Megan's painting her toenails when I get there, door propped because she heard me on the stairs, foam spacers wedged between her toes, and she doesn't look up right away. "There's beer in the fridge," she says. "Grab me one too if you're getting one."

I get two Yuenglings off the door shelf, twist the caps on the edge of the counter the way her dad probably told her not to do, and sit down across from her on the floor. The labels come away wet under my thumb. Her building's maybe ten minutes from mine, both of us renting in the same stretch of newish complexes off the highway, close enough that neither of us has ever had a real reason to talk about whose place we end up at on a given night. Tonight it's hers. The towel under her foot has a coffee stain older than the towel's current job. Coral, maybe. I'm not great with the names past red and pink and whatever you'd call the color of a stop sign. The TV's going behind her with the sound off, some cooking competition, and the polish smell is sharp enough I can taste it a little in the back of my throat. Somewhere above us someone's dragging furniture across a floor, on and off.

"Long day?" I ask.

"Parent-teacher conferences start Thursday. The copier ate itself again, so I had to print forty packets at the library on my own dime." She caps the polish, blows across her toes, glances up like she's only now noticing I'm actually in the room. "You look tired."

"Client wanted to move his whole portfolio into something his brother-in-law heard about at a barbecue."

"Did you talk him out of it?"

"Mostly meaning I got him down to moving thirty percent of it instead of all of it, which is its own kind of win when the other seventy's sitting in something a guy named Ronnie heard about over ribs." I crack my beer. "Doug kept saying diversify like it was a word he'd picked up secondhand and didn't quite trust yet. I let him say it twice before I asked what Ronnie does for a living. Roofing. Doug didn't have a great comeback for that."

She laughs, more air than sound, swings her legs down, careful of the polish, and comes to sit against me instead of across the table. Her hair's damp from a shower, lavender shampoo, and under that the warmer smell that's just hers. I put an arm around her without deciding to.

We end up ordering Thai from the place two blocks over because neither of us wants to cook. I think about Sloane for a second while the app buffers, wondering if she's working the late shift at the bar tonight, if she'd be up for a drink tomorrow. Two months in with Megan, and we've never had the exclusivity talk. I haven't brought it up, and neither has she, which means the space between us is still technically open. I manage the overlap quietly, the same instincts I use on a client's portfolio.

I get the pad see ew, same as always, and Megan spends a full minute deciding between two curries before picking the one she picks every time anyway. My phone buzzes once against the coffee table and I turn it face-down without checking it. Megan doesn't notice, or doesn't say if she does. While we wait she scrolls her phone and turns it toward me twice, once for a video of a dog falling off a couch and once for a picture of her sister's new baby, the hospital cap too big for the kid's head.

"Isn't she perfect," Megan says, not really a question.

"Cute kid," I say, and mean it, mostly, as much as anyone means it about somebody else's baby.

"Hannah's already got the nursery picked out and Lily hasn't even slept through a whole night yet." She sets the phone face-down on her thigh. "I used to think I'd wait until I was established, whatever that means. Now I see stuff like this and just think, what am I waiting for?"

I can feel where this is going before she gets there. "You've got time. You're not even thirty."

"I'm not saying right now." She picks at the label on her bottle, peeling it off in one long strip. "I think about it, though. With someone. You ever think about it?"

"Think about what?"

"Kids. A family. The whole thing."

"Sure," I say. "Someday. When the someday stuff lines up."

"What's the someday stuff?"

"Money. The right person. Not living somewhere with a copier that eats itself."

"That's not an answer," she says, but she's already half-smiling, like she's decided this question doesn't need to land tonight. I lean over and kiss her instead of giving her a better one, and she lets me, and somewhere in there the question gets set down rather than actually settled.

