I live in a whitish building with ten units and worn espresso colored floors. The place is old, but the floors are new, made to look old. I love those floors, how they try to be something they’re not. The flats are four to a floor, except for the third floor, which only has two units. That’s where I am, in the attic space that has been converted into two small studios and divided by a thin sheetrock wall. My side has the skylight; my neighbor, Bidi, has a slanted ceiling and a window seat with built-in bookshelves. I’m jealous of her window nook, and as far as I know she is too busy fucking the guy from 5M to use it. I’ve been in her place once to return the vacuum she loaned me and spotted five varieties of bongs on the shelves that were meant for books. I bought my own vacuum after that. I won’t be taking loaners from someone who desecrates bookshelves. The room came with a single bed and a dresser that is so worn and chipped I’m not even sure what color it had originally been. I papered the drawers and packed away what little I had. You’d think someone who traveled America for as long as I did would have…more. But, I don’t. I shed things like a snake shed its skin. When I left I didn’t take anything with me but some clothes.

Ethan kisses me as the rain tinkers softly against the skylight in my living room; the one good thing about my sad little flat is that small piece of joyful sky. A slice of light. He undresses me slowly, which puts me at ease;his long fingers flick across the buttons on my dress, popping the little beads out of their assigned holes. He doesn’t say stupid shit about how hot my body is, I appreciate that. Maybe he doesn’t think my body is hot, I don’t really care. We’re here now and on the way to orgasmic glory. I need time to acclimate to this new man who is touching my skin and breathing hard against my neck. I know that once he’s inside of me I’ll have taken a step away from David and toward my future. It’s all for the best. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

I breathe him in. A new smell. Maybe I’ve missed this: the first smells, and touches, and kisses. It’s so different with each man. Ethan’s not at all what I thought, quite gentle actually. I imagine it’s all a show with him, the fucking, and flirting, and whatnot. He goes full bravado like a Hollywood action flick and then settles into a romance once you’re impressed. It’s a grand tactic and a great relief. Bad boys are only fun when they’re threatening to break your heart. There isn’t a hair on his chest, just smooth, white skin and lean muscle. I try not to remember the dark hair I liked to run my fingers through. Another man, another lifetime. I hadn’t known I liked hair on a man’s chest until I saw David’s. Ethan is going to make love to me—I can tell by his movements. There won’t be any fucking tonight. Tonight? I think maybe it’s morning. He licks my clavicle. He’s the sort of guy who wants to stare into your eyes as he pokes around inside of you. A literal fucking romantic. And in ten years, when someone asks how we met, he’ll tell them that he tried to play it cool, but he was in love with me from the first moment. This was how beautiful things started, I assure myself—at the tail end of something else.

Ethan leads me toward the bathroom and I have to redirect him to the bedroom, both of us laughing. I kick open the door. Before he pushes me down on the bed he turns on the radio. I almost laugh except I’m caught up in the moment, the potential for love songs and lovemaking. I want to believe again, to feel. The adverts are on: a car dealership, and then a dating service. He takes off my bra while a woman with a smoky voice talks about the husband she met online.

His mouth is on me when a jingle about Nando’s chicken plays; first one breast and then the other. The irony is sort of hilarious. I arch my back because it feels so good to be touched after such a long hiatus. Why did I ever stop doing this? He rubs me through my panties and then suddenly yanks them off. I lift my hips to help him and he tosses them somewhere over his shoulder. Finally a song comes on. I haven’t heard it before, but it has a nice beat. A sort of ra ta ta ta that makes your heart accelerate.

I relax as Ethan settles himself between my legs and I curl around him. I like this part. I get lost in it, my eyes rolling back, my hands gripping his too-cool-for-school hair. The song plays, but I’m too lost to hear it. His tongue keeps beat with the music. And then he crawls up my body until his weight is on me. And it’s the very moment Ethan is pushing himself inside of me, while I’m moaning into his mouth, that the song reaches me. I recognize the voice, and I listen to the lyrics as a strange man moves in my body.

Atheists who kneel and pray, the voice sings. Begging for just anything. Non-believers bitten down to the core. Pass them a word, give them a string. When you’re dying you cling. Yara, Yara, the god of disbelief. I worship between your legs. Pray to your fallacy, pray to your winter. You kill everything.

Ethan at first thinks I’m having an orgasm. He speeds up, pushing into me harder while he bites at my neck and shoulder. I convulse against him, my grief so profound I shudder. Thousands of miles away, and David has crawled into bed with me, crawled right in the middle of Ethan and me and punched me in the gut. I feel him release into me and I wonder dumbly if he put a condom on. Drunk was bad. Drunk was irresponsible. Drunk was potential pregnancy or STD from a stranger.

Stupid, stupid, Yara, I think. And then David is on his second verse, accusing me of ugly things.

We’re all just atheists who kneel and pray, you made me believe and then erased the day. Fallacy, Yara, a molten idol. A flesh and blood god, not a god at all. A girl who calls you just to kill. Yara, Yara, the god of disbelief.

Ethan is looking into my watery shocked eyes and I notice that his are weatherworn blue. Like an old pair of denim. Had we made love? Had we fucked? Was I pregnant and riddled with STDs? He rolls off me and I breathe a sigh of relief when I spot the condom. I want to cry from relief.

Yara, Yara, the god of disbelief.

I curl up on my side, too wrung out to even pull up the sheet. He does if for me before climbing into bed and molding his body against mine. I don’t tell him to fuck off and leave. I don’t want to be alone, I’m afraid of what I’ll do. I did it. I did what I’d set out to do. I wanted to break a man’s heart for his art. Rip his belief system to shreds so he’d have to rebuild it. And that was the thing about a scorned artist, wasn’t it? Their new medium was you. Just ask Bukowski, ask Plath, ask Taylor Swift whose blood they used for ink. David was going to hate me for the rest of his life. But, he was going to make beautiful music. He already had.

“Yara,” Ethan says softly.

I pretend to be asleep.