Not enough. Not close. Maybe, when you could bring most people into your arms, you eventually stood at this crossing. He could see in her eyes that she, so wonderfully, was not even close to where he was. She ached for him. He recalled feeling that. Maybe the problem was he knew what it was to want, and be denied, and then get what he wanted over and over and over.

He didn’t want to come. He didn’t want to make her come. He wanted nothing. No, that was not honest. He wanted sensations that had no names.

He kissed her in an exploratory way and almost started talking to her. He would not say her name, that was too easy. He thought of the things he had said in the past, to other women, and meant. “I have wanted this for so long.” “You make me crazy.” “What are you thinking?” “Am I anything to you?” “I cannot have enough of you.” He could not bring himself to say any of them. He wanted to go into his room and sleep, but that would upset her. There was only one thing to do and that was finish. He thought of her breasts, the way they were before she became so thin. That fullness that was only Heather’s. He could not come with the new Heather in mind. In mind? She was there; he was in her. What was wrong with him? He wanted the old Heather. He fucked that memory; he came then.

He pulled up his sweatpants and held on to her. Then he whispered, “Lie down with me.” Black old birds, the usual questions, were arriving. Why couldn’t he fall in love? What was it that cut him off from that nectar of being alive? Once again, he put his hands through the sand of his past and pulled, hoping this time to find something that might explain it. There was nothing. It wasn’t that his fiancée had fucked his brother. He didn’t love her before that. He didn’t love her when he told her he loved her. He didn’t love her when he told himself he loved her. It looked like he had been wronged, but he had been relieved. It had given him room. Excuse enough to leave.

As he held Heather, it was plain to him that he could only respond to an assembled woman, one cobbled together from the old Heather’s fullness and the new Heather’s wanting him. Together, she was desirable, but even then, this compiled Heather of his mind, she failed him.