She laughs and lets it go, and I feel the relief of a subject changing direction without my having to push it there myself. The food shows up twenty minutes past what the app promised. We eat off the coffee table, her with her feet tucked under her so the polish doesn't catch the rug. The pad see ew is oversalted this time. Megan gets through about a third of her curry and slides the container toward me without being asked. She tells me about a second-grader who ate a crayon on purpose just to see, and I tell her about Doug Halvorsen nearly walking his whole retirement out of a thirty-year plan, how his wife's already called the office twice trying to talk him back into it. It's easy between us. Easier than most nights, even. I'm not performing. Nobody believes that about me, but I'm not. I like this part.

What I don't say: somewhere down the line I want a kid too. My idea of it, though. Not her sister's nursery, not the sense she's getting that the clock's started somewhere she can hear it and I can't. Mine, whenever it shows up, on terms I haven't worked out yet. I picture it sometimes, vaguely, a kid with my mother's chin maybe, learning to ride a bike in some yard I don't own yet. It's not a plan. It's barely even a want, for now.

She's quieter than usual getting undressed later, like she's still chewing on the couch conversation. The bedroom's colder than the living room, the window cracked the way she likes it even in spring, and goosebumps come up her arms before either of us has done anything yet. The lamp on her nightstand throws everything orange. She unhooks her own bra before I get a chance to fumble at it. The red lines the straps left across her shoulders take a second to fade. She kisses me slower than usual, palm flat against my chest.

My shirt comes off. She runs her hand down my stomach, tracing the line of hair to my waistband, slow, as if reacquainting herself with the shape of me. I work a hand into the elastic of her shorts and pull them down over her hips. She steps out of the fabric clumsily.

I push her gently backward onto the mattress, kneeling between her legs. I hook my thumbs into her underwear and she catches my wrist after I've already pulled them off.

"Hey," she says. "I can't tonight."

I stop. "Can't?"

"I got my period. Like, an hour before you showed up."

"So?"

"So it's a whole thing. Cramps. I'm not really feeling sexy."

I'm still half-kneeling on the bed, one hand on her hip, the blood already where it wants to be and not especially interested in the logistics. "I don't care about the mess. We can put a towel down."

She makes a face. Not a no exactly but not a yes. "Wes."

"What."

"I just told you I have cramps and I'm bleeding and I don't want to have sex. Why are you still negotiating?"

I sit back on my heels. She's still lying there with her shorts off. The orange light makes her look tired. I don't know why I'm pushing. Forty packets at the library on her own dime and a second-grader who ate a crayon and here I am, another thing she has to manage.

"Sorry," I say. "I'm not trying to be that guy."

"I know you're not." She pulls her shorts back up, wiggling her foot through the leg hole, reaches for the comforter and pulls it over herself. "Just. Not tonight."

I lie back on my side of the bed, still in my boxers, the erection slowly retreating into a dull ache. Above us the furniture-dragging neighbor has finally quit.

"You want ibuprofen or something?"

"Already took some."

"Okay."

She rolls onto her side, facing away from me, and I turn off the lamp. The dark settles in. I lie there listening to her breathe, the rhythm evening out toward sleep. I reach for her shoulder in the dark, just the blade of it through the comforter, and she doesn't pull away but she doesn't lean into it either.

I wake up once in the night to her shifting in the bathroom, the light under the door, the soft click of the cabinet. I fall back asleep before she comes out.

In the morning there's coffee going before I'm fully up, and Megan's in the kitchen in a t-shirt of mine she's apparently decided is hers now, the one with the faded marlin on it, left behind a few weeks back and never reclaimed, humming something I can't place. She hands me a mug without asking if I want one. She kisses the side of my head on her way past the table, and for a second, standing there at seven in the morning with a mug I didn't ask for, none of it feels complicated.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. Less like someone's wringing out my insides." She sets down toast I didn't ask for either, buttered to the edges, gone soft in the middle from sitting. "Sorry about last night."

"You don't have to apologize."

"I know." She sits across from me, tucking her feet up onto the chair. "I just felt gross. And the idea of dealing with the mess, after. You know."

