The next day she was in the bathroom putting on lipstick and practicing her look. That was all she needed to break most men, but Tim was different. He was different in so many ways. Why hadn’t she realized what she was getting into that first day in the supermarket? She couldn’t stop thinking about his little house and that maybe in addition to holding his secrets it might also be the way into his heart. She stepped farther from the mirror to admire the red on her lips. The doorbell rang then unexpectedly, and by the time she came outside, no one was there. On the top step sat a pot full of homemade meatballs still warm from the oven.

She decided it was time to have sex.

She chose an afternoon that her mother was not home and he came over after work, his hands still dusty from unloading a shipment of Idaho potatoes. She hooked her thumb into the back of his jeans and playfully pushed him toward the kitchen sink until they were standing side by side, thighs rubbing.

She pumped soap out of the dispenser and rubbed the white pearly liquid into the grooves of his hands, trying to look concentrated while she leaned over knowing that her breast was touching his chest. Still clinging to his hands, she slipped them under the running water and allowed the suds to pool in the corners of the basin. She stopped rubbing his fingers to make circles on the rough skin of his knuckles and he tilted his head back slightly.

Therese leaned in and gently kissed the space that connected his neck to his shoulder. Surprised that his skin was so delicate, she let the tip of her nose rest against his softness. Suddenly, he grabbed her waist with his slippery hands. She felt spots of wetness forming on her blouse and seeping through to her skin, but when she pushed him away, he pulled her in harder. When he put his mouth on hers, all she could smell was the dirt she had worked so hard to cleanse him of. That was how it began—she would tease and he would restrain and then he would leap at her with such fury and intensity, she could feel the desperation in his movements. He drew her in with the same level of concentration that he used with his chocolate shakes.

Every Tuesday afternoon they met at her mother’s house. It became their routine until she began making excuses for why they could no longer meet. Tuesdays passed like pages in a book and still she waited, hoping that his addiction to her would prove so powerful that he would relent and invite her into that little red house.