I learn from Olivia that Brendan and Will aren’t speaking. Will is somewhat pissed that Brendan didn’t tell him about Dorothy’s cancer, but mostly he’s pissed that Brendan is hooking up with me.

Olivia wants details, but I really have none to give, since I don’t even know what’s going on with us myself. I know that I hear from him every day. His texts are always funny and frequently dirty, but what they never are is sweet. I wait for them to evolve, for him to say I wish you’d stayed over, or I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you last night, but those words never come.

I know that I’m with him more nights than I’m not. I know that we’ve fallen into a sort of haphazard domesticity—he’ll make us dinner, I’ll bake. I start staying the night and he doesn’t seem to mind. But we are not dating. We don’t go out, we don’t hold hands. And I don’t know where he is on the nights we’re not together.

That’s what troubles me most.

Brendan’s unexplained absences have become a blank screen on which I project worst-case scenarios: cheerleaders with D cups, sex-crazed models. Or nights spent with Gabi—the girl I suspect he hasn’t left behind.

* * *

He goes to Boulder to visit his mom when she starts radiation. I don’t see him for three days, but I have no idea whether he’s with her the entire time. I’m not even sure I’ll hear from him again. I’m forced to wonder—not that I ever really stop wondering—when we will end, and if he’ll warn me before it happens.

I go to his place when he gets home. He’s standing at the stove when I arrive, but takes one look at me and turns the burner off.

“Get undressed,” he says, his voice a low growl.

Mere seconds later we are both rid of our clothes, bare skin meeting bare skin. He manages to grunt the word “bed,” but we only make it as far as the couch.

When it’s through, his gaze follows mine across the room, which we’ve littered with clothing.

I laugh. “Your apartment looks like a crime scene.”

“I did plan to try to talk to you for at least a few minutes first,” he admits. “It’s those fucking heels of yours. Seeing you naked is mandatory when you come here in those things.”

“What’s shocking is that you still want to,” I venture tentatively. "I can’t believe you’re not bored yet.”

“Why would I be bored?”

I shrug, feigning ambivalence. “It’s sort of what you’re known for, isn’t it? Never the same girl twice?”

He studies my face. “Does that bother you?”

“I just want to make sure it ends well.” I grind my teeth together on the last word to keep it from sounding tremulous, because that’s suddenly how I feel when I say it aloud—not ambivalent, the way I’m supposed to be about our dirty little secret, but invested. You cannot be invested in something as brief as this, particularly something you’ve always known will end, but I am.

"You worry too much," he says. "We're in the bubble right now. That’s why this works."

"The bubble?"

"Like a pocket of air in a submerged car. It’s a little space to breathe that you know won’t last. This works because I know you’re getting back together with Rob,” he says. “If you weren’t, I’d have to worry that…you know, you might get attached.”

“So you’re saying if Rob and I weren’t planning to try again, you wouldn’t have slept with me in the first place?”

He laughs, shifting just enough to make me realize he’s already thinking about round two. “I don’t have that much self-control. But if you weren’t getting back together with him, you wouldn’t want this. You’d be off looking for someone just like him.”

"Why do you say that?"

He rolls on his back, staring at the ceiling. "You want stability, Erin. You want the boring guy like Rob who's going to work unrelentingly until he can retire at 65, and who's never going to have more than one or two drinks when he goes out.”

"Being a hard worker and responsible drinker doesn't mean someone is boring."

Brendan rolls his eyes. "Fine. Not boring—controlled. You want someone who's always controlled, and reliable, and steady. And that guy will never be me."

I no longer believe that controlled—or controlling—is what I need, but I still want someone I can count on. If I were a smarter girl, I’d ask myself why, given that fact, I am here at all.

"Why are you so against relationships?” I ask. “They aren’t all bad."

"The problem with a relationship,” he says, “is that it's a sort of promise to the other person—not that you’re staying together but that you at least think you might. And it fucks people up when you realize you were wrong. I'm not ever making that promise to anyone again."

“Brendan, it’s not a promise. It’s an attempt. Until you marry someone, you’re only promising to try. No one can blame you when it doesn’t work out.”

“You just never know how someone will react,” he says. “Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I bring it out in people. But the few times I’ve tried have been disastrous when they ended. And when that happens, you bear some responsibility for it, for what you’ve turned someone else into.”

“No, you don’t,” I argue. “I became someone else with Rob—to keep the peace and to make him happy. But he didn’t make me change, and he also isn’t responsible for how unhappy I became when I did. The only person whose feelings you’re responsible for are your own.”

“You really believe that?” he asks, staring off into the distance.

“I really believe that,” I affirm.

He sighs and glances at me before he jumps to his feet. “I wish I did too.”