I finish the coffee at the counter, still in last night's clothes, creased now from the floor. She makes it weaker than I would. I drink it fast and I'm already running tomorrow's calls before I've got my shoes back on. She's scrolling her phone at the table, the marlin shirt slipping off one shoulder. By the time I'm in the car, the whole easy shape of the morning is already someplace behind me. The frustration from the night before has faded, a small knot that loosens the further I get from her exit. I merge onto the highway and let it go.

---

The air inside The Continental smells like stale citrus and floor wax, sour under the pounding bass of the sound system. It's a dive trying to reinvent itself as a cocktail lounge, succeeding only in charging twelve dollars for well whiskey in a thicker glass. Sloane's at the far end of the rail, mixing something in a shaker tin. I texted an hour ago and she'd already said yes before I finished typing why. Her hair is tied up in a messy knot that's already failing gravity, dark strands sticking to the sweat on her neck. She spots me. She doesn't wave, just taps the metal bar mat twice with her knuckles and goes back to the shaker tin.

I find an empty stool near the service station, claiming the space before a guy in a tailored suit can beat me to it. The shift in gears is easy. Tuesday was pad see ew and second-grade drama and the loaded, unasked questions hanging around the edges of the room. Tonight is just loud. Music and bodies and nobody asking me where I'm headed after. My phone sits in my left pocket, face-out against my thigh, on silent. A habit so ingrained it doesn't even feel like a choice anymore. Megan thinks I play basketball on Thursdays with guys from the firm. Sloane thinks my schedule is just unpredictable, the collateral damage of a demanding client roster. Neither of them asks for a shared calendar, so I don't offer one.

I order a bourbon while I wait. It's the well stuff, hot going down and sweet after, in a glass thick enough to make it look like more than it is. Then another. The second one goes down faster than the first. The bar is warm and the bass is doing something to the base of my skull that feels almost pleasant. I should probably eat something. I can't remember if I ate dinner. A guy two stools down is trying to get Sloane's attention. She ignores him for three full minutes, wiping down the rail and cashing out somebody's tab before she even looks his way. When she finally steps over, she doesn't smile.

"What do you need," she asks him.

"Two vodka sodas, make 'em strong, and a shot of whatever you're drinking."

"I'm drinking water."

"Then a shot of whatever you want me to drink."

She pours him a shot of well tequila, rings it all up, and takes the twenty without looking at his face. She leaves the change on the wet wood and pivots to me.

"Ten minutes," she says over the noise. She glances at my glass, the mostly-gone bourbon. "You want another?"

"Sure."

She pours it and slides it across. I tell myself I'll nurse this one but by the time she's off shift I've finished it and ordered one more. The room has gone soft around the edges. My tongue feels thick. She's pulling her jacket on, watching me slide off the stool and catch my balance on the rail.

"You good?"

"Fine. Long week."

We walk to her place because it's only six blocks but the walk feels longer tonight. The air has cooled off enough to make the asphalt bearable but my face is still warm and the streetlights smear a little when I turn my head too fast. She smokes half a cigarette, offering it to me once. I decline. She flicks the cherry into the gutter and talks about a guy who tried to pay his tab with a fake Rolex.

"He actually took it off his wrist," she says, laughing. "Said it was worth three grand. The second hand was ticking loudly enough I could hear it over the jukebox."

"What'd you do?"

"Told him we only take Casios. Held his driver's license until his buddy came back from the ATM."

Her apartment is above a dry cleaner, the hallway always smelling faintly of hot chemicals and scorched cotton. Inside, it's a scatter of camera lenses on the kitchen island, light stands collapsed in the corner. No throw pillows. Just clothes draped over the backs of every chair in the place. She drops her keys in a ceramic bowl and kicks her boots off.

"My feet are ruined," she says, rubbing her arches. "Bachelorette party came through at ten. Six women who all wanted something blue and complicated. I ran out of curaçao."

She opens the fridge, grabs a half-empty bottle of Topo Chico, drinks straight from it. Offers it to me. Whatever fizz it had is gone. I take a sip and set it on the counter and realize I missed the counter by about two inches. The bottle wobbles. I catch it.

"That bad, huh?"

