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“Why just you guess so?”

She sighed. “Well, you know how it is. You like a guy. A lot. He likes you. It’s going great. I’m just waiting for it to all turn to crap.”

“Awww, why would it?” I asked.

She shrugged again. “Because that’s what happens.”

“Not always,” I said, then added, “or so I hear.”

“Yeah, I know, right? Love is sorta like Sasquatch. Or alien abduction. You hear a lot about it happening to other people, but there’s no real evidence of it. Girl, that shit’s scary.” Jen made a face.

I sighed, my smile fading along with my good humor. “So’s love.”

“Oh, Emm. I’m sorry. It sucks that he’s being such a dick.” My friend squeezed my hand. “Cute blouse, by the way.”

“Nice subject change.” I looked down at the shirt I’d picked up at the Salvation Army. It had poofy sleeves banded tight at the wrist and a matching bow at the throat. “It was fifty percent off because it’s so ugly.”

“It’s like a shirt and a vest combined. Verrrry retro.”

I laughed. “The pockets aren’t real, either.”

Jen looked over my shoulder and sighed. “So much for the subject change.”

My muscles went tight, my back straight. “It’s him, huh?”

The bell jangled. I imagined rather than felt the whisper of cold air along the back of my neck. I turned to look at him, expecting him to ignore me as usual and not going to let him get away with it without at least a little bit of guilt.

Johnny stopped at the table. He nodded at Jen but looked at me. “Emm. Hi. Can I talk to you?”

I ignored Jen’s breathless squeak and the kick she gave me under the table. I folded my hands over my mug and looked up at him without the slightest hint of a smile. “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”

He didn’t look taken aback, or abashed, both reactions I’d have quite thoroughly enjoyed. Johnny tilted his head just a bit. “Privately.”

“I’m with my friend right now.”

“Actually,” Jen said apologetically, though I didn’t believe for one second she was sorry, “I have to get going. I promised Jared I’d call him.”

I narrowed my eyes at her but couldn’t force her to stay with me when she was already getting up and putting on her coat. “Betrayer,” I muttered.

“Nice seeing you,” Jen said to Johnny.

He smiled at her. “You haven’t been into the gallery in a while.”

She stopped, looking stunned. “I, um…”

“I’m having a new-artists show in a month or two. You should bring me something to look at for it.”

Both of us let out surprised squeaks that time. Johnny didn’t look surprised. Patiently, he waited for an answer.

“Sure, okay,” Jen said hesitantly. Her smile got wider. “Yeah, sure. I could do that!”

“Bring it by sometime in the evening this week. I’ll be there until seven.”

“Great. Okay.” She nodded and gave me a look full of wonder and excitement I wasn’t about to sully with my own pissedoffedness. “See you, Emm.”

“Later.” I waited until she’d gone and he’d slid into her seat before I glared at him. “What was that all about?”

“What?” Johnny pushed Jen’s mug out of the way and steepled his fingers together on the table in front of him. He hadn’t bothered to take off his coat, maybe not planning to stay long.

“How do you even know she’s an artist, anyway?” I didn’t want my drink anymore and spun the half-melted peppermint stick around and around.

Johnny’s brows lifted. So did one corner of his mouth. I hated that smile. It tempted me into returning it, and I didn’t want to. Silently, he pointed along the Mocha’s back wall, hung with the photos and art for sale, some of them Jen’s.

“I didn’t think you’d have noticed,” I said coolly. “Not to mention paid any attention to who she was.”

“You think I don’t know who’s in here and who’s not?” Johnny’s smile hadn’t reached full power yet, but I could tell it was on its way. “You think I just come in here and drink my coffee without noticing everything?”

“Yes. I do.” The peppermint stick snapped in my fingers and I let both pieces slide into the chocolaty coffee.

“Well,” Johnny said in a low voice, “I don’t.”

His gaze was unflinching. His smile crept up another fraction. I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, to keep myself from giving in to his attempt at charm.

I smelled oranges.

