He tapped my back with his fingers and hoisted me up so he could unzip his pants and pull out his cock so I could slide onto it. He gasped and tilted his head back as I rode him. My knees ground down into his couch cushions as we fucked. He held on to my hips and came quickly. I jumped off him, suddenly aware of what we had done. I pulled up my underwear and looked around for my things.

“You don’t have to go,” he said, and though I imagined he had uttered that phrase hundreds of times, he couldn’t even sound like he meant it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I could feel his cum getting my underwear wet. I didn’t want it to dribble down my leg in front of him.

“Don’t say anything to Bethanny,” I said.

“I won’t.”

I packed up my things and felt him watching me, but he didn’t move to help me.

I drove home and I knew he wouldn’t tell Bethanny. I could tell he was accustomed to keeping secrets. I wanted to leave with the upper hand, but I didn’t really, because I wanted to fuck him again so badly.

On my way home, I thought about how strange it was to be with a new person after being with the same one for so long. His penis was a different size and shape. I had forgotten about variation. I compared him with Bobby even though I didn’t want to. It made me miss Bobby for a moment. Not that Daniel’s penis was any better or worse, it was just different, and the difference reiterated that I would never see or feel Bobby’s penis again. I felt ashamed that this was the point that made me miss Bobby. That this was the thing that drove home a sense of loss for me. It seemed reckless to want to look at these encounters through a lens of love.

My sense of loss contained the following things:

That Daniel would never know that I left and called pharmacies on my drive home to see if they had Plan B.

That I considered buying it in a different neighborhood after calculating the probability that Bobby would be in line behind me while I picked up the Plan B from our pharmacy.

That I had taken it before, years before I met Bobby, and though I was more than a decade older, I still felt ashamed to ask for it.

That I provided my club-card number but immediately regretted it in case Bobby would receive coupons for emergency contraception the next time he came to fill a prescription.