Abandoning his newly un-rotted fruit, Ned moved around the counter while hastily pulling on plastic gloves so he could grasp one of her hands in his own. “You’re my happiness loophole, Chuck." When she looked at him quizzically he continued, "Before you I’d pretty much written up a statement that I would live a satisfactory, practical existence baking pies, waking the dead, and keeping people at an arm’s length in both the physical and emotional sense. Nowhere in that statement was there anything about really being happy until you came along and became a pretty central part of everything that makes me happy now, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So, no, you're not holding me back from happiness, and yes, I am happy.”

When she squeezed his hand in return and beamed warmly at him with some of her usual spark, he felt the warm, fuzzy feelings rushing back to take residence in that part of his heart saved especially for her. “I think I like being a loophole,” she said to him in mischievous hushed tones, like she was sharing an especially juicy secret, and he laughed in spite of himself.

And so the Piemaker and the girl called Chuck went about their business as usual on that normal Tuesday morning, slowed down in their activities ever so slightly when neither of them found that they wished to relinquish their hand-holding privileges just yet.