Welcome to Gaia! ::

When the knock came, she had already hopped out of her bed to go open up the door. When she heard the voice of the person on the other side, however, she stopped. She stood there, staring at the door with narrowed eyes, and wondered what exactly would have possessed him to think that it was okay to return after all that awkwardness they'd dealt with. She didn't want to see his face. She didn't want another reminder of men who never looked at her, just through her to what they wanted on the other side.

And yet there he was.

She opened the door, regretting the choice not to put her new hunter coat on and close it tightly around herself before doing so, and stared at both him, and the coffee in his hand. Then she let out a long, suffering sigh.

And just like that, she let it go.

Leaving the door open for him to walk inside, she trudged back over to her bed, curled up on it, and pointed at him to take a seat on the chair. Specifically on the chair.

She wasn't necessarily surprised that his presence signaled an apology. It wasn't as if she thought he'd returned for another pass, so what other reason could there be? That was why the sigh had been all she'd needed to get over things and let him in. But if she thought the apology was going to come with some of her favorite coffee, she was sorely mistaken; the brown liquid swished morbidly in her cup, and she stared at it with baleful disdain.

"I guess." She muttered. "But apologies work better with orange mocha frappuchinos."

With one clipped response, Maebe learned more than she'd been looking to find out. He was living in the basement now, which meant he wasn't living with the Mrs. and that meant he was probably too honest for his own good. Even though she'd stopped him before he'd done something he would regret, it seemed inevitable that Maebe would be coined the homewrecker of Deus, just as she'd always known she would be.

She sipped the coffee, and tried to make the best of it.

"Bit hard to do anything in the basement, I've heard." She murmured, sadness filtering in her voice. It was the only amount of regret he'd get from her - because she didn't like seeing him suffer.

She appreciated that small mention, because she was already trying so hard to keep from blaming herself for the whole thing - her own slow crumble included.

"Yeah." She whispered, chuckling into her cup. "But I wanted it as much as you did. If I was a better person, I would have stopped you long before you were on my bed."

And it was true, in some ways. But Maebe could no more be a different person than the lamp beside her could be a horse. Still, she wasn't about to apologize; not for being who she was, and not for wanting what she did.

She took another sip of her coffee, and pretended to like it more than she did. "I needed this." She lied, tilting the cup his way.

She only answered with a smile, but it was infinitely more telling than any words could have been. He was right, and she stopped trying to lie about it.

When he continued, she found herself thinking the same thing once more. "Yeah." She huffed out with a weak, exhausted chuckle. "I guess I am better at it. Maybe that's why you keep coming to see me. You're hoping some of this amazing attitude is going to rub off on you, and the s**t choices you make in life are going to be a little more tolerable." Because it was clear, by the way she did not look like a wreck, and he sort of did, that Maebe handled her terrible choices just a tiny bit better.

She took another sip of the terrible blackness of coffee, and realized that the caffeine it offered, if nothing else, was making her feel a little better. "Being good is boring, anyway." She muttered, another obvious lie.

"No." She murmured with a far too pleased smile and lidded eyes. "I like him because he's the kind of guy who won't go sniffing after other tails when he's bored."

And Mate.

She had cut deep. She knew, instantly, how cruelly she could react when someone insulted Dawson. Lex was not an innocent, but he did not deserve a reminder of his mistakes from someone like her.

But then Lex had to cut through all of the bullshit and see things the way they truly were. It didn't matter how good or faithful of a man Dawson would have been. He was not, and would not be, these things for her. Her face crumpled just as his had, and she slumped down against the wall.

"I'm sorry." She whispered. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. You've gone through enough." And it was worth noting in her mind that, though he'd almost strayed.. at least Lex had tried to love at all.

That was the bravest, and scariest plunge.