“Yeah.”

My lips pursed. “Great.”

She headed into the bathroom and returned a minute later, kicking off the duvet and settling down on my bed. “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”

I shrugged. “No. I told you before that you’re always welcome here. No questions asked.”

She huffed quietly. “You’re annoyed at me, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are. You won’t even look at me.”

“That’s not true.” It was true.

“Look at me, Alex.”

I stared stubbornly at the calendar. It was still five months behind. “No.”

“Stop being a git and look at me.”

“No.”

“Fucking hell, Alex. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t sleep with him, okay?”

“I—you—you can sleep with whoever you want.”

“I know I can. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I just…” She shrugged feebly. “I just wanted to see you.”

“You—oh. Why?”

“I don’t really know.” We were both silent for a moment. “I wanted to come here to you.”

“Okay.”

“I just…Jim is great, and stuff. And yeah, I planned on sleeping with him. But I just…I dunno. We went for a drink, he asked me back to mine. But then, I was bored. I missed you. Alex, I—”

She paused again and I raised an eyebrow, willed my hands to stop trembling. “What?”

“I want us to be together.”

My head snapped around. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly, and she made a show of inhaling a deep breath. Looking at her there, sitting on my bed, I could see that her cheeks were tinged with pink, her pupils slightly dilated. She wasn’t drunk, merely tipsy. Her confidence had been fueled by whatever drinks she consumed with Jim. “About last week. About…us. I was thinking about what you said this morning in the cemetery. What we said about life slipping us by. The thing is, I just—I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t get that night out of my head.”

My expression softened. I leaned back against the edge of my desk. “Neither can I.”

“That’s why I went on the date, you know. To—God—purge you from my brain, or something. And yet here I am.”

“Here you are.”

Connie finally looked at me, her expression gentle. There was a vulnerability there, in her eyes. Something unfamiliar to me and yet so touching. “I want to be with you, Alex.”

“Be with me? You mean, just like—have sex?”

“I…Yes. No. I want to be with you. Together, properly. I want—God, I don’t even know what I want, I just know that I want you. The thought of being with somebody else is just…or of you being with somebody else…I can’t stand it. Christ, I feel like an idiot. I want you to be with me. I want to be with you. I like being with you. I want to do it again.”

I blinked rapidly at her. I searched her face for some hint of cruel amusement but found only insecure sincerity. “Why not just sleep together, then? Why…Why do you want to be ‘together’? You said that you’re not gay. That you don’t like girls.”