Her observations become increasingly suggestive, her questions more leading. Most of our conversations feel intentionally weighted, though maybe I’m imbuing them with intention. One night we arrive at the end of a bottle around midnight, at which point it’s time for her to go back to her apartment. I walk her to my front door. She smiles and reaches forward to hug me. When she pulls away we make eye contact before saying good night. Her eyes are icy gray, almost blue. They seem to hold both intensity and surprising vulnerability. They seem to say what she doesn’t want to.

•

Tara is a runner. She does it to relieve anxiety, she says, for peace of mind, and I assume to stay thin, as well. She stretches on the front porch, sweaty after her long runs. One afternoon, I step outside with a New Yorker and I sit down on the steps. I watch her stretch; her legs are tan and long and tight. She presses her heel into the cement and bends over to hold the toe of her sneaker at a forty-five-degree angle. I suddenly feel self-conscious. She asks if I’ll wait for her to shower so we can walk to the reading together. Yes, I say, I’ll wait for her.

She steps back out an hour later, freshly showered and wearing fishnet tights and a dress—always a skirt or a dress. She somehow looks even tanner now, glowing.

At the reading, we end up sitting a few seats apart. My eyes keep catching her legs, bound up in netting. Afterward we go to an imitation speakeasy with a few others poets in her cohort. We talk about dating other writers, about “MFA goggles,” a phenomenon in which men who would be considered unattractive in any other setting became appealing here, due to the lack of options. “I slept with Jimmy again,” Tara tells the group. Jimmy is our across-the-street neighbor and her intermittent hookup. “Case in point.”

I feel slightly disappointed, momentarily forgetting that I sleep with my boyfriend every weekend. I’m also a little relieved. Tara and I can go back to just being friends, with no possibility of more, none of the efforts that come with attraction. I drink several cocktails, and at last call we order a martini to split. It’s sufficient, we’re drunk. We walk home together, and once we arrive at our building she invites me to her apartment for one more drink, though we both know we don’t need any more.

She lies on her couch, which is a futon that the last tenant, a fellow poet, left behind. I sit on the edge of it. We make small talk. I start to shiver. “You’re freezing,” she says. “Let me get you a blanket.”