TURNED OUT, SHE WAS both refreshed and relieved when she woke up the next morning. After John had left last night, she’d quickly showered, yanked her shorts and cami on and practically face-planted into the bed. She’d been out like a light. Around 2:00 a.m., a noise on the street below had woken Mary from a dead sleep, but then Ruth was there, stretched out along Mary’s side, her tail flicking curiously, and Mary was soothed enough to fall back asleep.

But now it was 7:00 a.m., she had a full night’s rest under her belt, the fog of yesterday starting to recede, and it was fully setting in just where exactly Mary was.

She was in John’s apartment. John’s bed.

It was such a strange intimacy to be in someone’s bed without them. Almost as if they were there, or some shadowy ghost of them was there. Mary knew that John did not lay behind her on the other pillow, but she caught the faint strains of deodorant and detergent and aftershave, and she felt his presence anyhow. This was the ceiling that John looked at each morning. Those were the bonging, reverent tones of the church down the street that John listened to upon the turn of each hour. Here were John’s worn cotton sheets, so soft after so many years of use.

It was like she was swimming in a sweatshirt of his, or wearing his reading glasses for a moment. It was delicious and disorienting.

What she wanted to do was make a cup of coffee in his decades-old Coffee Mate she’d spotted on the counter. She wanted to bring that coffee and sit for a while in John’s bed. She wanted the sheets to pool around her hips. She wanted to pretend that John was just out grabbing some breakfast for them. That he’d be back in a matter of minutes. That he’d slide under the sheets with her and drink half her cup of coffee.

And because she wanted to do those things, Mary got out of bed instead. She knew that daydreaming any longer was bound to be bad for her health and bad for her relationship with John. So, she roused herself, brewed some coffee and took another quick shower. She changed into the dress she’d brought, and by the time the coffee was ready, her hair was already wispily drying, that was how warm it was today.

Mary sipped her coffee and picked up her towels from the bathroom sink. She wondered if he had a hamper or something she could put them in. Maybe some small part of her acknowledged that she wanted to snoop just a little bit, but most of her just wanted to not impose mess on her host’s hospitality. Mary swung open the one door that he hadn’t introduced her to, and sure enough, it was John’s closet.