The first night of our arrangement, Holt seems irritated when he walks into the room. The lights are dimmed and I am seated on the edge of his bed, completely naked, with my hands folded primly in my lap, and my hair in two long braids I’ve carefully arranged to cover my nipples.

“I expect you to be ready for me when I arrive.”

“I am ready,” I say after a confused beat.

His face hardens. “This isn’t New Haven,” he informs me. “This is an arrangement. No kissing, and I am not touching you more than necessary. That means it’s your job to make sure you’re ready to receive me when I walk into this room.”

I stay confused for another second or two. Until suddenly…I’m not.

And that is how I end up fingering myself again under his watchful gaze as he unbuttons his shirt and takes off his pants.

At first, it is so very, very awkward. The dim lights do nothing to alleviate the awful exposed feeling that comes from engaging in one of the many indecent behaviors my mother warned me about—in front of someone who hates me. But despite all the disinterest in his voice…his eyes stay on me. Eating up the sight of what he refuses to touch “more than necessary” while the flesh between his legs becomes long and heavy right before my eyes. The sight has me rubbing faster and harder until I have to stop for fear of coming.

“I’m…I’m ready.” My voice is breathless as I think about how primly I folded my hands in my lap, purposefully placing them so that the top of my vagina was hidden. But now I sit before him, wet and gaping, my fingers covered with my own essence.

“Turn over,” he says, his words a hard scrape in the darkened room. Then he rips open a foil package I hadn’t noticed in his hand. “You can either get on your hands and knees, or bend over the bed.”

I climb onto my hands and knees with the feeling that I need some kind of foundation under me for this arrangement—

He is on top of me, faster than expected, one hand fisting both my braids and yanking so hard my bottom half thrusts down at the same time he slices into my most vulnerable space from behind. Basic physics, I think after sitting in on so many science classes at CIT. With one stroke, he fills me completely. With two, he sets a ruthless pace, moving in and out of me like a beast bent on domination.

No, not domination, I correct myself. Revenge. Every rough thrust is a punishment, every yank on my braids an indictment for my past crimes.

It is so different from how he was with me in New Haven. But to my shame, the result is still the same.

Arturo was good in bed. Sweet and considerate. Decent—he always put in the effort to make sure I had an orgasm, too.

But with Holt, I come apart. So fast it scares me. Part of me wonders if it is possible for any other man to be like this for me. That summer between Holt and I was so long ago, but it feels like it has somehow rewired me. As if the only person in the universe who can make me come this fast and hot is Holt. And only Holt. Amen.

He yells out behind me, angry and guttural as if I have taken something from him. And his strokes lose coherence, becoming faster and faster until he explodes into the condom. Then and only then does he let go of my braids.

We both breathe hard. For a few moments that is the only sound in the room.

Then he pulls out and says, “Don’t be here when I get out of the shower.”

Nothing more is spoken after that, and the next sound I hear is the rasp of his bare feet against the large Oriental carpet as he walks away from the bed. By the time I sit up, he is already closing the suite’s bathroom door behind him.

I feel terrible and abandoned and bereft. Even worse than last night. But this is the deal, I remind myself as I climb out of the bed and grab my silk kimono. The arrangement. And besides, I did not come to his office last night looking to relive our past, but to escape it.

Sex with Holt is humiliating. Rough and weird and wrong in so many ways. But after the boys are fast asleep the next day, my breasts swell and my womanhood tingles with anticipation as I put on my kimono and braid my hair. My body continues to want Holt, even if my brain knows it shouldn’t.

That night and every night that follows, we go through the same routine. Him watching me masturbate with that hungry wolf look in his blue eyes. Then I let him know I’m ready, and he gives me the signal to turn over before falling on top of me and rutting me like an animal.

Funny, I had thought my past responsiveness to him was a fluke of my youth. But no…it’s still happening. I come embarrassingly fast every night. Even though there’s an edge to us now, a roughness that wasn’t there before. No more gazing tenderly into one another’s eyes as we make love on a sex cloud of our own making.

Most of the time, he doesn’t even talk to me. Just strips off his clothes while I “get ready.” Then he takes me from behind. Hard. After that first night, he refuses to face me again. Maybe he is afraid I’ll end up hugging him a second time.

He’s probably right.

He is so much prettier now. So put together. Unlike ten years ago, he looks and sounds like a man one could trust to run a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Yet sometimes…usually, after I’ve come, I am so tempted to turn over on my back and pull him into my arms.

Maybe he senses this. He always pulls out fast after we’re done. And even though he only walks away, it feels like he’s running when he disappears into his en-suite bathroom. And though he no longer bothers to tell me not to be there when he returns, I know he wants me gone without him having to say a word.

So I go. And even though we have fallen into a routine by late September, I feel a little heartsick every time I make the trip back to the guest cottage.

This situation makes me wish a few weird and conflicting nevers. I wish we’d never met that summer night. I wish I could hate having sex with Holt.

One night I choose to stand and bend over the bed as he takes me from behind. And that turns out to be a mistake. When he wraps my braids in his fist and pulls my head back, his lips hover so close to my neck, I can feel his breath. Without thinking, I turn my face to kiss him. But as soon as my lips graze his, he jerks back as if I’ve burnt him.

“Not New Haven,” he grunts. Then he releases my braids and pushes me down on the bed, pinning me there with a hand on my back until I come a few minutes later, despite having my wish denied.

Most of all, I wish that night never happened. The night when he OD’d and it all fell apart.

But my wishes mean nothing. The past happened. Still, one night in early October I call to him as he walks away from the bed.

“Holt?”

And though this is not our usual routine, and he is already halfway to the bathroom, he turns and says, “Yeah?”

He is splendidly naked. Even if the room wasn’t softly lit so the overhead lights compliment his body instead of harshly highlighting all the flaws like the ones in my old bungalow, I suspect he would still look like a Greek god.

“Yeah?” he says again. Impatient in a way he almost never was in New Haven.

In my mind, I ask if he ever wishes we never met. My heart asks him why he didn’t suspect from the start that we were doomed. And my soul wails questions from all the heartbreak songs that have made me think of him over the past ten years.

But aloud I say, “Nothing.”

He regards me for another millisecond or two. Then he seems to make an icy decision and continues his journey to the bathroom. After picking up my clothes, I make my way from the room.

When you think about it, really, truly think about it, there are so many broken things in the world that can never be fixed. Holt and I are one more broken thing. A speck of a broken thing in a universe of broken things. What we had, what we’ve broken, doesn’t even matter. And that is the truth.