"Client dinner went long." Not true. There was no client dinner. There was half a turkey sandwich at my desk at seven and then three bourbons before she even got off shift.

She picks up a camera from the island, scrolling through the display. "I shot a punk band at The Garage on Tuesday. Lighting was garbage but I got a few good frames."

She turns the screen toward me. Black and white, heavily grained. A guy screaming into a microphone, spit flying in a freeze-frame arc. Raw, noisy even without sound.

"It's good," I say. My words are starting to run together at the edges.

"It pays in drink tickets, mostly. Better than pouring well drinks for finance bros." She gives me a look, teasing. "No offense."

"Wealth management," I say, the syllables requiring more concentration than they should. "Totally different tax bracket of obnoxious."

She sets the camera down. Her hands are still cold from the glass bottle. She steps into my space and pulls the hem of my shirt free from my jeans, no hesitation. The chill of her knuckles grazes my stomach and I shiver.

"You're freezing," I tell her.

"You'll warm me up."

She pulls my shirt over my head. I reach for her waist, pulling her against me. The room tilts slightly and I adjust my footing. She's wearing a black ribbed tank top, no bra underneath. I trace the ridge of her spine with my thumbs, or try to, but my hands feel like they're operating on a delay.

We don't make it to the bedroom. We rarely do. The couch is old, the upholstery a rough corduroy that scratches my back when she pushes me down. The motion makes my head swim. She unbuckles my belt, fast and practiced, pops the button and drags my jeans down. Cool air hits my bare legs.

She steps out of her jeans, pulls the tank top over her head and throws it over a light stand. Her body is lean, all harder angles, hip bones prominent. She straddles my thighs, knees sinking into the couch cushions. Her hair falls across my chest. She wraps her fingers around me.

Nothing.

She strokes once, twice, waiting for a response that isn't coming. I want it to happen. The wanting is happening somewhere above my body, in the part of my brain that's still capable of wanting, but the signal isn't getting through. I can feel the bourbon in my blood like warm mud.

"Come on," she says, not to me exactly.

"Give me a minute."

She tries again. She works her hand with the same efficiency she brings to everything else, and still nothing. I can feel the blood in my face now, a different kind of heat.

"I think I'm drunker than I thought."

"Yeah." She sits back on her heels, still straddling me, looking down at my limp cock like it's a piece of equipment that won't turn on. "I think you are."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. It happens."

She climbs off me, picks her tank top up from the light stand, pulls it back over her head. I lie there on the corduroy couch with my jeans around my knees and my shirt on the floor and my body refusing the one thing I asked it to do.

"You want water," she asks, already walking to the kitchen.

"Please."

She fills a glass from the tap and brings it back. I sit up enough to drink it, cold and metallic. She sits on the arm of the couch, one leg crossed, watching me with an expression I can't read.

"You want me to call a cab?"

"I can call one."

"I'll call one." She picks up her phone, thumbs through an app. "Seven minutes."

I pull my jeans up, buckle the belt. My shirt is behind the coffee table, wrinkled past saving. I button it wrong the first time and have to start over. She doesn't offer to help. She doesn't say anything at all. Just sits there in her tank top and underwear, scrolling, the blue light on her face. The camera lenses catch the streetlight from the window.

The cab pulls up. She walks me to the door. I kiss her on the cheek. She accepts it, same as always, but there's something different in the set of her jaw.

"Drink some water," she says. "Eat something."

"Yeah."

The door clicks shut. The deadbolt slides home. Walking down the stairs, the dry-cleaner smell is back, stronger now, and I have to grip the handrail to keep from missing a step. The cab is a Prius with a pine tree air freshener and a driver who doesn't talk. I give him my address and lean my head back.

The streetlights stutter past, same as they always do on this drive, except tonight I'm in the back of a cab instead of my own car. The radio is playing something soft and inoffensive with a lot of piano. I close my eyes.

