“I might want to do it again.”

I smile. “Me too.”

He moves his mouth to my neck, his left hand coming up to cup my breast.

“Is it weird,” I begin, “that I felt like I was having sex with someone new and old at the same time?”

This makes him laugh, and he bends, kissing my chest. Leaning back, he whispers, “Want to know something even weirder?”

My eyes fall closed. “I want to know everything.”

And for the first time in over a decade, I really do.

“It was years before I was with someone other than you. You were the only woman I was with until I was . . . well, for a long time.”

His words hit the blank wall of my sex haze, and then dread falls over me like blackness.

“I’ve loved you my whole life,” Elliot continues, his lips moving against my collarbone. Slowly, I open my eyes, and he looks up at me. “At least from the minute I ever thought about love, and sex, and women.”

He’s still inside me.

He smiles, and the moonlight catches the sharp angle of his jaw. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. It took a long time before I wanted anyone else, physically, at all.”

It’s a little like being in the eye of a tornado. All around me, things are happening, but inside my head, it’s so quiet.

At my silence, his eyes widen first, and then fall closed. “Oh, my God. I just realized what I’ve said.”

then

monday, january 1

eleven years ago

Just off the Richmond Bridge, I called Elliot, listening through the speaker as the phone rang and rang, eventually going to voice mail. About ten minutes into my drive it had occurred to me that I didn’t know where in town Christian lived, and I didn’t know how long Elliot would be there. It was after one in the morning now—he might even just be home, in bed, and I wouldn’t be able to get to him without waking up the rest of the house.

Highway 101 stretched out dark ahead of me, dotted with the occasional burning taillights of another car. It was otherwise empty, with clumps of drivers getting on and off the freeway around the dotted small towns: Novato, Petaluma, Rohnert Park . . . In Santa Rosa, I tried calling again, and this time an unfamiliar male voice answered.

“Elliot’s phone.” Noise blared, drunken and raucous, in the background.

A sour combination of relief and irritation twisted in me. It was nearly two in the morning and he—or at least his phone—was still at the party?

“Is Elliot around?” I asked.

“Who’s calling?”

I paused. “Who’s answering?”

The guy inhaled, and his answer came out tight, like he had just taken a giant hit off something. “Christian.”

“Christian,” I said, “this is Macy.”

He let out a long, controlled breath. “Elliot’s Macy?”