When they had first compared their sexual histories, David had told Claire, truthfully, that he’d slept with a grand total of six girls, and she had said, ‘Me too,’ and in his relief he’d made an awkward joke about not knowing that Claire liked girls. He often remembered that moment: his foolish acceptance of the matching number, but also the joke. Had he hit on the truth by accident? Was Claire really interested in women? She had never expressed any curiosity to him; and here she was, living with a man, calling herself his girlfriend. He had to respect the identity she chose to assert. Who wants to be the idiot who decides his lover is gay just because she doesn’t want to sleep with him any more? But even with all the respecting he had done, even with all the work, their sex life was still a disaster. He believed, profoundly believed, that she was just as frustrated as him, but didn’t know it. What else might she not know about herself?

He opened the notebook at random and started to read.

G. was a comedian, or wanted to be. We were both very drunk when we met for the first time in the union and went back to his room. He told me later that he’d already vomited and then continued drinking before we even spoke to each other. I said that was disgusting, and he immediately said that I’d stunk of garlic because I’d been for Chinese with my friends, so we were even. He was very skinny: I must have weighed more than him. We fucked in his narrow single bed, me on top, so hammered our carelessness extended to the sex itself, which we never really finished. We saw each other a handful of times, always with mutual friends, and always ending up in bed, despite the fact that we seemed to hate one another, to have skipped straight to the bitterness of the soon-to-be-no-more. The night he left the union leading a different girl by the hand, right past me, right in front of me, I cried on the shoulder of someone I wanted to call my friend, not because I was surprised, but because I had known it was coming and been unable to stop myself.