I wake up when the driver says my address twice. I pay him in cash, over-tipping because I can't do the math, and let myself into my building. The elevator takes forever. My apartment is dark. There's mail stacked on the counter I've been walking past for two weeks and the new TV still leaning against the wall where the delivery guy left it. The couch is where I land, still in my jeans, one shoe on, one shoe somewhere between the door and the cushion. I don't remember falling asleep.

Morning comes in through the blinds I forgot to close, a flat white light that lands directly on my face. My mouth tastes like a bar floor. The shoe I'm still wearing is digging into my ankle. I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling I've stared at a hundred mornings, and try to piece together whether Sloane will act normal the next time I text her or whether this is the kind of thing that changes the weather. I get up and drink three glasses of water at the kitchen sink and then stand in the shower until the hot runs out.

---

Todd Merrick comes in through a referral from one of the senior partners, the kind of client who gets handed to me because nobody wants to spend an afternoon walking someone through the basics of what a bond ladder is. He inherited a stake in a paving company from an uncle and has strong opinions about it that he picked up somewhere between a podcast and a barbecue.

Todd wants to bring his wife to the dinner where I'm supposed to talk him down from something. I ask Megan if she wants to come, half out of habit. She says yes before I finish asking, delighted at the idea of a real restaurant on a Friday that isn't split three ways on an app.

The place is a steakhouse downtown, all hard surfaces and no carpet, loud enough that every table has to talk a little over the one next to it. There's a glass case of aging beef by the host stand, lit from above. Todd's already at the table when we arrive, a big guy in a blazer that fits like it was bought for a smaller version of him a year ago. He stands to shake my hand too hard, then Megan's hand a beat too long. I can smell his cologne before I'm all the way to the table.

"Catherine's parking," he says. "She insists on doing it herself. Something about my parallel parking."

Catherine arrives a few minutes later with the cold still coming off her coat, apologizing for nothing in particular. She gets her napkin into her lap before she's all the way into the chair.

"Sorry, sorry," she says. "He always finds a spot two blocks away and calls it convenient."

"It was fine," Todd says.

"It was not fine." She turns to Megan, already smiling. "So how'd you two meet?"

"A bar, actually," Megan says. "Very romantic."

"The most romantic bar in the city," I say.

"He ordered a bourbon and made it look like a personality." Megan glances at me. "I taught him what curaçao is."

Catherine laughs. "Second grade?"

"Second grade."

"God, I don't know how you do that. I can barely handle Todd."

"I'm sitting right here," Todd says, not looking up from the wine list.

Todd talks about the paving company for twenty minutes before I manage to steer him toward yield curves. He's not a bad guy exactly, just a guy who's used to being the loudest person in a room and hasn't yet noticed that money doesn't automatically make you right about things. He laughs at his own jokes half a second before anyone else does. He orders a bottle of wine without asking Catherine what she wants.

The steaks come out on plates hot enough that the server warns us twice, and somewhere in there Todd leans back with a rocks glass and looks at Megan like he's noticing her for the first time.

"So what's a second-grade teacher do for fun," he says, "besides put up with guys like this one?"

He tips his glass at me, grinning. A runner puts a side down between us while he's still talking, creamed spinach, and by the time the plate's on the table the thing he said has already gone by.

"Grade papers," Megan says. "Drink wine that costs less than this bottle."

"That's not fun. That's a coping mechanism."

"Same thing, some weeks."

Catherine doesn't react. The table moves on to something else, dessert menus, whether anyone wants coffee, and it doesn't register as anything. Guys like Todd flirt by accident, or on purpose and badly, and either way it's not something you build a memory around. I forget about it by the time the check comes, split evenly because Todd insists even though the firm's paying for mine.

Catherine hugs Megan goodbye on the sidewalk like they're already friends.

"We should do this again," Todd says, shaking my hand too hard a second time. "Catherine loves her."

"Sure," I say, already thinking about tomorrow's calls.

