Mal lay in his bunk, trying to forget Kaylee the wild woman in a pink puffy towel, and failing. The only thing he had to think about was Kaylee or Inara and his break up, and he couldn’t be certain which one was worse to think about. His problem wasn’t that Kaylee revolted him, much the opposite. He wished he could have turned away from her as she stood there, quite obviously naked as the day she was born, but he was sure she was going to physically attack him for that move. He shook his head, women were just too difficult today, all of them.

*

Inara looked at him as if she wanted him dead, and he wanted him dead, so it all worked out in his head. She was fully clothed, if you could call one of her night garments clothing. She was screaming at him, “I thought that you had this figured out by now, Mal! I am not going to give up my life for you on faith!”

“What am I s'posed to do, Inara?! Just wait for you here as you go off with a ‘client’?! That ain’t happening!” Mal yelled back. By now the crew knew enough to avoid them when their voices began rising. “I don’t know what you want from me, one minute you’re running away, the next you’re in my bunk, half nekkid, and sweet-talking’ me. I don’t want to be your piece on the side, here!”

“Then what DO you want to be?” Inara demanded her dark eyes on fire but none-the-less beautiful.

“I want to be number one! Not just the fool you come back to after you bedded all of Persephone!” Mal’s answer didn’t slow him down, not now, not after she made him say it. “You nearly killed me when you left Serenity, and I hoped that you would wave us back, tell me that you wanted to be back on this ship of mine, that you missed me. I knew, though, I knew before you were in trouble, before you didn’t demand off at the Training House the second we cleared orbit of Mr. Universe, I knew I would never be that man, never be number one.”

Inara just stared at him, visibly calming in front of his eyes. “Why does number one have to be the only one, Mal? Why do