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his racing pulse. He knew who the woman was. He and John had both seen the news reports a few weeks ago about Sachi Wolowitz.
    He just hadn’t expected her to be so pretty in person. Or look so vulnerable, in a way that made him want to step up and beg her to point him in whatever direction she wanted him to go to slay bad guys for her.
    I don’t need any complications in my life right now, and I’m sure she doesn’t want a loser like me, either.
    There wasn’t any way to deny how he’d felt when he’d locked eyes with her. Like there’d been a connection.
    Yeah, you felt like that with Karen, too, and look where the hell that got you.
    It was tempting, too tempting, to step out of line and go find her. Then again, she didn’t have a hand basket or a cart, so maybe she was there with someone.
    And how pitiful is that anyway, to pick up someone in a grocery store? She’d probably think I was a creep.
    As he paid for his groceries, he tried to focus on that thought. The poor woman had been through enough. She didn’t need some random stranger coming up to her in Publix and hitting on her.
    When he got home, John wasn’t there. It wasn’t unusual for John to work late on Fridays, helping his guys finish up jobs so they didn’t have to work on a Saturday, except for emergency calls. He browned a pound of ground beef and cobbled together a pot of half-store-bought, half-homemade spaghetti sauce to simmer on the stove.
    It would only take a couple of minutes to boil the pasta, and the two of them would easily make a meal of just that.
    He walked over to where he kept his laptop on a TV table next to the couch and got it powered up. Sachi Wolowitz stubbornly kept filtering into his thoughts.
    I wish I’d tried to talk to her more.
    On the heels of that, the thought that he didn’t have his own shit together enough to hold up his end of a relationship. And probably the last thing the poor woman needed after what she’d been through was someone like him.
    When John called and told him he was on the way, Oscar got the pasta boiling and gave the sauce a stir. The two of them had settled into a fairly boring routine. Tonight, they’d end up watching a couple of shows on TV before they parted ways for the night and went to bed. Tomorrow, unless John was rousted out of bed by an emergency call, they would both end up sleeping late, putter around the apartment and do some housework, and then debate going out. Maybe to play darts, maybe shoot some pool, maybe bowling. Or a movie.
    Or…whatever.
    They had other friends they sometimes hung out with, single and not. Both men had long since waved off their friends’ many attempts to fix them up on dates. Oscar knew he’d been asked two or three times if he and John were an item, and wondered if John had received the same question.
    If so, they never discussed it between them. It seemed more than pathetic to discuss their love lives, or lack thereof.
    It wasn’t like they needed to ram it into the other’s face, that was for sure.
    It just…was.
    John arrived home and grabbed a quick shower. Within a few minutes, they were both sitting in front of the TV, plates of spaghetti and bottles of beer in front of them, and watching the evening news.
    To make conversation more than anything, Oscar said, “You won’t believe who I saw in Publix tonight.”
    “Who?”
    “You know that woman who got shot a couple of weeks ago? Sachi Wolowitz?”
    John froze.
    “What?” Oscar asked. He didn’t understand the sudden shift in his friend’s demeanor.
    “Yeah?” John sounded wary.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing. What about her?”
    “I saw her in the bakery department at Publix. What’s wrong?”
    John put down his fork. “I replaced her water heater on Wednesday. And…she called me today.”
    Oscar didn’t understand why he suddenly felt a little surge of jealousy roll through him. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. Aunt Tammy went into the shop Sachi works at. The New Age place on