The floors are new hardwood but look like perfectly aged barn board. The kitchen has all new chef-quality appliances, a long island covered in a pricey slab of marble, and custom cabinetry. The living room is anchored by a massive gray sectional and a heavy antique wooden coffee table, both sitting on a large area rug. Custom bookshelves line the walls and are filled with books.

Ezra tells me to make myself at home and disappears down a hallway to shower and change. I move around the living room, soaking up the domestic details of him. On the wall are some black-and-white photographs that have been blown up and framed. One is of a pair of feet dangling over the lake; you can see right down to the rocks on the bottom. The tanned, dirty feet belong to a child, and I’m pretty sure they’re Ezra’s. The next photo is of a clothesline lined with white sheets, which are billowing up in such a way that the forest is revealed just beyond them, and if you look very closely you can see the forms of two people standing far away among the trees. The last photo was taken looking up into a tree. The bark is in focus, but the higher up you look the more out of focus the tree becomes, so that you’re barely able to make out that someone is actually sitting high up in the branches.

Moving in closer, I get the strange sense that it’s me up there in that tree. I take a step back and look at all the photos together and know it right away—they’re May’s. The breath is sucked out of me. Stumbling on her work without warning is like seeing her ghost face-to-face.

“June,” Ezra calls out for me from somewhere in the apartment. I turn away from the photos and follow the sound of his voice.

He’s standing in the middle of his bedroom, still damp from the shower, wearing only a towel around his waist. Seeing all that skin, his muscles, the hair on his chest, wipes my brain clean and makes my body start buzzing.

He motions for me to come closer, and I step into his embrace. My hands go to his back, still slick with water, and my mouth lands on his. I can taste the body wash he used in the shower and smell the deodorant he must have just applied. My senses are overloaded with pine, citrus, and sandalwood, and I love it.

The wet from his stubble brushes my own cheeks as he puts a hand on the back of my head and pulls me in as close as he can. I am just about to rip that towel from his body when his cell phone starts ringing on the bedside table.