Against my will, my eyelids fluttered. I drew in a swift breath, not on purpose but from unconscious reaction. The smell got stronger. I stood, pushing my chair back with a loud scrape.

“I have to go.”

“Emm,” Johnny said, standing, too. “Wait.”

I didn’t wait. I went dark. I fell into it headlong and came up gasping, like I was kicking up from miles below the surface of a still, silent lake.

I wasn’t cold. I was hot. I was in a bathroom, porcelain sink cool under my palms, gripping it. Water running. I was sweating, salty drops of it on my upper lip when I licked it.

I cupped some water and drew it to my mouth, drinking. Gulping. I splashed my face, not caring I also wet my blouse and even got the front of my high-waisted jeans wet. I looked at my reflection. Wild eyes, dripping face.

I turned slowly, looking around. There was nothing so convenient as a calendar to show me the date but the shower curtain of red, orange and lime-green geometric patterns clued me in. Well, that and the fact that only a minute ago I’d been in the Mocha, getting ready to storm out, thinking,
Fuck Johnny Dellasandro, the arrogant prick.

Now, here, I was also thinking about fucking Johnny, just not in the same way. I dried my hands on a towel that wasn’t quite clean. I pushed open the bedroom door. Johnny, naked, lounged on the bed in a tangle of sheets.

“Hey, babe,” he said, then stopped, frowning. “Why’d you get dressed?”

I looked down at my clothes. “I—”

“Shit.” He laughed. “Sandy’ll be pissed you’re wearing her clothes. But, ah, who cares? That shirt looks better on you. She doesn’t have the tits for it.”

I was still angry; this didn’t make it better. I put a hand on my hip, not caring this was a fugue and I was essentially arguing with myself. “And why are Sandy’s clothes in your bathroom, huh? Why the fuck does that bitch waltz in and out of here like she owns the place? Like she owns you? And yet you can’t give me the time of day?”

Johnny sat up, not bothering to cover himself. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I breathed hard and deep, disoriented enough to grip the doorway tight. “Her. Sandy. Your wife, remember her?”

“I told you, we split up.” Johnny got out of bed and padded toward me on bare feet.

His body was gorgeous. His hair like silk as he pushed it off his face and drew me close. He kissed me.

“Don’t be mad, baby,” Johnny murmured against my mouth. “C’mon. Get undressed. Come back to bed.”

I pushed his chest until he stepped away from me. “No.”

His expression clouded. “Jesus, you chicks. The fuck’s a guy gotta do for you? You go into the bathroom all fucking smiles, you come out looking like you want to kill me.”

“How long ago?” I demanded.

“How long ago what? We split up, like, a year ago.”

“No. How long ago did I go into the bathroom?” I forced the words out across a dry tongue and numb lips.

“I don’t know. Five, ten minutes ago?”

“Oh, God.” I wasn’t just
back
in the world I’d constructed out of wish fulfillment and an overdose of internet stalking. I was back and forth inside it.

I stumbled into the bathroom where I bent over the sink and swallowed convulsively, sure I was about to heave up every bit of my peppermint latte. With my eyes closed I couldn’t see him, but I heard the shush-shush of Johnny’s feet on the tile and felt his hand on my shoulder. Without opening my eyes, I fumbled open the faucet and ran my fingers through cool water to press them against my forehead and cheeks.

“You okay?” His fingers made soothing circles on my back. “What’s wrong?”

“Heat. It’s the heat.” The words slipped out of me, and I wondered why I lied.

“Take a drink.” His hands kept smoothing over my back.

I did feel better with his touch, but my fingers gripped the sink and I didn’t move until I could be sure I wasn’t going to puke. Then I splashed my face again and, dripping, turned to him. “What is this, Johnny?”

“What’s what?” He took a towel from a drawer and gently wiped my face. He cupped my chin in his palm and looked into my eyes before kissing my forehead. He pulled me against his chest, his arms around me.

I didn’t care if it was too hot to snuggle, or that his bare chest beneath my cheek was sticky with sweat. I pressed my lips to the skin there. I tasted salt and sex.

