...you're too nice, Rikku. [Artemis swallows.] You know, when you started coming back home from your clubs with these other men, when you came home drunk, I didn't care. But the more we talked, the more you drank milk right out of the carton, and made me smell all these strange experiments, and shivered and asked to borrow my sweaters... I couldn't not care anymore. I didn't know what it was at first, and then I thought perhaps we were friends and I was concerned.

...and then that that French girl whispered she was going to have sex with you behind the circulation desk and I told her you were taken. [He's still staring at Rikku's chest, almost glaring now.] I didn't say "thank you for your time", I said you were unavailable and that she should fire whoever does her fake looking highlights. And I reasoned I did that because we were friends and that girl was insufferable.

I didn't think that maybe I thought all of this because I hated the thought of you coming home with someone else. Or potentially being asked to step out while you had sex with someone else. I dreaded that, and I always found some reason aside from 'maybe there's something new going on'.

But I hate those possibilities even more now...