The ding of my laptop announcing a calendar reminder abruptly ends those thoughts. I press my palms to my eyes and breathe deeply, envisioning a slow, painful walk into a frigid lake.
I need to get laid.
The past two weeks since Kate came home and upended everything, I’ve abandoned my routine—a meal at the bar, a flirtatious conversation and then a frank one （I’m yours all night. Only one night. No repeats.）， then a hotel room, the exhilarating challenge of a new body to learn and become an expert of, the thrill of wrenching orgasm after orgasm from her, the blissful mindlessness of my own release.
I don’t care to examine why the past few weeks have gone the way they have. No matter why I haven’t been getting out and getting laid—given my foul mood, my hopelessly erotic dreams—that needs to change.
I need a good hard night of fucking. A luxurious meal. One nice glass of red wine. And a beautiful woman by 10 p.m. beneath me, on top of me, beside me—hell, whatever way she wants it. I’ll get back into my routine and reset. No problem. Easy.
This is what I always do.
Which is why it makes no sense that when I start to draft an email to Curtis, my assistant, to clear my schedule after five and make a reservation at one of my favorite places, I can’t seem to make myself do it.
Shit. Shit.
This is bad.
I push back from my desk, reaching for my coat.
“Curtis!” I bark. “Going for a walk.”
“You’re due back in thirty,” he calls as I storm by.
“Got it.”
I nod politely to Luz at the front desk, then take the stairs, because fuck elevators, jogging down, pushing open the door into the cool air. The sky is cloudless, the sun a pale lemon yellow squeezing drops of light between tall buildings. I start to walk, hands in my pockets, and try to clear my head.
For a while it works, as I soak up the ambient sounds of traffic, the steady stream of people going about their lives, until I realize where I’ve ended up and slow to a stop.
Bello’s.
I stare at the familiar sign on the Italian restaurant I haven’t been to in twenty years. I can tell the place has hardly changed when someone with a food order rushes out to a delivery bike waiting for them and acoustic guitar music floats out in their wake.
The door eases shut, but slowly, giving me time to soak up its ambience. The clink of plates and glasses, the melodic lilt of spoken Italian, sharpens memories that have faded at the edges, fuzzy and softened by time. Plates of pasta swirled with Parmesan and cracked black pepper, tall glasses of deep red wine. Mom’s bright laugh and Dad’s warm smile. Old music, flickering candlelight, my belly full of too much frittelle.
The memory expands, like a widening lens. Bill’s deep chuckle. Maureen’s rosy-cheeked grin. Bea doodling on a napkin, Jules with her nose in a book.
And a little pigtailed menace with freckles on her nose and wiggly legs, kicking my shins, sharp, stormy eyes boring into me.
I blink, wrenching myself from the memory, though it’s hardly a relief. My present is just as haunted by Kate as my past.
I think of the work I have ahead of me to fix things between us, enough so that I don’t feel sick every time I replay what she said.
You hate me.
I wonder if there will ever be a world where we could walk in here as something gentler, something forgiven, split a bottle of wine, pick at each other’s plates, our forks knocking in a battle for the perfect bite.
That’ll be a cold day in hell, the voice of reason mutters in my head.
Finding my phone in my pocket, I pull up Curtis’s email from this morning, confirming the flowers and pastries were delivered, and type a response, asking him to clear my schedule after five but not to make any reservations.
Where I’m going after work, I won’t need reservations.
More like head-to-toe body armor.
? THIRTEEN ?
Kate
I’m sure I look ridiculous, clutching a bouquet the size of my torso as early December wind tries to rip it out of my arms, but I don’t care. Like hell was I leaving those flowers at the store.
While I couldn’t give a shit less what brand my clothes are, while I’ll never want diamonds or cashmere or any sort of personal luxuries—anything that costs the kind of money that makes me ill when I think of the poverty and inequality that ravages so much of the world—I have a weakness for flowers. I should care that once each stem is cut, a flower’s life dwindles exponentially, that such an extravagant, costly arrangement could have been assembled from my mother’s greenhouse for a few dollars, its blossoms grown dirt cheap from seeds nurtured by the simplest of things—sunlight and soil, water and waiting.