Caitlin-Anne is obedient. I’ll give her that.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asks, when we get into my apartment and the first thing I do is whip my dick out.

“No,” I lie. The last few days have been nothing but funeral arrangements and lawyer talk. I’m not hard yet, but I want a distraction—any distraction. And we’re both here.

“Okay,” she says, stretching the syllables sarcastically. Her face is skeptical as I touch myself, trying to work something up. Still, she starts to undress.

“No,” I tell her, when she starts for the bedroom. “I want the patio again.”

It’s light outside, and we don’t have sex outdoors unless it’s dark. Instead of pointing this out to me, though, she shrugs and leads the way.

Like I said: obedient.

The sun is scalding. I blink against the sweat already beading on my forehead as Caitlin-Anne bends over the deck chair I keep out here, presenting herself to me like a gift.

I put my tip against her entrance and drive it home.

“Oh, God, yes,” she squeaks. Literally. She’s got a pretty high-pitched voice as it is, and during sex it’s like a hinge that needs oil. It used to turn me on, when we first hooked up; it reminded me of my Japanese porn phase in high school. Nowadays, I find myself wishing I owned a ball gag.

I lean forward, bracing my hands on the chair, and start to pound into her. I’m still not totally hard, which makes me that much more annoyed at her moans and oh Gods: it can’t possibly be that good, yet.

The harder I thrust, the more noise she makes, which turns me off. Then I have to thrust harder to stay up, which makes her squeak more. Soon we’re trapped in an endless cycle of bullshit. I decide, not for the first time, that I’m going to break up with her as soon as this is over.

Also not for the first time, I find myself thinking of Mel. I saw her this morning, at the funeral. I’m sure she thinks I didn’t.

But how could I not? I was looking for her the entire time, searching every face in that crowd for the only one I wanted to see.

“Blake, something’s happening....”

“You’re gonna come, Mellie.”

I have lots of sex under my belt by now, plenty of other memories to turn to in times like this. But that night is the one I think about most.

I close my eyes and pretend Caitlin-Anne is Mel. That I’ve got her bent over this chair instead, making love to her in broad daylight. Even those annoying squeaks start turning me on, when I pretend they’re Mel’s.

“Rub your clit,” I order, because I want to feel her finish and pretend it’s Mel’s orgasm I’m feeling. Then, because I’ve got nothing to lose, I add, “Act like you don’t understand what’s happening, when you get close.”

Caitlin-Anne laughs. “What?”

My face is right behind her head. I lean down and bite her shoulder, a warning. “Did I stutter?”

Eager to please, she does as I tell her. But her moans are still too exaggerated, and when she whimpers, “Oh, God, what’s happening? Am I about to come? Are you about to make me come?” all I can think about is Mel on my couch that day, laughing at the porn and asking, “Is the acting always this bad?”

“Okay,” I breathe, my tone harsher than it probably should be; after all, she is trying, “you can stop.”

She shuts up. I ignore her normal noises and focus on the feeling. She looks nothing like Mel, acts nothing like her, but with my eyes shut and the memory of that rainy afternoon in my head, I can pretend.

“Blake,” Caitlin-Anne moans, the muscles in her back stiffening, “I’m coming, baby! Oh, God....”

“It—it’s happening, I think, it’s....”

I pump faster, even after Caitlin-Anne’s orgasm is finished and she grimaces, ready for it to be over. I can’t blame her: I’m not being gentle.

“I’m yours. I...I like that.”

My orgasm rolls through me so fast and so hard, it almost knocks me off-balance. My breath shudders out across her back as I release. I close my eyes and moan.

But I don’t just moan. I say something. A name.

And Caitlin-Anne is obedient in the bedroom, but even she’s got her limits.

So I’m not surprised when, just as I realize what I’ve said, a blast of pain arcs through my nose; she’s bucked her head back against my face, forcing me off her. When she turns around, unfazed by the blood now pouring across my mouth, she’s seething.

“Who the fuck is Mellie?”

“An estate sale, apparently. Yes, all of it, from what Sylvie told me....”

I pretend I’m not listening to my mom, who’s gossiping on the phone with a woman from church. It’s obvious she’s talking about Blake, because she lowers her voice whenever I get up for something: coffee, juice, butter. I don’t need any of it, but no way am I going to leave this kitchen.

“Oh, absolutely, the poor thing.” Mom clucks, running the curled wire of our old landline through her fingers like a rosary. “I imagine he just wants all the memories gone as fast as possible. What? Oh...no, I don’t think I will. I know it’s open to the public, but it just seems in bad taste, doesn’t it? Since we knew Patrick and all?”

Now I wonder if she actually wants me to hear. Her volume’s rising, and she’s stopped talking in code. Josh, a medical textbook open on the table in front of him, gives me a look that says he thinks so, too.

“Who was that?” he asks, when she hangs up. His reading glasses are perched on the end of his nose, just like Dad. I’d make fun of him if I weren’t trying so hard not to ask Mom any questions of my own.

“Bea Jacobs,” Mom says. She flips through some mail on the island.

“Talking about Patrick and Blake?”

“Mm-hmm.” I feel her look at me, but I keep eating my toast, even though I’m full. “Word is Blake’s inherited the entire estate, but plans to auction just about all of it off.”

Josh kicks me under the table. “When?”

She cocks her head at him, ready to scold. “Why?”

“Maybe I want to go. Patrick had some cool stuff, and if Blake doesn’t want it—”

“That’s a little inappropriate, Joshua, don’t you think?” Mom sighs and fluffs her hairsprayed coif with her fingers, using the tin plates on our wall as a mirror. “Now, if you want to go to support him emotionally, that’s different.”

I know she’s really talking about me. Josh does, too, because he kicks me again.

“Fine,” he tells Mom, “I’ll go, but I won’t buy. So? Where and when?”

Mom stares at him so long, I’m sure she’s actually checking her peripheral vision for my reaction. “Tomorrow. Eight in the morning, at Patrick’s place. He’s auctioning off the house, too, from what I hear.”

This, for some reason, gets to me. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised I’m affected by it. I grew up in that house, as much as Blake grew up in mine.

More so, actually. A lot more.

I think of the dates I brought to his backyard gazebo during my parents’ stricter days, pretending the house was mine. How, as kids, we’d slide down the banister of his stairs like we’d seen in movies. We cracked two spindles the last time we did it, finally too heavy.

And, as always, I think of that afternoon on his couch. The storm slacking as we made our way upstairs, to the bedroom I’d been in a thousand times before, everything suddenly strange and new, yet still familiar.

Mom kisses us goodbye and heads to work, running the preschool at the church. As soon as the backdoor shuts, I look at Josh.

“You’re welcome,” he says. I give him the finger and kick his shin.