“I thought so.” She smiled, tentatively. “I like you, too, a lot. I want us to talk about moving to the next level.”

I knew having lunch with her was a bad idea, he thought. If they were in a private place, he would have blown his top right about then. But in a busy restaurant, surrounded by other diners and staff, he had to avoid making a scene, keep his voice down and sound reasonable.

“What do you mean, the next level?” he asked.

“Real talk,” she said. “We get together at my place and we have sex. I’ll be honest, you know how to make me feel good, real good, and I know I’m doing the same for you. It’s mutual satisfaction. But we’re just fuck buddies, Troy. I need more than that if we’re going to keep doing this.”

“I like you a lot, Liz,” he said. “But are you forgetting what we established when we first started doing this? My non-negotiable rules of engagement?”

“Right.” She made a look of disgust. “I don’t expect you to leave your family or anything. But I need to be more than a warm body in the bedroom. I need . . . I need an emotional connection.”

Their food arrived, two steaming platters of gyros and fries. It looked and smelled delicious. Troy speared a strip of lamb with his fork.

She stared at him, hadn’t touched her food. “You’re going to just sit there and eat after what I said?”

“I’m starving, Liz. I didn’t eat much for breakfast.”

“Can you at least give me some kind of answer?” She was clutching her fork.

He chewed, wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, swallowed.

“Again, I don’t know why you’re asking me about this.”

“Don’t you want to have some real conversations, and somewhere other than my bedroom?” she asked. “Spend real, quality time together? I know you have that Harley, for example. I love motorcycles. Why can’t we have like a day trip on your bike?”

“I reserve day trips for my wife and kids.”

She flinched as if struck with an open hand.

“Look, Liz.” He put down his fork. “Let’s not pretend that we didn’t discuss all of this at the very beginning. I told you exactly what I was looking for, and you were fine with it. Now, you’ve caught feelings and want to change the rules. I’m not having it. Subject closed.”

He spoke the words in a deliberately harsh tone, and he expected her to respond with an emotional explosion, like most women would have. In his experience, every arrangement such as this one reached a breaking point, and it seemed as if it was time to blow up this one, and move on to the next thing.