It was helping, that much was true. Freddie's enthusiasm about me finding a rebound guy distracted me from the constant ache inside of me. Why worry about my lack of love life when there were washboard abs on display? I had to admit that Freddie was bang on about that much.

But I wasn't able to concentrate on the guys in the app after Winston ambled off to bed. There was an aura around him that disturbed my fun, as if a dark cloud had taken up residence around his head. That was so far from the usual Winston that it jarred me out of the revelry with Freddie.

She sensed that I was fretting and handed me a fresh beer she'd grabbed from Winston's fridge.

"What he doesn't know can't hurt him, right?" she said, grinning.

"Sure, but I'm confident he can count. I'm a houseguest, Fred, gotta be on my best behavior."

"Ok, but starting tomorrow morning."

I couldn't help but be swept up again in her energetic glow. Freddie was intrinsically charming, like a character from some teen movie who's the queen bee, but instead of being catty and manipulative, she was just someone who longed for fun, laughter, love.

"How's your love life?" I asked her. Maybe she was living vicariously through me to numb her own pain. Thinking about her might stop me from worrying about Winston.

"Not good," she laughed. "You know, the usual shambles you'd expect from someone who's more busy with law than life."

That hit me hard. I wasn't able to come up with a response, and instead sat there, nursing the beer like my life depended on it. Freddie noticed I wasn't meeting her eye anymore.

"Too soon?"

I shrugged, a half-smile all I could muster.

"Winston's cute, though," she said, continuing her train of thoughts to try to escape the downer she'd accidentally been. "In a sort of scamp slash rocker way."

"He has his charms," I said. My voice was tepid, probably because I was still reeling from thinking about Greg and that horrible girl he'd been with. Was the law really worth that? I mean, sure, Greg clearly wasn't the one if he was willing to sleep with someone else while we were still together, but my career was now a massive sore spot in my mind.

"I'd love to make him sing," said Freddie. Her gaze was fixed on the hallway where Winston had disappeared.

"He's the drummer, though," I said. As if she actually meant musically, and not sexually. God, it was like my brain was in some alternate universe where my cognition had been slowed by Jell-O.

"Ok, ok, Miss Literal. You know what I mean," she said.

I nodded, retreating yet again to the beer in my hand. Freddie stared at me as if in a new light, though, considering my expression carefully.

"Oh my God, are you jealous?" she said.

"Shh," I said, panicked as I glanced down the hallway towards Winston's room. "No, no way."

"Sweet baby Jesus, I can't believe what an idiot I've been!" said Freddie, her tone a balance of self-castigation and complete and utter amusement. Even though her words were negative, she was clearly delighted to have discovered something.

Now if only she was, you know, right about that discovery.

She must have been imagining something.

I wasn't jealous, just frustrated that Freddie would be so...so...

I wasn't sure.

All I knew was that it bugged me, rankled at my thoughts so that I couldn't get into the proper mood to be supportive, 'girl talk' style.

Freddie kept staring at me, saying no words at all, just watching as I struggled internally. A blush started to flame on my face under her watchful eye.

"What?" I said.

"Don't even try to deny that you find him attractive, Kayce," she said. "I know you two boned in high school."

"Dated!" I said. "We were high school sweethearts."

"And you mean it was totally chaste?"

My blushing intensified.

"So that's a no," she said. "And I'm guessing you didn't split up because you were sexually incompatible."

"Well, no," I said.

It was more complicated than that. But of course it wasn't the sex that got in the way. If anything, the sex made it more difficult to go down the paths we needed to go down. Our futures weren't together, we'd seen that.

"You still want to hit that?" she said. Freddie jabbed a thumb in the general direction of Winston's room.

Did I?

I had no idea what I wanted anymore. After my life had come crashing down around me, Winston was a safe space. He was familiar territory, a place I could go to recoup and rebuild my life, knowing someone was there for me if I needed. That was part of why I'd gone into his room the night before anyway.

Right?

Or was it more than that...?

"I don't know," I said, finally. The gap between Freddie's question and my answer seemed to make the issue clear to her.

"OK, then," she said. "I believe that's my cue to get out of here. He's cute, Kaycee. And he'd be crazy not to think you're cute, too. I don't want to get in between anything, if there is anything there. See ya tomorrow."

And she left Winston's house, summoning an Uber or something so that she could leave without much fuss. Suddenly, I wished that she'd stayed. I wished that she'd asked me anything, even the most prying, embarrassing questions, so that I wouldn't be left alone with my thoughts. With the knowledge that Winston was asleep in a room several feet away, his body moving up and down with each breath, that hardness I'd felt in the morning against me liable to show up sometime during the night.