---

The rain comes sideways across the avenue in cold sheets that flatten the collar of my wool coat before I can cross the intersection. A cab runs a red light and throws a sheet of gray water over my shins. I swear, jumping back too late, the damp already seeping through my socks. I duck into the closest open door, a hotel bar, mostly just to stop shivering. The heat's cranked so high my wet collar goes warm against my neck before I've found a gap at the rail.

It's Tuesday night. I should be at a seafood restaurant downtown right now, listening to a commercial real estate developer pretend he understands municipal bonds. He texted thirty minutes ago from a tarmac in Chicago, grounded. I shake the water out of my hair, find a gap at the crowded brass rail, and slip in. A guy in a suit tries to claim the spot at the same time, catches my eye, and backs off, giving me the space. I order a bourbon neat. The bartender brings it in under a minute, leaves the check in a rocks glass, and moves on.

I wipe the face of my phone on my dry sleeve. Read an email I don't care about. Drink the bourbon. The ice in the water pitcher next to me shifts with a loud crack.

Then I glance at the mirror spanning the back bar, past the rows of illuminated bottles, and the air stops moving in my chest.

Jenny is sitting three stools down.

She's looking at the rim of her glass, running a finger over the thin crystal, her profile caught in the amber light. Early thirties, brown hair in a bob, wearing a black silk blouse that gathers at her throat. It's been fourteen months. She looks exactly the same, composed and still in the middle of a loud room.

I should pay the tab. I should walk back out into the rain. I pick up my glass, step away from the rail, and walk over.

"It's raining pretty hard out there," I say.

She turns. Her eyes meet mine. They are dark, sharp, unreadable. Surprise flickers across her face for a fraction of a second before she buries it.

"Wes."

"Hi, Jenny."

She doesn't smile. She just looks at me, taking in my wet coat, the drink in my hand, measuring whatever she finds there against an internal ledger I can't see. I take a sip slowly and set the glass on the bar. This was the serious one. It ended because I cheated, though there's more to it than that.

"Are you staying at the hotel?" she asks, her voice neutral.

"No. Client got grounded in Chicago. I stepped in to get out of the downpour."

"Still at Struthers?"

"Yeah. Still making the partners rich." I take a sip of the bourbon. The alcohol burns its way down, settling in my chest. "How's the practice?"

"Busy. We hired a new attending in May." She picks up her drink, a martini with a twist, and takes a slow sip. Her eyes never leave mine. I remember the exact temperature of her hands. I remember how she organized her bathroom sink, the toothbrush always angled the same way in the cup. I remember a folded appointment card in her nightstand drawer, for a clinic that wasn't hers. She said it was for a friend and I said okay, because I wanted it to be for a friend. Something pulls behind my ribs, heavy enough that I have to look down at my drink instead of at her.

"You look incredible, Jenny."

She sets her glass down. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"The easy charm. I know how you operate, Wes. I lived with it."

"I'm just telling the truth."

She stares at me. Her breathing changes, her chest rising a little faster under the black silk, and I know she wants this as much as I do. A sudden, impulsive reopening of a door we both slammed shut, and neither of us is looking away.

She signals the bartender. He arrives immediately, ignoring the three people waving napkins down the bar. She hands him a card, closes her tab, and stands up. She reaches for her coat draped over the stool next to her.

"My place is a few blocks up," she says. "We can split a cab."

We don't split a cab. We stand on the curb in the mist, the driving rain having reduced to a cold drizzle, and I hail one. The ride is ten minutes of silence. The streetlights strobe through the wet windows, illuminating her face in yellow flashes. Our knees bump as the driver takes a corner too fast, and she doesn't pull away. The friction of the damp wool against her leg sends a jolt straight up my spine.

Her building is pre-war, thick walls and solid brass elevator doors. The ride up to the sixth floor is loud, the cables humming in the shaft. She unlocks her door and I step inside. The smell of her apartment is dry heat and the chemical hit of laundry detergent. The door clicks shut.

Before I can take my coat off, she drops her keys on the console table and turns. She grabs the lapels of my coat and pulls me down.

