She said, “Am I imagining this?”
He shook his head, No, you aren’t, or if you are then I am, too.
“Oh,” she said.
She leaned forward. He matched her distance again, their foreheads meeting like old friends; Hello, how are you, been a long time, how nice it is to be here with you. Their hands, meanwhile, stayed back like tired captives, wary prisoners of war.
“These keys of mine,” she said. “If you could have one of them.”
It was an implied question: If you could open only one part of me for your consumption, for your delectation, for the whims of your carnivorous mind, which part would you wish to see?
The answer, or at least the answer she wanted, was more difficult to guess. On the one hand, there was quite obviously sex. There was no question she had it on the brain. So did he, now. More than now, though it was more unavoidable now, sitting close to her like this. He wasn’t so oblivious that he could ignore how close she was, how tempting. She’d essentially teed up an answer for him, made it easy—Here, let me tell you what you want. In fact, let me show you. Let me be the one to decide for both of us. Let me be the one to want you in such a way as to acquiesce that you want me, and let me save us both the trouble of fumbling through the Do you want to?, Are you sure?, the tiresome little how-do-you-dos of intimacy.
He could imagine the softness of her cheek or feel it for himself, up to him. He could see the flutter of her lashes where her eyes were closed and his were open, he could watch her play the ingenue, he could let her have the starring role the way she wanted this to be. Her hair smelled like flowers because she’d washed it somewhere in this house, under this same roof. Somewhere in his proximity, somewhere within these very walls, she’d been naked; she’d let the stream of water spill down from the top of her scalp, cracking like an egg and dripping down her forehead—the same forehead now pressed to his—and then her lips. Those droplets would have slid along her nose the way he could now, with just an inch to make up the difference. Water might have fallen in the little cracks of her lips, the ones her teeth slid over now with anticipation, and then down from her chin to the floor while the rest of it draped over her shoulders, saturating her skin. Somewhere, she’d sighed amid steam that embraced her with comfort, washing away the tensions of the day, and massaged it free from her limbs—the way his hands could do now, if they wished to. He could slide away the strap of her shirt and discover what, until now, remained only hers.
（Hers, and whoever else had been given permission to see it. Hers, and whoever else possessed some version of this moment with her, touching and not-touching within the shelter of a darkened room.） “Any key?” he asked.
“Any key,” she said, in the kind of voice deliberately intended to make him shiver.
She turned her head slightly, her cheek meeting his. He could feel her breath on his skin, could sense her fingers tightening in the sheets, could taste the bitter sweetness of her waiting, coiled and knotted and tensed.
How fragile the craving, he thought, and how delicate it was. How easy it would be to snap it between his fingers, to crush it between his palms. How effortlessly the wanting turned into the franticness of taking, and how very, very easy it was to take.
“I want,” he began, his voice fighting its way through the dryness in his throat, and she pulled away a fraction of a degree; only enough so that if he wanted her mouth—if he wanted to match it with his—he could do it. He could find out what secrets she kept in her kiss.
“Yes?”
A thrill of opposition burst from the haze of her closeness.
“Your art,” he said, and felt her stiffen.
“What?”
The tension snapped, striking them both.
“I want to see your art,” he said, and she pulled away, staring at him.
“Aldo,” she said. “You’re kidding me.”
He shook his head. “I’m not.”
“But.” She dragged her tongue over dry lips, mouth tightening. “Aldo, I have a boyfriend.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
“But I’m here. With you.”
“Yes,” he said.
She stared at him.
“You know what this means, don’t you?”
“I have some idea.”
“Of course you do, you’re a genius.” She sounded bitter about it that time, and though she didn’t move, he could see her tightening inside herself, curling up and shrinking down. “I thought that you—”