It was the presumed power that I fed off, the glimpses of vulnerability from the kind of man whom I’d rarely seen show emotion, let alone candid interest in someone. I was a game player because I expected it, because I had never really known anything different. And I always believed that was where one’s power in dating lay, one chess piece ahead of the other person. But I hadn’t realized how incredible it was to know that person’s feelings for you, and manipulate that vulnerability however I saw fit.

I stayed that night. When we got to the brownstone he made us martinis, plucking the olives out of a jar with a toothpick. We sat outside, in the little garden with the swing set, empty and desolate-looking under the moon. He spoke some more about his childhood. He grew up middle class in Connecticut. His mom was a physician’s assistant, his dad “worked in insurance.” He felt slighted and thus ostracized because he didn’t get into the schools his brother had attended. He felt slighted and ostracized in general from being in the shadow of his big brother. He thought he had a mild form of dyslexia that was never diagnosed. He wasn’t popular in high school, he said, or in college. But something changed when he entered the working world, in finance. By the time he started his own company, he had discovered a confidence and self-possession that he hadn’t been able to attain in any other situation.

“Because you were destroying the world, finally. You had power,” I said nonchalantly. He paused, imbibing that sentiment.

“I guess you’re right.”

I plucked the olive from his empty glass and slid it onto my tongue. “I’m always right.” He leaned over and kissed me then, so, so gently that I almost thought it didn’t happen, a mirage of a movement. But I pulled him closer, pressing harder, our teeth gnashing against each other. And then we were going upstairs, not to the second floor but to the third, to the master bedroom this time. The thought flickered, as I noticed the vanity, the screen in the corner painted with images of women bathing, that this was his ex-wife’s domain. That she existed within the drawers and closets, if not at that moment, then at some moment not too long ago.

I pushed that thought away, luxuriating in the high thread count sheets, closing my eyes as he slid off my skirt, shutting out all corners of the room until all I could see was the light behind my eyelids, all I could feel were his movements, the tender ways with which he held my body, his breath brushing it. I’d never had sex with a man who enjoyed kissing to the degree that he did.