Holly glanced around the apartment. “It seems empty.”

A contemporary red leather couch and a modern oversized blue fabric chair sat across from one another in the otherwise lonely space. Everything else I once owned had been sold to pay rent. Frustrated at what I’d lost, but more grateful for what remained, I waved toward the two pieces of furniture. “It is empty. It’s bigger than your entire house, and it’s got nothing but a couch and a chair in it.”

“You need to go shopping.”

“I’ve got bills to pay first,” I said, more to remind myself than to make her aware of it. “Maybe in a few months.”

She gave the spacious room another quick look. “It’s just you, so I guess it’ll be okay.”

I shrugged. “It’s going to have to be.”

“An upside is that you get to park your bike in the basement. It’ll keep people from messing with you on the nights you have to…” She did the air quote thingy. “Work late.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you and that guy with the arm-sized dick have sex in your office.”

I chuckled. “We do it during the day, not at night.”

“Never late in the day?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think it’s weird?”

“That we don’t bone at five o’clock?”

“That you only do it during the day.”

Him leaving his shirt on was weird. But, I never viewed the time of day we fucked as weird. I guessed he was busy being an eccentric entrepreneur in the evenings. It wasn’t anything I needed to justify to Holly, that was for sure. “We bone when he’s got time. He’s got businesses to run.”

She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. “He has sex during the day and runs his business at night?”

“That’s right.”

“Listen to what you’re saying.”

Now that she’d mentioned it, it seemed slightly odd. Maybe a little more than slightly. I wasn’t going to admit it, though. He didn’t wear a wedding ring and there weren’t any of the telltale signs that he’d taken one off, either. As long as I wasn’t having an affair with a man who was in a committed relationship, I really didn’t care why he chose to fuck me during the day.

“He comes by when his schedule lets him,” I said. “Stop worrying about it.”

“Has he been up here yet? To see your new place?”

I hadn’t seen Baker since the day I told him I was moving in. I suspected he feared having me as a neighbor would create problems with his privacy, but nothing could be further from the truth. I expected him to give me mine. In return, I wouldn’t invade his. Given enough time he’d see I wasn’t a threat to his manner of living life. When he did, he’d return.

I hoped so, anyway. Even though all we shared was sex, I missed out time together.

“Not yet,” I said.

She walked to the window and peered down at the street. “You don’t see that as weird?”

“Everything’s weird to you.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Hank started doing weird stuff. Six months later, I found out he was having sex with that Simon chick.”

“Sierra,” I said. “Her name was Sierra Simon.”

She gave me a condescending look and then turned toward the window. “Yeah. Sierra. Fucking bitch.”

Holly placed blame for the affair on the waitress, saying that she should have had enough common sense not to fuck a married man. She set up fake accounts on every social media platform imaginable, and friended her on Facebook while posing as another person. After a few years of stalking her, she eventually let it go.

But she never found fault in Hank’s actions.

I, on the other hand, viewed it no differently than I viewed my father’s decision to cheat on my mother. He had a responsibility to be faithful to her, and he didn’t meet it. He made a conscious decision to crush her belief that he loved her and her alone. I viewed the aftermath, entirely, as being his fault.

It wasn’t a matter of if a man would cheat, it was a matter of when. For men, it seemed lying was second nature.

“Hey!” Holly shouted. “Is this him?”

Her voice brought me back to reality. I wiped my watering eyes as I walked toward the window. “Huh?”

She pointed toward the glass. “Is this your guy?”

The faint sound of a motorcycle running grew louder as I approached her. I stepped to her side and looked out the window. A man with crazy hair was seated on a motorcycle that was parked at the curb in front of the adjoining building. Standing on the sidewalk beside the man’s motorcycle, was Baker.

“Oh wow. Yeah. He’s the one on the sidewalk with the beard and tattoos.”

Holly pressed her forehead against the glass. “That guy on the motorcycle took off his helmet, and I was like, holy crap.”

I looked at her. “What?”

“He’s sexy.”

I took another look at him. His long hair hung in his face, and his arms weren’t completely tattooed, like Baker’s. Instead, they were spotted with small pieces of illegible artwork. “He looks like a thug.”

“So does that other guy.”

“Whatever.”

Baker seemed nervous. Every few seconds, he glanced over each shoulder. After a moment, the man on the motorcycle nodded and put his helmet on. Then, Baker turned toward the building, and the man rode away.

Holly took a step back and looked at me. “Looks like they were doing something shady.”

“Looked to me like two friends talking.”

She made a face as if she’d swallowed a worm. “Your guy looks sketchy.”

“Not as sketchy as that ex-con on the motorcycle.”

“He kept looking over his shoulder, like he thought the cops were coming.”

“Who? The ex-con?” I asked, although I knew she meant Baker. For some reason, I felt the need to defend him.

“No. Your guy.”

I gave her a cross look. “His name is Baker.”

“He looks sketchy. He acts sketchy. I say he’s sketchy.”

I tossed my hands in the air. “He might be,” I said. “I don’t care. I’m not married to him, I’m just riding his dick.”

As much as I told myself that was the case, the spasm in the pit of my stomach said otherwise.