I awaken the next morning feeling like the universe has rearranged itself. After I brush my teeth, I blink into the mirror and I try to see back over time, to see all the Marleys that I’ve been since I was old enough to look in mirrors. Sometimes if I squint right, I can see one of the others: Mar the middle-schooler who wore pig-tails every day and was obsessed with Judy Blume; high school Marley with her bangs and pony-tail and somber face; Gabe’s first Marley, with her blunt bob hair and pert red lips and too-large eyes. And then the Marley I’ve been mostly since. The One Who Gets Shit Done. The One Who Doesn’t Make Excuses, Who Does What Is Reasonable and Right and Logical and Necessary.

I blink and blink and blink and blink because I know The New Marley, she does not let her ex finger her asshole. She does not. She walks down to the farmer’s market café and she has her whipped-cream-topped apple cider, and if she thinks about Gabe weeping on the first floor, she does so with only the most distant kind of curiosity, with only the most removed sort of concern. Because she knows he’s not hers, and she knows why that is a very good thing. And she is living her life on a straight line, goddammit; she is on an arrow, and her arrow knows the way and never dumps her off to fall through outer fucking space screaming a silent, oxygen-less scream. She knows she should ride this arrow straight into tomorrow, and if she does, This Smarter Marley understands that if not happiness, there should at least be peace. And this Marley, she needs peace. She requires it.

Therefore, clearly, this Marley is dead. She died the moment she wrapped her hand around the doorknob and pushed. She was buried under Gabe’s hot tongue. And when he carried her up the stairs—the outdoor stairs—wrung out and tussled, and he sat her on her doorstep, she was born again.

What kind of creature is she now? I blink at her neck, marked with green and yellow bruises. I look at her hair, just washed and half dry on her back and shoulders. I straighten her glasses.

I don’t know her motivations, her intentions, her limits, or her plans.

Am I insane? I wonder all day as I peek in little ears, wave my thermometer across small foreheads, poke flu shots into arms, and scribble prescriptions for amoxicillin. I’m a doctor, I’m a daughter, I’m a friend, and I want desperately to be a mother.

And maybe I still want my ex-husband—just a little.

* * *

At 5:40 a.m., when she starts creaking on the boards above my head, I walk into the bathroom, take the top off of the mouthwash, and pour the bottle down the sink. The sharp scent wafts into my head. I close my eyes as I inhale. My hands are sweaty on the counter’s edge. My legs feel weak and unsteady.

A brief glance in the mirror shows a man I know too well lately. Gabe McKellan—insomniac. Gabe McKellan—addict. I don’t like to see my own tired eyes or line-drawn face, so I step into the shower. In where it smells like soap and water, and not gin—or her. I lean my back against the tiles and tilt my head back. Breathe.

I almost licked a jagged shard of glass after I took her home. I pressed my hands into the gin-soaked rug and ran my damp fingers under my nostrils. I saw a few drops atop a shelf and my mouth watered. For six hours, I tortured myself cleaning that room—while Cora whined from the bedroom where I quarantined her and, at random-seeming intervals, Marley creaked around upstairs.

All night on my hands and knees: kneeling, crouching, bending down and standing up to pick up shards and toss them in a bag. I saw it as penance. For Marley or Geneva?

I feel no remorse for Marley. I’m aware I should. I should have had the self-control to keep from letting her into the foyer. When she asked to hug me, I should have sent her packing. I could have lied to her. I should have evaded her. But I was weak. Needy. She hugged me, and I put my arms around her. What happened after that was near inevitable. And still, I didn’t have to put my mouth on her soft skin. I didn’t have to carry her into that bedroom. I fucking fed on her.

I didn’t slake my desire in the back of her warm throat, or in her sopping cunt, so maybe that’s worth something.

Even now, I haven’t let myself come.

Penance.

Now I hear her moving just above me. For a second, my hot water flickers. Because Marley’s in the shower. She must have foregone her morning run.

I hear her soft footsteps again. After a minute, I get another shot of cold water. I can’t help the vision in my head of Marley in the shower: water streaking down her soft, round hips, her soapy hand over her fat, pink pussy.

Goddamn. I can’t help myself: I fist my cock and start to pump. It seems fitting that the shower loses heat at times, and rains down icy water on my miserable erection. I’m not surprised to find the cold does nothing to chill my lust.

I can almost taste her, even now. Can feel her tight hole squeeze my finger as my other hand fucks her slick pussy. I can feel the taut bud of her clit under my thumb, and hear her gasps, her groans, her moans.

Marley—underneath me.

Marley—wet and waiting for me.

I let my cock roll with that, pumping, squeezing, stroking till I’m leaking cum between my fingers and my balls are drawn up hard and tight. Then and only then do I recall the picture of her stretched out on her back, with her arms above her head and my fingers plunging into her tight cunt. The way her eyes flipped open and her mouth rounded as she looked up at me. The way her eyes squeezed shut as my thumb found her clit and gave a careful little stroke. And Marley moaned as if she wanted it. She moaned because she wanted it. I put my slicked-up finger in her virgin asshole, and she groaned, grunted, and soaked my other hand—because she wanted it.

I know I’m damned to hell, because the money shot, the memory that tightens my strained cock and lifts my balls until I’m right there at the edge, panting and leaning on the shower wall—that memory is the one of Marley peeking up at me through heavy eyelids, wrapped up in my sheets, saying, “Are you okay?”

In my mind’s eye, I see her tongue over her lips and I can read the offer on her face. Can I take care of you?

I suck a steamy breath into my lungs and picture pushing my cock down her throat until she gags and coughs. I see her red and teary eyes as she peeks up at me from on her knees. And she can’t run. And she can’t run like that.

* * *

I’ve never looked before, but when I do, I see that there’s a lock down near the bottom of the door inside my living room—the one that leads into the rest of the upstairs, the part of Fendall House that isn’t my apartment. I find, when I look, after dinner with my mom, that all it takes to get into his square footage would just be one slip of a bolt.

What would I do?

Maybe I’d pull off my shirt, unclasp my bra, and go downstairs in just my dress pants and my white coat. Would he like that? Would he like me naked underneath my coat? I think if I did that, I’d wear my stethoscope. I would press it to his chest and drag it down, along the happy trail between his chiseled abs. Down, down, down…until I reached the elastic of his boxer-briefs, and then I’d pull those back and ease my stehascope inside.

I can hear your heartbeat, I would whisper, but I need to be sure you’re completely healthy.

I imagine his heavy balls in my hands. I would tug them, maybe even lick them. I would run my hand all up and down his long and veiny shaft, around his plump and ruddy head, until he got so hard he groaned and slumped down on the couch. (What couch? But there’s a couch. Why can’t there be a couch?)

He’d sit there with his legs spread—hard, muscular legs, dusted with hair—and I would bounce his balls on my palm, tugging and rolling as my other hand worked his cock until he started panting.

And then I’d gobble up the head and as much of the shaft as I could take, and I would fist the base and suck and swallow, hum and rub my lips all up and down him. And he would think, Goddamn. She’s like a porn star. No—he wouldn’t think. Because he would be groaning, his tense legs squeezing around my shoulders.

He’d be putty in my hands.

I cry out on that image, coming on my favorite toy, underneath my covers, just past two AM.

That’s why I’m awake when the phone rings.