“I have to use the bathroom,” I blurted out.

On the way there, I passed the bookcase at which Langham and I had first kissed. Could it have been only one week ago? The spines of the books swam before me. I felt unsteady and gripped the side of the bookcase for support. There was the book we had laughed over: How could anyone possibly read six hundred eighty-three pages on the history of the zipper? He had looked at me, I knew, with craving. But it all felt unreal to me now, our shared laughter, the arousal, the pleasure of knowing with certainty I was desired. I could not even conjure his old expression, only the face he’d worn moments ago, resolutely detached, skimming over me as if I no longer existed. I imagined asking him what had happened, how it had gone wrong, and his voice echoed through my mind: Did you really think I’d be interested in someone like you? Maybe he had fucked me as a way to conquer my parents. I was drunk, he might say. Why had he called me this past week? Was it to ask if I would be here tonight, so he would know not to come? Was it to ask me, explicitly, not to? You look nothing like I remembered. I got it all wrong. Someone’s thirsty… I wanted to run to the bartender, throw myself onto him, press myself into him, my face into his chest.

My phone buzzed. Langham had texted from the other room:

Thx for pretending nothing happened.

I wanted to ravage, I wanted to cry, I wanted to be ravaged, I wanted to be held. I wanted to be fucked, was what I really wanted. To lie still and dead and be ransacked. I wanted to be thrown around like a doll, limp and ragged, and ripped apart.

The phone buzzed again:

Heading home, take care.

And then I noticed, farther up on the home screen, that I had missed several texts from Jojo in the past couple of hours.

Did you seriously just leave this party without telling me?

Where are you?

Are you with Sam? I can’t find him.

Where the fuck are you?

I ran to my old bedroom and closed the door and threw myself onto the bed. The room was still covered in the daisy-patterned wallpaper that had adorned it all my childhood. An image came into my mind—ripping my limbs from my body and roasting them over a pit; popping my head off and throwing it against the wall to explode like a pumpkin—and I squeezed my eyes shut against it, rubbed myself with an angry fervor. My heartbeat quickened, my breath quickened, the backs of my legs were sweating. New images burst forth: thick hands on my thighs; a stingray; a laugh; being flipped roughly over; patio guy’s big bumpy knee; a hand on my neck; the twin knobs of his collarbone; the spire of a building; the swish of a cape; a man’s ass; a swoop of hair; the bartender. I tilted my pelvis up toward my right hand, grabbed my ass with my left, my fingernails digging into my flesh. His cheekbones casting shadows, his beard, his eyes. I saw you. The movement of his forearm over the bar, the circles of his hand as he wiped it down, the other hand balanced against the bar. His eyes, boring into me. His hand in my hair, twisting my head around to meet his gaze. Freud would understand. The daisy-patterned wallpaper. The latticework of my radiator. I saw you. His beard, his eyes, his forearms with the muscles moving underneath, the radiator and its interlocking shapes, his sturdy fingers, the hair at the nape of his neck, our bodies pressed together. Come back. The carved-out shapes of the radiator, the small spaces between our bodies, Did you want to be seen? He was the one person who knew me, he was not a contemptuous judge, he was protector, he was possession, he was mine, I was his.