It wasn't as if these things weren't available in Beijing and in the Olympic Village, but Sue still almost wept with relief when the in-flight meal came around and there was a little plastic package of flatware on her tray instead of the chopsticks she had learned to despise over the long weeks. It was enough to make her ignore the mediocrity of the food, and for a moment, she even forgot that the seat next to her was empty.

Only for a moment, though. She had become so accustomed to Diana by her side over the years that she couldn't not notice Diana's absence. "It's like we have ESPN or something," Diana had once said, and Sue had never been sure whether Diana was quoting, misquoting, or had misspoken. But it didn't take ESP, or even ESPN, to know where Diana was now. If she were an objective observer, she might wonder which kind of charm would win out, Diana's all-out candor or Alana's lace over steel, but she was nothing close to objective, and the best she could do was hope for an explosion that would send Diana running back to her; she wasn't sure whether she would take Diana back, secure in the knowledge that this was where Diana belonged, or if she would turn from Diana as Diana had turned from her and let Diana burn as she had burned. It was a thin line that divided love and hate, after all, or so she'd been told.

Warmth against her hip, her shoulder, tiny sounds of heavy breathing, and the general pervasive sense of someone nearby, and Sue turned her head. Lindsay had fallen into the seat next to hers, staring at her fingers as if she had never seen them before, a pensive expression on her face that suggested dark thoughts of self-loathing, although it was hard to tell sometimes with Lindsay. She always looked frustrated or irritated; even her smiles had a practiced element of impatience to them.

Sue remembered the facile rearrangement of rooms, and Alana's possessive stance in practices, and the way Lindsay blushed whenever Alana was mentioned around her, and patterns of scratch marks and hickeys that matched certain fingernails and certain mouths. Lindsay's fingers twitched, her hands reaching for someone who wasn't there. Perhaps Sue and Diana weren't the only ones who had ESPN or something.

She stilled Lindsay's hand, and Lindsay looked up at her in surprise. "Looks like we got trumped," she said quietly.

"How?" There was a world of anguish in the single word; Lindsay was, if nothing else, efficient.

Sue shrugged. "Like will to like. They're like each other's mirrors anyway. So maybe that makes it opposites attract. It's one of those, anyway." The words didn't disguise the bitterness, and if Lindsay hadn't known about Sue and Diana before, she could figure it out from this, unless she happened to be a complete moron.

"Maybe they deserve each other." Lindsay twisted in the seat, lifting the armrest for a surprising amount of extra intimacy.

Sue allowed it, surprised that she was allowing it. More than that, she edged closer to Lindsay, her knee joggling the tray table. The other woman's warmth and need drew her, although she couldn't understand why; she only knew that her eyes were drawn to the pulse in Lindsay's throat. She bit her lip several times, trying to keep herself under control, but she could not shift her gaze.

Lindsay put her hand on Sue's knee, a light touch that still made Sue's skin tingle even through her jeans. With her free hand, she reached up and threaded her fingers through Sue's hair, which had gone curly for lack of attention, winding each curl around her finger before letting it spring back.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sue knew that she'd arrived at a critical decision. Once she made whatever choice she was going to make, she couldn't undo it. There were too many repercussions down either road, and she knew in her bones that there would be no second chances, no forgiveness, no chance for explanations, and probably not even the friendship that sometimes rose from the ashes of old relationships.

But enough had been enough, and Sue had stood by too many times while Diana loved and loved again. She drew Lindsay closer to her, and Lindsay responded in kind, which was for the best since the tray table would have been in the way otherwise. Just as quickly, Lindsay's lips were against hers and Lindsay's tongue was in her mouth, and there was warmth and softness to Lindsay that Sue had never imagined.

If Diana was right all along, and they did have "ESPN or something", then Diana was going to be in for a hell of a surprise whenever she and Alana left off what they were doing.