“So why did you marry your husband?” I asked as she lay next to me. It was six in the evening and I’d been there since ten a.m. I had called in sick to the coffee shop so that I could spend a full weekday with her, from start to finish, or at least until her son came home from a day at sports camp. When I arrived she was in the kitchen making toast. She led me upstairs and invited me into the shower. Afterward we had lunch and then sex that I didn’t deserve—I was not attractive enough to be there, and I feared the moment she would realize it. Pink rays started to spill across the bed and I knew that I would have to leave soon.

“Were you in love?” I asked. She was far better-looking than her husband, she took better care of herself, so I assumed it was because he had status, power, money.

She pulled back. “Yes,” she said, appearing insulted by the insinuation that she wasn’t. “Very much so. I’m still in love with him.”

I felt like I’d been pricked with a pin, the air escaping from inside me. “Oh,” I said. I hesitated before deciding to press further. “Sorry, but what are we doing, then?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, as if she hadn’t been there for any of it. The question crushed me in its honesty. Until then, I didn’t know. I thought that the intensity of sex was correlated with love. That passion was specific and that adultery meant something was wrong.

“I don’t know if you realize this,” I said. I felt my face getting hot. “But you sometimes say ‘I love you.’”

I’d been clinging to her I-love-yous like a refugee clings to a threatened nationality. They were the homeland that validated my existence.

She turned away from me. I watched her back muscles strain and flex as she got up and walked to the bathroom. She took her robe off a hook, covering herself before closing the door. I could tell I’d ruined things, I felt rejected, defeated, worthless. I felt myself shattered to pieces. I got up and pulled on my clothes. I knocked lightly on the bathroom door. She said nothing. I considered apologizing, though for what exactly, I wasn’t sure. I was breathing heavily, anger welling up. I wanted to beg her to forget what I’d asked, to just keep going as we’d been. Instead I went downstairs, stopped in the kitchen for my bag, and left.

The next day I called her cell phone and got her voice mail. I called back, again and again. I left messages until her inbox was full, at which point I called her landline. Ampy told me she was out. “Where? When is she supposed to be back? Will you please tell her to call me? It’s urgent.”