"Actually, I haven't either," Karen says with a shake of her head and a quick, soft laugh. "Not since I left home." That feels like longer ago than it probably should, though perhaps that's by design. She had every intention of leaving the past firmly behind her when she moved to New York, and except for Ben, she managed it. Her demons are her own, of course, and there's no doing away with that, but she got the fresh start she wanted. She just also got a hell of a lot of new trouble, too. Of course, none of that is anything worth saying, and God knows she was lucky not to have a roommate in New York given some of the shit that went down, but it does make a step like this seem all the more significant.

It's easy, though, too, which she supposes she could say about being with John at all, going all the way back to when she first found him on the beach and lied about being his wife so she could stay with him in the hospital. It was instinctive, something that just made sense when it damn well shouldn't have.

Clearly teasing, she adds, "So I guess that makes this a pretty big deal, huh?"