When I woke up, I wasn’t alone in my bed. Maya lay next to me, her brown hair fanned on the pillow and her body curled like a question mark. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes pressed against her cheeks and she looked as young as I remembered her from our college days. I lifted my hand and brushed the back of it down her cheek. It was to check if she was real, to see that she wasn’t an apparition.

I couldn’t believe she had spent the night, any more than I could believe she had accepted me and we’d had sex. It was something from a novel, the kind of dream that usually didn’t become a reality. And I realized with a shock that it was the first thing to go my way in years.

God, last night had been perfect. At dinner, we had slipped back into our old ways, talking and laughing, even joking as if none if it had occurred, as if the years that had gone by hadn’t happened at all. Maya had always projected an easy comfort that I could slip into, a way of being that resonated with me. And she was stunning, her dress and her hair and her eyes. Everything had been mesmerizing.

I had been thrilled that she’d wanted to come home with me afterward, and had vowed I wouldn’t ask her to do anything she didn’t want to do. I’d told myself I would let her call the shots. But the sexual tension had been electric in the air and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from kissing her. It had gone downhill from there, but I was relieved that she’d felt the same way about it. She’d instigated our sex as much as I had.

And it had been fucking fantastic. Being inside her, having her body rearing over mine as she rode me, her hair splayed out on my chest, those lips around my dick—it was all like a fantasy.

One that got me hard again just thinking about it.

I considered pulling her closer to me, waking her up and going for round two. But I didn’t want to push my luck. We were in a good place.

So, instead of finding a resting place for my cock I willed it to go down. I pulled boxers on and walked to the kitchen. My erection slowly deflated while I made coffee. By the time I was done with coffee, with cups and sugar on a tray, I was flaccid again and I could wake her up without making it look like I expected something of her.

I put the tray on the nightstand next to her and slid my hand into hers which was upturned on the pillow.

“Morning, beautiful,” I said, when she opened her eyes and blinked sleepily at me. She flashed me a lazy smile and stretched. The sheets slipped off her naked body and her breasts were gloriously on display—so soft and malleable. I couldn’t stop myself from staring, and I felt my cock stir in my pants again.

“What time is it?” Maya asked, pulling the sheets up over her chest again, and I was grateful.

“It’s just after seven. I have time for a quick cup of coffee before I have to get to work.”

I gestured to the cups I’d prepared. Maya sat up, smiling.

“Coffee in bed, what a treat,” she said, and sipped it. “You remembered how I like it,” she said, surprised. I shrugged. I remembered everything about her.

“You’re the only woman on earth that doesn’t drink sugar in her coffee,” I said.

Maya laughed. “I guess you’re right. Are you leaving soon?”

“Yeah, I have to get going by eight. You’re welcome to spend as much time here as you like, though. There’s no rush for you to leave.”

“Oh, no. I have to get to training as well. I promised the girls I would join them earlier so we could watch the third stringers train. I just love watching them when they’re working on their game behind the scene.”

I flinched when she mentioned watching football players. Jealousy flared up inside me like a fire and I had trouble swallowing it down. When Maya and I had dated, I was still playing. It had been my life then and we had been perfect together because she was such big fan, of the sport and of me. Now, I wasn’t playing anymore. There was nothing worse than hearing the woman I spent the night with saying she wanted to watch other men play football. That could have been me, I thought bitterly.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I had hoped she hadn’t noticed.

“I just remembered a document I need to fax first thing,” I lied, because I was a pussy and I couldn’t tell her what the real problem was. “I have to get ready to go.”

Maya nodded and stood up. The sheets slipped from her body and she stood before me in her naked glory. I stared and she blushed as if I hadn’t seen her naked before, as if she didn’t know how breathtakingly beautiful she was.

I turned away from her. If I didn’t, I would want to jump her again and it wasn’t only inappropriate, it would make me late. I walked to my closet and put on a business suit. Maya disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, she wore the same red dress from last night. She had twisted her hair up and somehow made it stay in a loose bun. She carried her heels in her hands. I watched her walk behind me in the mirror. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and unlocked the screen.

Her face crumpled and she closed her eyes a moment, taking a deep breath. She didn’t know I was watching.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Maya plastered a smile on her face but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Perfect. Sara wants to know where I am.”

