“Ooh, a foreigner, how fabulous!” she said laughing, putting on her thick southern drawl. And then she paused. “Are you telling me this because it’s serious?”

“I’m telling you this because I have no idea.”

I loved my mother’s laugh. I missed its frequency. “That’s the best stage.”

“Is it?”

“For sure. Don’t you dare squander it. Don’t let that jerk of an ex-boyfriend keep you from having fun.”

I sighed. “But it feels so uncharted. I always knew what to expect with Andy.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it, and her answering silence felt thundering.

“Did you?”

She knew me so well. I could practically see her arms crossed, her I’m-gonna-kick-some-ass face. “No. I didn’t.”

“Do you feel like you know this guy?”

“That’s the weird thing. I kind of feel like I do.”

No matter how much I thought about it, or how little sleep I got that night, it’d be fair to say I had no idea where Max’s head was after what happened Monday. The dynamics were backward: He was supposed to know how to do this casual thing. I was supposed to know how to do commitment.

And neither of us was supposed to want anything but sex. But somehow, it had never been like that. The niggling desire to know each other had started pushing its way in from day one, and I knew that as much as I wanted to be a person who could compartmentalize my relationship into Just Sex, I never really would be.

I remembered the panic on his face when he chased me down, and felt a stab of guilt.

Sara, you are complete fail at Booty Call for Beginners.

On Wednesday he texted me a picture from our night at the library. It was of the hem of my dress, pushed up against my lower back. A simple shot, but he’d stylized it into black-and-white, and the original was blurry enough for me to know he’d taken it toward the end, when I’d dissolved into inarticulate recitation and he’d followed me into orgasm with a groan muffled against my neck.

On Thursday, it was a picture I remembered seeing as we flipped through his phone on the Fourth of July. It was a photo of my hands unbuttoning his jeans. I’d pulled the denim away from his skin just enough to see the faint shape of his cock straining against his gray boxer briefs.

Both pictures were sent around lunchtime, and I received them while I worked on finalizing two major contracts. I tried to convince myself that I felt giddy from getting a few contracts done rather than from the prospect of seeing him.

I was a giant lying liar.

“Question,” George said, walking into my office without knocking first. “Are we entirely sure Max Stella is straight? I’ve been thinking about this since he was here on Monday.”

I blinked, trying to figure out if I’d just said his name out loud or if George was just doing what Chloe had been doing since the Stella & Sumner meeting: making constant, casual references to their firm, and then watching me for any reaction.