Justin comes home briefly between appointments & checking his email finds a message from Eleanor telling him she'll be going out to dinner tonight with her parents and she's not sure when she'll be home. He's just counting the days until they are back on their side of the country and out of his way.

Zach comes into the kitchen as Justin is cleaning up his lunch dishes. His housemate tells him he is going to dinner that evening with Eleanor and her parents. Eleanor didn't mention Zach in her email at all & jealous suspicion rises in him like a tsunami: Justin struggles to keep the wave of anger at bay, he backs away from Zach, out off swinging range, while he demands an explanation.

Not picking up Justin's warning signals at all, Zach follows him, explaining that the dinner is taking place in the home of a friend & colleague of Eleanor's father, Dr. Arjun Chaudhri, who was Zach's mentor through grad school, and still a close friend of Zach's. Justin doesn't need to be told what's going on...Eleanor needs to hide a guy like himself from her parents, but Zach is exactly what they'd expect their daughter to be with, he's their kind, Eleanor's kind. They're already making him one of the family...

The anger becomes too much for Justin to hold back. "I will kill you," he growls fiercely, his fist dangerously close to Zach's face, "If you touch her, I will kill you."

"I'm sure you could kill me, Justin," Zach says, peculiarly calm for someone facing his own violent demise, "But that wouldn't solve your problem. It would probably make it worse." Justin is taken aback for the moment, He's not used to having a guy he's threatened turn his back on him.

His rage dissipated in the threat, Justin stops Zach before he gets away & apologizes. "She didn't tell me you were going out with them, this...situation is putting me under a lot of stress," he explains, and groans at his own understatement, the pain coming out of him in a guttural burst, "Why is she doing this to me?"

Justin doesn't even flinch when Zach puts comforting hands on his shoulders, "I don't think she wants to hurt you, Justin," he says, "Her family is very restrictive, I know the type. She's been supervised & chaperoned throughout her life & she's just now starting to do things on her own. She wants to be an adult, but they want to keep her a child. She's under more pressure than you are..." Justin nods sadly in agreement. The situation has got him to where he's ready to punch one of the only people in his life he ever talks to, and the stress on him is coming straight down from her, bearing the brunt of it. If he wants to get through it and come out with his relationship intact, he has to be strong.