It was like a spell had been cast on me, transfixing me to the spot. I couldn't look away from the hall but I couldn't move either. I fiddled with the label on my empty beer bottle, mentally making a note to stop drinking beer every night. It wasn’t good form to crash at someone’s place, sad and needy, and then consume every last beer in their fridge.

Even if that someone was Winston, who I knew would do almost anything for me. Who could afford to re-stock the fridge with beer every day, if he needed to. Really, it was just that I couldn’t be drinking every night or I knew I’d be covering up the sadness inside with liquid courage.

Freddie, on some level, was right. I could feel the way my skin was tingling when I thought of Winston, my body all sensitive and full of anticipation. I hadn’t felt that way about someone in a while. To be completely honest, I don’t think I’d felt it with Greg at all. I’d told myself that was because I was maturing, but then if that were true, why did I feel it again with Winston?

Here goes nothing.

I took a deep breath and swept away the little pieces of paper from the beer label. Even though my guts were in turmoil, roiling with the anxiety of having realized that yes, maybe I did find myself attracted to Winston again, I couldn’t be a total slob.

Then I walked quietly down the hall, trying to think of what I’d say.

What could I say?

No words came to me as I tiptoed along the carpet. I knocked the door with my heart hammering in my throat, still no idea of what excuse I could possibly use to wake Winston up. I just knew that I needed to say something. Anything.

His voice was quiet, but responded immediately after I knocked.

“What’s up?” he said.

And I gently pushed the door open, leaning against the wall inside as I paused, pulse racing.

“Hey,” I said.

He didn’t look like he’d been sleeping. In fact, he was sitting up with a book in hand and the light next to his bed was on.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, shrugging as he noticed me surveying the scene.

“I…Freddie left,” I said.

Good job, Kaycee, barge into the guy’s room to tell him that a guest is gone. Then he definitely won’t think you’ve gone insane from your breakup.

“What’s wrong?”

He knew me so well. Normally, I wouldn’t have been unnerved by being in his room. Normally, I wouldn’t be standing there fighting to find a single word I could say, as if every part of my brain had been hijacked by the sight of him.

It was quite the sight.

He was shirtless, for one. I wasn’t confident of where to look, so I’d been staring intently into his eyes.

Wrong move.

They were so blue, a rich, vivid colour like a tropical sea. Yet again, I found myself transfixed.

I had to do something. Something to quell this stormy urge inside me, this newfound voice compelling me to reconnect with Winston, to feel him, taste him, tangle up with him as if we’d never been closer.

Maybe my breakup had made me lose some form of my inhibitions, propelling me into situations I’d never have gone into otherwise. Maybe I was on the rebound, desperate for comfort in some form, whatever the cost. Maybe it was a combination of everything that had been whirling inside me and needed release.

I crossed the room swiftly, not responding to Winston’s question. I stepped up right next to his bedside, and I leaned over and kissed him, pulling his face upwards as I sank down onto the mattress next to him.

If he’d been surprised, he didn’t say so. He kissed me back, his lips meeting mine with a hunger that I hadn’t known he had in him. He’d looked so innocent and restful, sitting there with his book that he’d now flung aside. But beneath the surface, Winston’s kiss was fire. It was tumult. It was heating me up in a way I hadn’t even begun to imagine he could.

Freddie was onto something.

I did want Winston. The more he touched me, the more I felt it: a desperate need for his fingers to explore me, to feel him harden against me like he had earlier. To drive our bodies together as if making up for the lost time of years and years. The proximity we’d had suddenly was replaced with agonizing, thrilling electricity.

To think that we’d been friends so long and now, against my better judgment, we were kissing in his bed, startled me. Underneath that alarming notion, though, was an even more unsettling one: this felt natural. It felt right. And I wanted him even more as time went by.

I think I’d expected kissing him to feel like I was kissing family, or on a date that became clearly uninteresting the moment you touched.

It was so, so much the opposite I gasped. Winston’s hand on my hip was a fire I needed to feel, a physical manifestation of hunger, need, desire. Wherever he touched, the same sensations joined the white-hot core of me.

Finally, the kiss broke. We panted, lying there disheveled by our activities.

“Freddie said something that got me thinking,” I said, still dizzy from the goddamn marvel of his touch.

“Make out with Winston?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“No, just…” I said, stopping. I bit my lip as I thought, but Winston interrupted me with a kiss. He growled as he planted it on me.

“God, that’s sexy,” he said. “Bite that lip again and I might have to bite it too.”

