Ruthie smiles, “Thanks. It was a total fixer upper, but I finally finished it.”

“Did you do it yourself?”

“A lot of it.” Ruthie leads them further into the room to sit down. “I thought of you a lot while I was doing it. I remembered all the talks we had about buying a place like this and fixing it up.”

“I still wanna do that.” Harper smiles.

“Can I get you any thing? Did you eat?” Ruthie kicks into hostess mode for a moment.

“Yeah, I grabbed something after I dropped off the stuff. A drink sounds good.”

“I’ll be right back.” Ruthie gets up and leaves the room. She returns a minute later with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Hope this is ok.”

“Of course.” Harper says not really caring what she drinks.

Ruthie struggles with removing the cork. “Here, will you try.”

Harper takes the bottle and manages to remove the cork. “There you go.”

“You always were stronger then me.” Ruthie says pouring the wine.

Harper just laughs.

“How longs it been Harper?” Ruthie asks reclining back into the sofa.

“About three years I think.”

“Three years. Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s a long time.” Harper says settling into her chair.

“I’ve missed you.” Ruthie’s gaze intensifies, “A lot.” She let’s her words hang in the air for a moment. “There were so many times that I wanted to pick up the phone and call you. Or email you. But I knew it was forbidden.”

Harper starts feeling bad, but quickly remembers the restrictions placed on her when she was the other woman. “I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think to do to try and save my relationship. Not that it was worth it.”

“I know. And I wanted you to be happy so I respected that, even though your girlfriend was a total loon.”

“You forgot lying, cheating ***** too.” Harper laughs.

This hits close to home for Ruthie, “I can’t really say anything about that.”

“Maybe that was all just Karma paying me back.” Harper has wondered this a hundred times.

“I was the one cheating, not you.”

“I was just as guilty as you. It wasn’t like I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. I knew. I consented. It went against everything I ever stood for but somehow that ceased to matter. Being in love won over.”