I rolled over and faced him, but he sat on the side of the bed, his back to me, his head bowed. A bright fissure of panic crackled through me.

“I’m clean,” I said.

“So am I.” Our voices were quiet like we were in a hospital. Or at a funeral. “I give blood at church every month,” he said and looked at me over his shoulder.

“I believe you,” I told him, because I knew what he needed from me at that moment. Calm and faith. I knew what he needed because I needed the same damn thing.

“And if you’re pregnant—”

“I’m on the pill.”

But my pills were at home. I hadn’t taken one since Saturday morning. Shit. It was Monday night. Fuck. Charlotte got on me about this all the time. ALL THE TIME. She was going to kill me. But I never had sex without a condom. Never. This was a total first for me.

Jack was a total first for me in every way.

“I’ll get the morning after pill,” I told him. Even though Maria had gotten pregnant after taking the morning after pill. Oh God, what had I done?

“But if you’re pregnant,” he said, “I’d like to know.”

“It’s my choice, whatever happens.” I sounded more scared than I was. I think.

“I know. I agree. And I won’t stand in the way of whatever you do. But… I’d like to help you. Money or whatever.”

“Whatever?” I asked, pulling at something I knew I shouldn’t. Not if I wanted him to get back into this bed with me. “Like, you’ll hold my hand at the clinic? Bring me home? Or go to the doctor’s appointments with me? Birthing classes.”

“Abby,” he sighed, like I was just asking so much. And I was, in a way—we barely knew each other. But at the same time, this thing had happened between us. This potential catastrophe. My nerves were twitching inside my skin.

And like he saw that, he reached out and touched my hair, stroked the skin of my shoulder. “Whatever happens,” he said. “It will be okay.”

“Yeah? How is that possible with your three day rule?”

He had no answer. None.

He got up, the pale skin of his ass and thighs glowing in the dim room. “I’ll be back,” he said.

I fell asleep waiting for him. Cold in his warm bed.

* * *

I woke up again to his side of the bed empty. My purse was on the bottom of the bed as well as my clothes, all folded into a stack. My leggings replaced by the pair of his sweatpants I’d been wearing while I’d been here.

I sighed at the sight.

The air was empty of delicious smells and the condo was silent. Cold.

I hung my head for a moment, hurt more than I thought I could be by a man I both barely knew and felt like I knew down to the ground.

But it would seem we had crossed a line for him, and now he was going to clean that up by asking me to leave.

My body ached as I got out of bed, and I could see on my wrists and breasts the lingering signs of our last twenty-four hours. Beard burns and bruises, red marks. My body was an artifact. And I treasured every twinge and sore spot as I pulled on my clothes.

I gathered up my stuff, gave myself one last look in the mirror, and tried to tell myself I didn’t care.

But it was all a lie.

The sight of him in his kitchen, surrounded by his copper pots, back in his suit, the deep black of it like a hole ripped in the rosiness of the last few days. It was ugly, that suit. A harsh reminder of things I did not want to be reminded of.

And if the suit wasn’t enough of an indicator that he was getting rid of me, his face made it clear.

Handsome as sin, cold to the bone. He looked at me like he’d never touched me. Like he’d never begged me. Like I hadn’t tasted his come and he hadn’t tasted mine.

“Good morning,” I said, the chill of the tile floors seeping up into my feet. Creeping up my legs. The apartment had been so warm for so long, now the chill was everywhere and—as he turned his midnight eyes to me—I knew it was coming from him.

On the counter in front of him was a small box from a pharmacy.

“I got this for you,” he said. The morning after pill. He pushed it toward me and I picked it up with shaking hands.

“I’ve also called you a car,” he said, his voice hard. “It’s time for you to go.”

“What day is it?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re kicking me out because of last night. Because it was a little too real for you.”

He got to his feet so fast I held my breath, unsure of what he would do. But he just walked to the sink, got out a glass, and filled it with water like that was all that mattered.

“Fuck you, Jack. You’re not fooling me with this act.”

“Jesus Christ.” His voice was a sneer and I braced myself for him to say something awful. To try and hurt me enough to leave. “You’re not that special, Abby. In fact, there are hundreds of girls like you in this city. Beautiful, dumb—”

I flinched and he stopped. Knowing what he was doing didn’t make it hurt less. Tears, a steady threat since waking up and seeing my bag at the bottom of the bed, flooded my eyes and I turned my face aside, wiping one away in hopes he wouldn’t see it.

But he saw it. And he did nothing.

And part of me wanted to smack his face and leave. And maybe I’d still do that. But part of me saw exactly what he was doing. The cage he’d built around himself was shrinking every day, and this was how he protected himself.

“When I was a kid—”

“I don’t care,” he lied.