If we kept on the way things were going, we’d end up naked. There was no doubt in my mind about that. What I did wonder, though, was whether it was a grave mistake. Sure, I’d heard of friends with benefits before. Who hadn’t? I just wasn’t confident it was something I could pull off.

And risking my friendship with Winston would be catastrophic.

Too bad the way he was nibbling at my neck was so much more appealing than sensible thoughts.

Win made his way along my neck, his right hand massaging my breast through my sweater so that I could feel my nipple hardening in response to his touch. While he did this, his hot breath on my skin caused me to moan, despite my best intentions.

What did he think we were doing?

He was so hard, obviously eager to be exploring my body. Maybe as eager as I was, maybe more so.

I knew I should have stopped him, said something, talked though the petty jealousy I’d been feeling over Freddie hitting on him, explained that in my vulnerable post-breakup state, I’d found him attractive in more ways than one.

Should is a magical word. How often do we actually follow through on those shoulds?

For me, not enough.

Deep inside me, not only was there a growing flame of desire, but there was a stubborn, insistent little voice getting louder and louder. It was telling me to stop being such a good girl. To stop worrying what people would think, whether I was doing the best I could, if I could try harder, do better, be better.

Just let yourself enjoy something for once, Kaycee.

One thing they don’t tell you in law school is how many of your days you’ll spend doubting yourself. So much time spent in school, so many cases read, memos drafted, arguments constructed, and each and every moment afterwards you’ll spend wishing you had more time.

To do the job correctly. It seemed like a great irony to me now, that so many of the people I went to law school with were as perfectionistic as me, and we were all trapped in a profession where you couldn’t ever be sure you’d read everything. Prepared perfectly.

So I let go.

I stopped the voices in my head that were telling me this was a risk, a misstep, or worse. Winston and I had dated before, had sex before, and that hadn’t ruined our friendship then, had it?

We’d survived a first breakup, we could get through a night of misplaced passion.

If it was misplaced in the first case.

I leaned back onto the bed, and carefully unhooked my bra.

“Oh,” said Winston, his soft exclamation full of joyful surprise. He must have thought this was just a beery make-out session.

No, I wanted more.

I needed more.

If I was going to get through this funk, get hired back at my job, I needed to be able to cast off the pain. To live.

I would let myself live, and I couldn’t think of anything better in that moment than having Winston tangled up with me in bed sheets, our bodies warming to a sweaty mess as we tumbled so that I was on top of him.

Winston’s hands had a firm grasp on my hips, just a delicious enough pressure to make me feel like sliding him inside of me and rolling until I made him cry out my name. Instead, he moved his hands upwards and massaged my breasts, his hands warm and welcome.

“Wait a second,” I said, pausing so that I could strip off my sweater. When I did, sitting on top of him half naked in the soft light of his desk lamp, I felt momentarily self-conscious again.

This was Winston, after all. The man who had talked me through a grad school assignment panic, joking so much I forgot myself. The boy I’d fallen for, loved, and lost all in one year. The rock star that thousands around the world would have gladly experienced in my stead, were I to doubt myself again.

But I had decided not to doubt. I was all in. So I pulled him closer to me, our naked skin against each other tingling in the momentary touches, nerves brushing, dancing, screaming to be heard. I rolled my hips to grind against his underwear, causing his eyes to close and a throaty groan to be released from him.

“Are we doing this?” I asked, reaching down to undo my pants. I guided his hand to my underwear, where he stroked me gently, revelling in the way I’d already responded to his touch, my body readying itself to be entered. I was surprisingly wet, a reaction to the dry spell with Greg, no doubt.

Winston’s eyes darkened as he grunted, his fingers slipping my underwear to the side and sliding inside me in response. He smiled, a half-smile that showed off his newly stormy eyes, showcased his sandy stubble to perfection.

He looked every bit the poster rock star, the man I’d seen in interviews, videos, concert recordings from crappy cell phones. A devilishly handsome trickster who never took a single thing seriously.

Well, that wasn’t true. Because the way Winston was touching me, you’d think that he was serious about every damn thing in his life. He played with me as if his reputation depended on it, as if he were channeling a lifetime of desire into his fingertips, taking me to a crescendo before I even realized he was doing it.

Since the last time we’d fucked, he’d gotten much, much more experience. And he was going to shake me to my core before I could even take my pants off.

My head thrown back, I gasped.

“Oh my God, Winston,” I said. The words were like a ghost of myself, echoing in the room far longer than my eyes were able to stay open. I yelled, I shook, and I rode him through to the other side of a dizzying, perfect moment.

When I regained control of my body, I looked down at him with a smile and he tossed me onto the bed, switching our positions effortlessly.

“I’m just getting started,” he said.