“This. Us.”

He laughed. “I don’t know. What do you want it to be?”

“I want it to be everything, Johnny.” My voice broke.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, shhh.”

I didn’t quite cry, but my body shook with tension and he must’ve thought I was weeping. It was nice, him holding me this way. A nice echo of what had happened the day in his office, except that here I knew if I kissed him, Johnny would kiss me back.

“So why can’t it be?” he said after a minute.

The air in the bathroom was heavy with heat and moisture. Breathing it took effort. Speaking took effort, too.

“Because none of this is real.”

“Hey.” He pushed me gently away without letting go of my upper arms. Holding me steady. “Don’t say that. It’s real. I’m right here, you’re right there—”

“No.” I shook my head. I ran my hands over his chest and belly. “You’re not. I’m not. This isn’t real at all.”

“Then what is it?” He tilted his head and gave me a faint smile. “It feels real to me.”

He slid his hand up to cup my breast through my blouse. “This feels real.”

He took my hand and pushed it down to hold his half-hard cock. “This feels real, too.”

I pushed away from him, half turning. With the sink at my back I had no place to go. “It would feel real to you. You’re always real to yourself. The problem, Johnny, is all of this is inside my head. I’m making it up. None of it’s real. It’s all just something that’s going on in my brain.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t try to pull me closer, but he didn’t move so I could get away. “Emm. Look at me.”

I did. He was so beautiful, so young. Smooth face, unlined. Was it wrong to see such beauty in his youth, especially when I had the memory of his real face to overlay the one in front of me? The lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver at his temples, those were things about the real Johnny I found utterly delicious, but there was no denying that the man in front of me was in his yumfuckable peak.

“What’s not real about this? I know we haven’t known each other very long, but…”

“It’s not that.” I shook my head. My hair had started to slip from the clip binding it in a coil to the back of my head.

I reached up and pulled it out, then held the curved leather on my palm to show him. “This is real. I bought it because of something you said to me here. That I left it here, that is was mine.”

He looked confused. “You did? When?”

“You told me,” I said, “in the kitchen. That this was mine, though I’d never seen it. That I’d left it here. Then I saw it in the mall and I bought one like it, because it reminded me of you. That’s crazy, Johnny. Maybe I’m crazy.”

“We’re all a little crazy. It’s okay.” He smiled.

I didn’t. I threw the leather clip into the sink, where the leather turned dark with wet. I looked at him again.

“None of this is real, and it can’t last.”

“Shit.” He frowned. “Some things last. Don’t make this over before it’s even started.”

“But it is over!” I shouted.

He backed up a few steps, eyes narrowing, fists clenching just a little, like he thought I might hit him. He had been married to Sandy, a woman I could totally see punching a dude in the nuts when he was naked. I, however, wasn’t that sort of woman.

“It’s over,” I whispered. “Because it never started. Don’t you get it?”

“No. I don’t get it.”

“This isn’t real.” I threw out a hand to gesture at the bathroom. “We aren’t. Somewhere, you’re shaking…shaking…”

I was shaking, but not from nerves or a seizure, but as though a phantom hand were pushing me back and forth.

“Emm?” Johnny sounded alarmed.

“Shaking me,” I whispered hoarsely, then louder, “shaking me out of it.”

“Out of what?” Johnny cried, reaching for me. “Jesus, Emm, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“Shaking me out of the dark. Bringing me back.” I pushed past him. “I’m going.”

“Where are you going?” he called from the doorway as I pushed myself to walk at a steady pace through the bedroom, not knowing where I was going.

Knowing it didn’t matter.

“Are you coming back?” he cried. “Emm! Tell me you’re coming back!”

“I don’t know,” I said over my shoulder as I opened the bedroom door. “I never know.”

And then I was blinking, my vision momentarily blurred, and Johnny’s hand was on my shoulder.

“Emm,” he was saying quietly. “You have to believe me when I say I’m sorry.”