“Fuck you, Jack!” I snapped. “You’ll listen to me because you owe me that. And you do fucking care and I’m going to leave, don’t worry, but let’s not fucking lie to each other now.” He was silent, holding onto the edge of the counter like it was the only thing he had. I held onto my purse the same way. Like it was hold onto something as hard as I could, or fall to pieces. “My parents took Charlotte and me to this dude ranch in Idaho, way out in the middle of nowhere. It was a total one-off, but Char and I were getting older, and I was getting into some boy trouble while my sister was retreating inside her room more and more, and I think my parents saw this as a chance to get us together as a family.”

I glanced up at him, and then away because he was staring at me so intently it was like he was looking inside my head. My skin. He could see my beating heart.

I saw him think: That’s why, that night in the car, at the very beginning, you said you’d go to Idaho.

And I let him see me think: Yes, Sherlock. Now listen.

“Charlotte got sick, like… right away. Some kind of stomach thing and she couldn’t leave our cabin, which frankly suited her fine. She’s like you, she brought seven thousand books with her to read. I think that’s why I felt so safe with you. Or felt like I knew you when I didn’t. Why I still feel that way.” I stopped, cleared my throat, and forced myself back on topic. “Anyway, Mom was taking care of her and Dad—well, Dad never had much to do with us. We didn’t have much to do with him. I expected to hate it. There were no parties, no shopping. No cell phone service. My friends felt a million miles away. The closest town was this place called Silver Falls, and it had like a bar and a café and seven hundred churches and that was it. I was prepared to pitch a fit every day until we went home. But… I loved it. I loved it like it was mine. Like it fit me. And I fit it.” I laughed, remembering how surprising it was to love something like I loved that vacation. That weird little dude ranch. “The family that ran it let me work with the horses every day, and I got to eat with all the staff at this big table, and the cook let me help in the kitchen one day, and it felt like all the work I was doing was important. It felt… it felt like I was important.”

He made some noise in his throat like he understood, like he understood even what I wasn’t saying. Didn’t know how to say about how empty my life was and how I needed purpose.

“And I know I was a kid, and I know they were humoring me, but it was real to me. And I’ve never felt that way again until—”

“Abby. Don’t.”

“You make me feel important. You fit me. And I fit you and this is going to suck, because you can’t change that, Jack. It just is.”

He went to the door and started unlocking the locks.

“Don’t do this,” I said, begging in a way I never thought I would. “Don’t make me leave.”

“It’s already done. You are already gone.”

The man I’d spent the last two days with was not here, and I could see I wasn’t going to get him back. There was nothing he would hear.

Silent, I took my barely restrained tears and my trembling anger and bruised body and began the process of peeling myself from this place. From this man. Before I got to the doorknob he stepped slightly into my way and I recoiled, terrified he would touch me and terrified I would shatter at the sensation.

“If you’re pregnant, you call me.”

“No.”

He couldn’t even look me in the eye. I watched as he swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbing as if he was choking something awful down. “Call me,” he said. “Please.”

I leaned in, as close as I could. So close I could smell him, and he smelled like I did. We smelled like each other. And his bed would smell like us. His sheets and pillows. His whole house was covered in me and he was going to have to live here.

“Goodbye, Jack,” I said. I left his apartment without giving him any promises and without looking back.

I ignored whatever car he might have ordered for me and walked toward the large intersection I could see down the hill. I needed air and I needed movement and I needed to exorcise the ghosts of Jack from my body. Holding up his sweatpants, I started to run. Sprint.

Pushing him out of my muscles and skin.

My heart chugged and my lungs screamed and I ran until my brain let go of the thought of him. Just for the moment. For the now.

And it was enough.

I got to the intersection and realized I wasn’t that far from my house. Another mile. Maybe a bit more, and I pressed on. Running until I was dripping in sweat.

All the way home in my too-big sweatpants and my bag banging against my shoulder, I ran because to stop would let him back in.

Once in my apartment, the door slammed shut behind me, I wanted to collapse on the floor, but I didn’t. I went to the sink and took the pill and then I shed my clothes and walked right into the shower, where I shampooed the smell of his shampoo out of my hair and I ran hands over my body, ignoring the marks he left on me.

Because they would fade.

Just like the memories.

It was nothing, I told myself. It was a moment. The appeal was the surprise of him. The perceived danger. The mystery.

It was the fact that I filled all the blanks in my knowledge with something noble or kind, when the truth was I had so little to back that up.

I’d convinced myself by the time I got out of the shower that he was only special because of the mystery. He was only special because I made him that way.

I wrapped myself in my favorite robe and went back to my bag to pull out my makeup and throw my dirty clothes in the laundry.

At the bottom of the bag, beneath the sparkly gold dress, something rustled. I pulled out the sweaty and terrible wrinkled work dress and the shoes and there at the bottom of my bag were stacks of papers.

“What in the world?”

Flipping through them, I realized they were all the restaurant spaces for lease or sale in the Bay area.

He’d printed them off for me at some point while I was sleeping. And then put them in the bottom of the bag so I wouldn’t see them until I got home.

Tears burned behind my eyes.

And despite all my brave words, I fell down to my knees at the foot of my bed and sobbed.