My brain’s already doing cartwheels when the lights go out, my bearings long gone from whiskey. The stars on the dome above us are beautiful, but the vastness of it, this huge phony sky, freaks me out.

“Hey,” he says, kissing me, “it’s okay. Shut your eyes.”

I do. True, I’m kind of missing the entire point of a planetarium, but at least I’m calm now.

The announcer booms out every constellation: Cassiopeia, Taurus, Orion. I repeat the names silently, with my mouth shut, my tongue hitting the back of my teeth.

“Bet I can make you feel better,” I hear, and Blake’s breath slides along my neck the way his fingers slide under my skirt.

“What are you doing?” I hiss. “We’re in public.” I push his hand away, but he puts it right back in place, shoving my panties aside to find my weak spot. For a few incredible seconds, I let myself get swept inside. The music seems louder, almost unbearable. The constellation names mean nothing to me, now.

Don’t moan. Don’t scream.

“After this,” he breathes into my ear, “I’ll take you to my place, tie you up…make you come all night. How’s ten sound? You think you can handle that many?”

“We’re in public,” I say again, seething as I shove him off and cross my legs. He’s got such an arrogant smile on his face, I hate to admit his offer interests me even a little. I try to watch the show, but all I can think about is the way it must feel to be tied up, completely at the mercy of another person—how it must feel to have that person be him.

He can’t touch me anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from tempting me. He leans close when the announcer is on some spiel about ancient seafaring. “I’ll make you scream my name,” he whispers, “until you lose your voice.”

It’s involuntary, the way I shiver closer to him. He captures my earlobe between his teeth and bites down.

“Stop pretending you don’t want it, Mellie.”

I cross my arms and worm away, folding myself into my chair. The cushions are musty and threadbare, and the hinges creak with everyone’s movements. No wonder they’re shutting the place down.

Truthfully, I’m desperate for his touch. For another taste of that power I saw in him yesterday.

But I also miss the guy I knew, and I can’t get my head around the fact he’s changed. I don’t believe he has, deep down. Not completely.

“Is this how you treat all your dates?”

He hesitates, but only briefly. “So this is a date, now?”

“If you were operating under the….” My brain, fogged and battered from the stars and whiskey, fumbles for the word.

“Premise?” he prompts. There’s the arrogance again. He trails his finger, the one he just had in my panties, down my neck and shoulder. “Idea? Assumption?”

“Assumption. Yes.” I take a breath and jerk away from him. “If you were operating under the assumption this wasn’t a date, but just a hangout with a friend, well…that makes what you’re doing even more inappropriate.”

“So let me get this straight.” He leans farther, invading my armrest with half his body. “You don’t like the idea of me tying you to my bed? Or is it the other part that bothers you—me giving you so many orgasms, your voice gives out because you just can’t stop screaming my name?”

I’m lost. In his words, the sky, in the smell of bodies all around us and the cold, aging seats of the theater.

“I didn’t say that, exactly.”

He tongues his cheek, laughing to himself.

“But,” I add, as another guest twists in her seat to glare at us, “it would be nice if you, you know…tried to woo me, or something.”

“Woo you?” Blake leans back in his own seat, giving me space. “I don’t have to win you over, Mellie. We both want the same thing.”

“Maybe so.” I watch the fake starlight glint off his flask as he lifts it to his lips. It must be a new one; we emptied the first in the car. At least, I think we did. I suddenly can’t remember. “But it would still be nice if you pretended to work at it. I mean, damn, I invited you to a planetarium. That’s romantic. The least you can do is sweet talk me a little, instead of jumping right into the dirty stuff.”

Instead of laughing again, the way I expect him to, he sits up straighter. “Okay.”

“Okay? That’s it?”

“If you want romance, I can do that.” He reaches towards my lap once more. I recoil, until he takes my hand off my leg, laces his fingers into mine, and settles it on the armrest between us.

Somehow, the brush of his thumb there, the pulse points of our wrists connecting, sends an even greater shock through me than all his promises for tonight combined.

A real, official date with Melanie Thatcher. Teenage me would have a coronary.

“Too bad you can’t see the stars out here, too,” she sighs, when we get out of the planetarium. I follow her eyes into the pale yellow wash overhead, courtesy of the city lights.

“I know where we could see real stars.”

“Let me guess: your apartment balcony. Or some fancy skylight thing in your bedroom. You look like you’d have a skylight.”