Of course. Living with someone was different than living alone, coming and going as you pleased. I envied her that. I’d had a roommate in college, but Liam had been my best friend, not my roommate. Maybe, if everything had gone differently for me, Liam and I could have gotten a place together. But he’d been scouted to play for Texas and he’d moved away. I wouldn’t have been able to live shoulder to shoulder with the man that had gotten everything I’d ever wanted in life, anyway. It wouldn’t have worked.

The alternative was that I was always alone, and that sucked, too.

Maya and I walked out of the apartment together and I waited with her until she got a cab. I didn’t want to leave her standing alone on the curb. When the car stopped in front of us, I opened the car door for her. She turned to face me.

“I had a great time,” she said.

“Me too.”

She smiled at me.

“I’d like to do it again, sometime. I mean, I’d like to see you again. I mean, well, whatever it is we end up doing.”

God, I sounded like an idiot. Maya grinned at me.

“I’d like to do it again, too,” she said, with a voice that suggested all sorts of dirty things and I swallowed. She stepped toward me, the car door trapped between us and pressed her lips against mine.

“Have a good day, Kyle,” she said, as if she hadn’t just rocked my world off its axis, as if we had merely shaken hands.

“You too,” I said, when I’d caught my breath again. She ducked into the car and I closed the door behind her, tapping the roof so the driver knew he could go. I watched the car drive away until the taillights disappeared around a turn, then I walked to my own car.

God, what a night. My mind was full of Maya, the way she felt, the way she sounded, the way she smelled. She was my dream girl. She always had been. Somehow, after all these years, I’d found her again. This time, if we became anything serious, I was going to hold onto her. Of course, it still remained to be seen, but I typically didn’t make the same mistake twice, and losing her had been the biggest mistake I’d ever made.

Reaching into my car, I climbed in, turning into traffic. I always had to fight through traffic in the business district this time of morning. Usually, I left for the office much earlier and left the office earlier in the afternoon to miss peak hour traffic. My hours were a little flexible and I preferred to avoid traffic jams. But today, I was willing to brave bumper-to-bumper traffic for the sake of spending more time with Maya. I hadn’t wanted to leave early with her in my bed, her body heat soaking my sheets and the semblance of my happily-ever-after reminding me that life could be just as good as it could be bad.

I caught traffic on the Dolphin Expressway, slowing down to a slow crawl. Usually, it would have drained me of life, and made me feel dull and dreary. Today, I didn’t care that I was stuck in traffic, or that I had to wait for over an hour when I would have normally been at the office in less than twenty minutes. I had a lot on my mind and it was all good. I was in a great mood.

It had been so long since I’d been in a good mood, I had forgotten how amazing it was to be on such a high.

I thought about Maya again, remembering the sheet slipping from her body to show me her nakedness. She was so confident about her body, so self-assured. It was a pleasure to see a woman that didn’t feel self-conscious or insecure about her body. Last night, Maya as I saw her on the bed illuminated by moonlight that had fallen through the undrawn curtains, she had been a vision of confidence. She had been happy and in a good mood, the way I remembered her.

She’d been happy most of the time, except when Sara had asked where she was. I saw her face in my mind’s eye again, crumbling a little as if she had hoped she wouldn’t be asked, and wouldn’t be found.

Which, in retrospect, didn’t make sense. Why would she react that way if her best friend asked her where she was? I knew Sara. Maya and Sara had been joined at the hip as long as I could remember, and I understood the dynamic between them. They had never felt like they needed to answer to each other, to explain themselves, or prove themselves somehow. I used to joke with her that her friendship with Sara was the same as my friendship with Liam. Or at least, what it used to be.

So, Maya’s reaction hadn’t made sense. Why had she looked like she’d dreaded the message she’d gotten if it was from Sara? Unless it wasn’t from Sara. Which suggested there was something she was keeping from me.

But I had no right to know everything that went on in her life. I had lost that right when I’d told her it was over between us. When I had thrown away a perfectly good relationship. Of course, there would be things I didn’t know about her. She had built a life without me.

The only thing I could do was to see her again, to spend more time with her, so bit by bit I could find out who she was now and get to know here again.