved into a sheepish grin. "I'm usually quite charming."

"Really?"

"You have me kind of flustered."

"Do you want to try again? Maybe leave the Excel spreadsheets out of it this time?"

He took a deep breath. "OK," he said, still grinning. "The point I was trying to make was that relationships should not be reduced to Excel spreadsheets. All the rules were, perhaps, a bit..." He waved a hand, searching for the right word.

"Rigid?" she supplied.

"I was going to say reductive."

"Is that a fancy Harvard word for rigid?"

"A little bit rigid," he conceded.

"A little bit?"

"Rigid. Yes. We can go with rigid."

"That's what I thought."

He looked at her uncertainly. She'd stopped laughing. Now, she had her mouth scrunched over to one side, studying him.

"Does that make you feel better?" he asked.

She looked away from his face and pointed to a spot by the bedroom door. "Did you see I left my underwear on the floor over there?" she asked.

He followed the direction of her gaze, silently bracing for wherever she decided to take the conversation next.

"Are you going to need me to pick those up and fold them?" she asked.

"OK," he replied, holding up his hands in surrender. "I get it. I'm a neat freak. I'm too rigid."

"You know I'm a slob, right? I've been known to leave my underwear on the floor for months at a time. Are you sure you're prepared to live with that?"

Was she talking about living with him again? Was she actually considering it? How the hell had that happened?

Whatever. It was working - whatever it was they were doing right now. She wanted to spar with him. She wanted to banter. He just had to give her a little jab back to keep it going. He knew the routine. Five more minutes of this, and they might just be back to making out.

"I know you're a slob," he said, faking a shudder. "I'm the one who cleaned out your desk. By the way, I wasn't quite sure what to do with the colony of feral cats you had living in there."

"So how is this going to work?" she asked, crossing her arms in front of her. "We're going to draw a dotted line down the middle of the apartment, and my side gets to be messy?"

"Sure," he nodded. "As long as you train the cats to stay over on your side."

"How am I supposed to train the cats, David? They're feral."

"I don't know. Maybe you could just have an ant farm or something...."

"Oh, right." She shot him a skeptical look. "So you're telling me I can infest your apartment with ants, and you'll be OK with that?"

"Not feral ants. The domesticated kind."

"Domesticated ants."

"You know. An ant farm? Where they're all sealed up in a glass tank and they can't get out?"

"Sure," she nodded. "I get it. Maybe we should just seal up my whole half of the apartment, and we could wave at each other through the glass. Or we could even get one of those intercom phones to call each other during visiting hours-"

"I think you're describing prison now, Penny."

"Hey, prison sounds pretty good. Rent-free accommodations, right?"

Her face changed again as she said it. No more laughter now. David's mind was reeling, trying to keep up. Were they back to talking about her financial status again? He could have sworn they'd changed the subject.

"Penny, it's OK," he said. He laid a hesitant hand on her arm. "The money is not an issue. I'm telling you-"

"You hate messes," she interrupted, shrugging his hand away. "I know you, remember? I've seen inside your desk too."

"What's inside my desk?"

"You keep your desk empty except for your pens, which you have arranged in order of ink color and thickness of point."

One corner of his mouth quirked upward at the description - a slight exaggeration, but not by much. "Well," he smirked back at her. "Sometimes you need a finer point-"

"Here's a finer point for you." She poked her finger into his chest for emphasis. "You hate messes. Messes make you anxious."

"So we're not even going to try because you left your underwear on the floor? I'm telling you, I can live with the underwear. I'm completely fine with the underwear. Really. The underwear can take up permanent residence, right there in that spot on the floor for all I care-"

She shook her head. "It's not about the underwear, David. It's a metaphor."

"Oh, OK. Well, that must be a Princeton thing because Harvard never taught me how to conduct my pillow talk in metaphorical form."

She crossed her arms across her chest again, and he could only shake his head helplessly in response. "Penny, give me a hint," he said. "Is the metaphor my desk drawer? Or your underwear? Or-"

"My whole life's a mess!" she cut him off, her voice rising in irritation. "That's the metaphor. I'm a mess. And you can't stand messes."

She shook her head and looked away, as he watched her in utter bafflement. Was she about to cry again? Dammit! He thought they were just joking around, but apparently, that whole exchange had just been conducted in some secret metaphorical language.

And he'd somehow managed to say exactly the wrong thing to her. Again.