I woke suddenly, torn from the nightmares of what I had done. Echoes of the dreamed laughter from all around me faded as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Apparently I couldn't escape what I had done whether I was sleeping or awake. I certainly couldn't escape what I had said, and now it was time to face the consequences, both real and imagined. I shuddered at how stupid I must have sounded, how, in a moment of stupid, panic-driven courage, I had said what I did.

The knock on my front door sounded again several seconds later. So that's what woke me. I looked at my clock, 6:24 AM. Who the hell visits someone at 6:00 in the morning?? I threw on a shirt and some pants before opening the door, and it took a moment for my brain to catch up.

It was her. Sarah Sheppard. The object of my humiliation and the muse of my current suffering. I tried to think of something, anything to say, but nothing came out.

She stared down at me, apparently also at a loss as to what to say. "Uh, Hi Derrick." She said, somewhat flatly. "Sorry to, uh, you know, wake you up or whatever."

I couldn't meet her eyes. There was only shame there. Shame and humiliation and a thousand other things that should and could never be. "Hi."

"It's just that-" she started. "Well, I, uh. What you, you know. What you said." Her wedding ring shone brightly under the porch light. She stopped talking, and let the sentence hang there.

What I said? You mean that I was in love with you, and had been every since I had known you? That you married the wrong man, that it should have been me? How I made a fucking ass of myself in front of the entire fucking office because I thought, you know, "Hey, world's ending tomorrow, might as well not regret anything?" Yeah that's a bust. I fucking regret everything about yesterday. "Listen, Sarah, I, uh. You know. The circumstances being what they we-"

"Did you mean it?" She asked, cutting me off.

"-re, I just...what?" I finished.

I felt her gaze on me as mine continued off into the distance. She didn't say anything until I finally mustered the courage to look at her. Her eyes were shining, moist.

"Did you mean it?" She repeated. Softly this time. Her intense gaze held me there for a moment, her eyes sparkling in the morning's darkness.

I shuffled my feet as I thought how to respond. Yes. Obviously. "I. I don't...Sarah the fucking world was ending and then China goes and knocks that damn asteroid off course, saving the whole goddamn world and there I am, waiting for the goddamn world to end, at peace with everything I'd been able to accomplish and I see - I actually fucking see this goddamn asteroid veer off course on the horizon, missing the Earth and saving all of us. And totally fucking damning me." The words just poured out of me before I could stop them.

She paused, taking it in. "I, uh. I see. So you were at peace, then? When you thought the world was ending, you were happy with what you had done?"

I raised my hands defensively. "Sarah, listen, I'm sorry, I don't know what to really...I don't know how I can-" she poked me in the chest, and I noticed her eyes had narrowed in anger.

"Were. You. Satisfied. With. Yourself?" She enunciated each syllable dramatically. "Answer the question, Derrick."

I was caught. I didn't know what to do, I was trapped in this conversation of truths and unspoken desires, and I couldn't have felt worse. "I. I, uh. Yes." I finished. "I was. I had said what I wanted to say, and now I don't know what to do because, and I will repeat this, I literally saw the asteroid veer off course, and-"

Suddenly her lips were on mine. It was such a shock that it took my brain a second or two to realize what had just happened. She pulled away, her eyes no longer betraying the lust and the passion that lay behind them.

She came back in for another go, and this time I was ready. This time I was-

Nope. Still not ready. Still no idea what's going on. After what felt like an eternity, finally my subconscious must have taken over because my lips started moving with hers while she wrapped her arms behind my back and I grabbed the nape of her neck and pulled her in closer, tighter, as we danced backwards into my apartment.

She kicked the door closed in the same moment that the wedding ring hit the floor.