Her mouth is desperate, punishing. I back her up against the wall, my hands catching her waist, the silk slipping under my palms. She tastes like gin. I kiss her back just as hard, my tongue pushing into her mouth, my hands sliding up to grip her shoulders. She bites my lower lip, hard enough to hurt, a sharp sting of metal in my mouth.

"Bedroom," she says, her breath ragged against my jaw.

I follow her. The room is dark, lit only by the ambient city light bleeding through the tall windows. She doesn't turn on a lamp. She pulls the silk blouse over her head, unhooks her bra in a single, practiced motion, and lets it fall to the floor. Her skin is pale in the shadows. Her breasts are full, the nipples tight and dark in the cool air of the room. I pull my shirt off, kick my shoes away, shedding the wet clothes onto the rug while she drops her coat to the floor.

She pushes me backward onto the edge of the mattress. She climbs onto my lap, her knees straddling my thighs. She runs her hands over my chest, her nails cut short for work, tracing down my stomach.

She reaches down between us and wraps her fingers around me, sure of exactly how she likes to hold it. A low groan escapes my throat. She strokes the length of my shaft, her thumb circling where I'm most sensitive. I push my hips up into her hand instinctively.

She shifts her weight over me, and there's a half second where neither of us moves, like we're both deciding whether to actually do this. Then she sinks down, slow, her hand still wrapped around me, until I'm all the way inside her and her breath goes ragged against my ear. She closes around me, a heat I haven't felt in fourteen months and recognize anyway, taking all of it, her hands planted flat against my chest for leverage.

I grip her hips harder than I mean to, like I'm trying to hold onto something that's already halfway gone. She starts to move. It's a grinding, deliberate rhythm, pulling almost off the shaft and then driving down hard, and that drags me higher, closer than I want to be this fast. Skin against skin is the loudest thing in the room, even with the street still going below the window.

I push up to meet her thrusts, driving deeper. She throws her head back, her brown hair just touching her shoulders. She digs her fingernails into my chest, scratching the skin. I roll us over, pinning her to the mattress. I part her legs wider, hooking her knees over my forearms, and drive forward.

Her breath catches in her throat. She turns her face into the pillow. Her whole body goes rigid against me, a long shudder she doesn't bother trying to keep quiet. I go still inside her, the orgasm arriving before I gave it permission. For a second the only sound in the room is both of us trying to breathe normally again. I collapse against her, my face buried in the crook of her neck. We lie there, chests heaving, the sweat cooling between us.

Hours later, the light outside the window shifts from black to a flat, dirty gray.

I wake up staring at the ceiling plaster. My mouth is dry. A dull, pulsing headache sits right behind my eyes, the gin and bourbon demanding payment. I push the thick comforter off my legs.

I hear the shower running through the wall. I sit up, my feet finding the cold hardwood floor. My clothes are scattered on the rug where we dropped them. I pick up my boxers, step into them, and pull my jeans on. My shirt is wrinkled. I button it halfway.

The bathroom door opens. Jenny walks out, wrapped in a white terrycloth towel, her wet hair combed back tight against her scalp. She looks at me coldly.

"There's coffee in the kitchen," she says, walking past me to the dresser. Her voice is flat, brisk.

"I should probably get going," I say.

"Alright." She doesn't turn around. She pulls open a drawer, taking out a pair of scrubs.

"Jenny."

She stops. Turns her head slightly. "It was a mistake, Wes. We both know it."

"Yeah."

"I have an early rotation at the clinic." She pulls a scrub top over her head. "You can pull the door shut behind you."

She walks back into the bathroom. The lock clicks.

I stand there for a second, listening to the silence of the apartment. I grab my coat off the floor, retrieve my phone from the pocket, and walk out. The deadbolt engages behind me with a thud.

The street outside is bright, the morning sun glaring off the wet pavement. The air is cold and sharp. I hail a cab on the corner, slide into the backseat, and give the driver my address. I lean my head against the cold window, watching the city blur past, and try to remember the last time a one-night stand with an ex felt like anything other than a bad idea you both already knew the ending to. My head hurts.

---
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