But with Emily it had been complete sexual exploration and discovery. They learned from each other in stuttering, though achingly blissful, steps. Even now, as much as he detested her very being, he could still feel the tightening, could still recall the way his nerve endings would sing and surge when they were in bed. Or the back of a car. Or a movie theater or a library or once even during a poly sci lecture on Hobbes's Leviathan. While he may have yearned to be a Carpenters man, his first long-term relationship had ended up more like something off Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album--hot, heavy, sweaty, fast, the whole "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

Still, there had to have been more to it. He and Emily had lasted three years. He had loved her, and she'd been the first to break his heart.

"There a coffee bar near here?" she asked.

"A Starbucks," Myron said.

"I'll drive."

"I don't want to go with you, Emily."

She gave him the smile. "Lost my charms, have I?"

"They lost their effect on me a long time ago." Half lie.

She shifted her hips. Myron watched, thinking about what Esperanza had said. It wasn't just her voice or her words--even her movements ended up a double entendre. "It's important, Myron."

"Not to me."

"You don't even know--"

"It doesn't matter, Emily. You're the past. So is your husband--"

"My ex-husband. I divorced him, remember? And I never knew what he did to you."

"Right," Myron said. "You were just the cause."

She looked at him. "It's not that simple. You know that."

He nodded. She was right, of course. "I always knew why I did it," Myron said. "I was being a competitive dumbass who wanted to get one up on Greg. But why you?"

Emily shook her head. The old hair would have flown side to side, ending up half covering her face. Her new coif was shorter and more stylized, but his mind's eye still saw the kinky flow. "It doesn't matter anymore," she said.

"Guess not," he said, "but I've always been curious."

"We both had too much to drink."

"Simple as that?"

"Yes."

Myron made a face. "Lame," he said.

"Maybe it was just about sex," she said.

"A purely physical act?"

"Maybe."

"The night before you married someone else?"

She looked at him. "It was dumb, okay?"

"You say so."

"And maybe I was scared," she said.

"Of getting married?"

"Of marrying the wrong man."

Myron shook his head. "Jesus, you're shameless."

Emily was about to say more, but she stopped as though her last reserves had suddenly been zapped away. He wanted her gone, but with ex-loves there is also a pulling sadness. There before you stands the true road untraveled, the lifetime what-if, the embodiment of a totally alternate life if things had gone a little different. He had absolutely no interest in her anymore, yet her words still drew out his old self, wounds and all.