She pops a handful of Dots into her mouth. When I brought them back from the concession stand, she marveled that I’d remembered her favorite theater candy.

“Not to be confused,” I added, whispering right in her ear, “with your favorite candy bar—Snickers—or your favorite holiday candy: chocolate oranges.” We both loved those as kids, mostly because they had to be smashed open. The day after Christmas, every year, we’d hammer them against her kitchen counter to loosen the slices, already melting from the heat of our palms.

“Wow.” In the man-made twilight, her blush turned purple. “You have a really good memory.”

“Only when it comes to you.”

She scoffed. “Okay, I said give me sweet talk. Not lines.”

“Not a line if it’s true.”

She rolled her eyes, but let me kiss her again.

“I look like I’d have a skylight,” I repeat now, catching her as she stumbles. Even once she’s steady, I don’t move my hands from her waist. “What does that mean?”

“You know,” she chews, “the power suits, the ad man thing. I bet you live in, like, Canal Heights or Pike’s Landing.”

“No way you guessed that. You saw my license or something, didn’t you?”

“I was right?” She squirms away from me, both of us laughing and tripping our way to the parking lot. “You really live there?”

“Yeah,” I sigh, smiling, “Pike’s. But I don’t have a skylight. Sorry to break it to you.”

“I bet I know exactly what your living room looks like,” she challenges. She finishes her candy and studies me. “Leather couch. Lucite or marble coffee table. Gray curtains, no blinds on the window, because you hate cleaning them.”

“My curtains are black.” I unlock my car. “But still, impressive.”

“You like modern and minimal.” Her mouth barely spits out the last word, she’s so drunk. I expect her to fall into the car, thrilled to have somewhere to sit again, but she just stands there while I open my door.

“Are you getting in?”

“You can’t drive. You’re drunk.”

“You’re drunk, Mellie. I didn’t have that much.”

She squashes the empty Dots box and shoves it in her purse, then takes out her phone. “I’m getting a ride-share. You had even more of that whiskey than I did.”

I put my arms on the roof of the car and stare at her. “I’m also about sixty pounds heavier than you. Trust me, I’m good. Get in.”

“No way.” Hands raised, like I’ve got her at gunpoint, she backs away from the car until she bumps into the next one and stumbles. “I’d rather walk.”

“Fine.” I open my door and slide into my seat. “Then walk.”

Other girls I’ve dated would back down around this point, and I wait for Mel to do the same. We both know she isn’t going to walk around in the city at night, drunk and alone, or even wait for a car by herself.

So when she looks at me through her window, shrugs, and starts for the street, I let her get several yards away before getting out of the car.

I should have known better. With Mel, you can call her bluff—but she’ll call your call and raise the stakes, every time.

“Okay,” I shout, when I’m within her earshot. “If you really want a ride-share, we’ll get one.”

She pivots on her heel, no hesitation. Like she knew, all along, I would follow.

“But I’m paying for it,” I add firmly, and pull my phone from my pocket.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those types, now.” She watches me order the car. “The whole ‘I’ve got to pay for everything because I’m the man’ types.”

“I’m not.” I can hear how defensive I sound, but can’t manage to fix it. The truth is, I am like that. It’s a big reason I studied marketing and went into advertising, instead of getting a studio art degree: you earn way more money, and money means power. When you’re the one paying, you get to call the shots.

While we wait for the car, Mel ducks into a coffee shop to use the bathroom. She comes back with two drinks.

“See?” she says. “You hesitated before you took it from me.”

“Only because I was trying to figure out what it was.” I take a sip.

“Iced hazelnut macchiato.” She leans against the wall with me and taps our cups together. “I’ve got a pretty good memory, too.”

We drink and rattle ice for a while. When some guys pass by and let their eyes linger on Mel too long, I slide close and put my arm around her waist. They move along.

“Hmm. Maybe you’re one of those types, too.”

My sigh fills the air between us. “I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but what type?”

“The kind who has to make sure every other guy knows his girl is off-limits. Like…like dogs, marking their territory.”

“Apart from the tasteless analogy,” I concede, pushing my face into her neck until she laughs, “yeah. I’ll admit to that.”

The car pulls up to the curb. I hold the door for her, hoping she won’t construe it as any “type” trait other than politeness. Quietly, she thanks me.

“Where are we going, anyway?” While the neon of downtown streaks around us, she tilts her head and rests it on my shoulder. I think about kissing her again, but decide to wait: if she wants romance, I’m going to deliver.

“You’ll see.”