She returns with a colorful knitted quilt and proceeds to drape it over me. We keep talking. I start touching her leg, cautiously at first, and then with increasing confidence. I move my hand up her thigh. I’m still shivering as I press my fingers against the holes in her fishnets. We keep talking as if nothing is happening. I inch my hand higher; her body feels warmer. I ask inane, mindless questions. She smiles and laughs a little, and asks, “Do you really care?”

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

I kiss her. At first it just feels like mouth on mouth, lips against lips. But I keep kissing her, and it starts to feel good. I run my fingers through her hair, I move my body on top of hers. She bends her knees and I am between her legs. I cup her hips with my palms as I kiss her. Her kisses are full, she flicks her tongue against mine, her body beneath me feels tiny and I like it. She says we should probably go to her room. I let her lead me through the dark and to her bed. She tells me this is new for her. I tell her I already know this.

I pull back the waistband of her fishnets and place my hand beneath them. I ask her if it’s too much. No, she says, it’s not. I slip my fingers inside her. After a few moments her body shudders. I roll off her and we lie beside each other. She takes my hand and kisses the top of it. Then she says she’d like to make something to eat. “You hungry?” she asks.

“I’m okay,” I say, sensing I should leave. “I’m gonna go.”

“Don’t feel like I’m pushing you out,” she says, which of course means “I’m pushing you out.”

I return to the living room and get dressed. My clothes are embarrassingly strewn about, much less sexy in the aftermath. I call out good night and close the door behind me.

The next morning I leave the building through the back door, afraid of running into Tara in the hallway. I’m shaky and hungover and my heart is beating fast. I’m not yet sure how I feel about what happened, but I know she is now different to me. She’s imbued with an electric charge. Around three in the afternoon I get a text from her: No shame, friend. How’s your hangover?

Shame isn’t what I feel. I tell her this, and I wait for a response, but she doesn’t answer.

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