At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

oh
four five six times
“Fuck.”
He bites me,
wild.
“Yes.”
Elliot stills me when his iron grip drops to my hips, and he’s jerking into me, his mouth open, teeth bared
on my breast.
It will leave a mark.
But even after he’s finished he grazes his teeth back and forth, tongue stroking the tight peak, soothing
the site of his gentle attack. I feel the way he spasms still. His breaths are tight puffs of air against my
breast.
My fingers make a tangle in his hair, holding him to me. Goose bumps spread across my skin as his
hands slide around, cupping my backside, holding me tight against him.
He came inside me.
He’s still inside me.
What did we just do?
And how have I gone this long without him?
Making love to him suddenly feels vital, like air and water and warmth.
He turns his face up to mine, expectantly, and it’s only a tiny shift forward for my mouth to meet his in
this new, lazy relief.
It’s both familiar and foreign. His skin is coarser with stubble, his lips stronger. Inside me, I know, he’s
thicker.
I start to move off him – worried about making a mess of his tuxedo – but he holds me steady, his hips to
mine. “Not yet,” he says against my mouth. “I want to stay here. I still don’t believe this is happening.”
“Me either.” I am lost in the lazy sweep of his tongue, the tiny kisses that melt into deeper ones.
“I might want to do it again.”
I smile. “Me too.”
He moves his mouth to my neck, his left hand coming up to cup my breast.
“Is it weird,” I begin, “that I felt like I was having sex with someone new and old at the same time?”
This makes him laugh, and he bends, kissing my chest. Leaning back, he whispers, “Want to know
something even weirder?”
My eyes fall closed. “I want to know everything.”
And for the first time in over a decade, I really do.
“It was years before I was with someone other than you. You were the only woman I was with until I
was… well, for a long time.”
His words hit the blank wall of my sex haze, and then dread falls over me like blackness.
“I’ve loved you my whole life,” Elliot continues, his lips moving against my collarbone. Slowly, I open my
eyes, and he looks up at me. “At least from the minute I ever thought about love, and sex, and women.”
He’s still inside me.
He smiles, and the moonlight catches the sharp angle of his jaw. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I
want you. It took a long time before I wanted anyone else, physically, at all.”
It’s a little like being in the eye of a tornado. All around me, things are happening, but inside my head,
it’s so quiet.

---

At my silence, his eyes widen first, and then fall closed. “Oh, my God. I just realized what I’ve said.”

---

J
then
monday, january 1
eleven years ago
ust off the Richmond Bridge, I called Elliot, listening through the speaker as the phone rang and rang,
eventually going to voice mail. About ten minutes into my drive it had occurred to me that I didn’t know
where in town Christian lived, and I didn’t know how long Elliot would be there. It was after one in the
morning now – he might even just be home, in bed, and I wouldn’t be able to get to him without waking up
the rest of the house.
Highway 101 stretched out dark ahead of me, dotted with the occasional burning taillights of another
car. It was otherwise empty, with clumps of drivers getting on and off the freeway around the dotted small
towns: Novato, Petaluma, Rohnert Park… In Santa Rosa, I tried calling again, and this time an unfamiliar
male voice answered.
“Elliot’s phone.” Noise blared, drunken and raucous, in the background.
A sour combination of relief and irritation twisted in me. It was nearly two in the morning and he – or at
least his phone – was still at the party?
“Is Elliot around?” I asked.
“Who’s calling?”
I paused. “Who’s answering?”
The guy inhaled, and his answer came out tight, like he had just taken a giant hit off something.
“Christian.”
“Christian,” I said, “this is Macy.”
He let out a long, controlled breath. “Elliot’s Macy?”
Someone in the background let out a sharp “Dude.”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “his girlfriend, Macy.”
“Oh, shit.” The line went quiet, muffled, as if someone was holding a hand there. When he came back, he
said simply, “Elliot’s not here.”
“Did he go home without his phone?” I asked.
“Nah.”
Confused, I pressed, “So how is he not there if you know he didn’t go home?”
“Macy.” A slow, drunken laugh, and then, “I am way too high to follow that.”
“Okay,” I said calmly, “can you just give me your address?”
He rattled off an address on Rosewood Drive, adding, “Second house on the left. You’ll hear it.”
“Chris,” someone protested in the background, “don’t.”
Christian let out another low laugh. “What the fuck do I care?”
And then he hung up.
Christian’s house was new, and therefore large for the Craftsman-modest Healdsburg, set on a hill and
overlooking a vineyard. He was right: I could hear it as soon as I turned onto his street. Cars jammed the
long driveway, fanning out messily toward the curb. I parked in the first empty stretch of street, several
houses down. Zipping my puffy jacket over my dress, I left my heels in the car, grabbed some flip-flops from
the trunk, and trudged back up the hill.
It seemed silly to even bother knocking. The door was slightly ajar, noise pouring out, so I just pushed
inside, stepping over a wide pile of shoes that seemed paradoxically thoughtful given the state of the rest of
the house. There were cans, bottles, and stubbed-out joints on nearly every flat surface. Blaring music and
television battled from down the hall. On the living room couch, two guys were passed out, and a third sat
with a game controller in his hand, playing Call of Duty.
“Have you seen Elliot?” I asked, yelling above the hammering of fictional gunfire.
The guy looked up, glanced over to the kitchen, and then shrugged.
I headed to the kitchen.
The room was huge, and a complete disaster. Blender drinks had been attempted and abandoned. A
pyramid of beer cans sat on a sturdy marble island, surrounded by a wreath of broken chips, smears of
salsa, a trail of M&M’s. The sink was full of smudged glassware and a tall bong.
“He’s upstairs,” someone said behind me. I turned, and recognized Christian from the photos on Elliot’s

---

desk. He was tall – not as tall as Elliot, but wider, with an ill-advised goatee, and a beer stain on his Chico
State Wildcats T-shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and dilated nearly to black. At his side, another guy stared
wide-eyed at me, looking like he was going to be sick. It was Brandon.
Elliot’s two best friends.
“Upstairs?” I repeated. Christian lifted his chin in a nod, rolling a toothpick from one side of his mouth to
the other.
“He’s really wasted,” Brandon said, following me when I turned to head out of the kitchen and upstairs.
His voice grew increasingly desperate as my foot hit the first step. “Macy, I wouldn’t. I think he’s been
sick.”
“Then I’ll take him home.” Even to me, my voice sounded hollow, tinny, like it was being projected from
speakers in the faraway corners of the vaulted staircase.
“We’ll bring him home.” Brandon wrapped a gentle hand around my elbow. “Let him sleep it off.”
My pulse beat in my throat, in my temples. I wasn’t sure what I would find… but no, that isn’t quite
right. I think I knew. I understood Christian’s laconic smirk and Brandon’s buzzing anxiety. Looking back,
it’s hard to know whether I was prescient to head up there, or whether it was just so obvious.
“I would just head home, Macy,” Brandon pleaded. “When he wakes up, I’ll have him call you.”
His voice continued as a hum in the background, following me all the way up the stairs and to the only
closed door, at the very end of the hall. I pushed inside and stopped.
A long leg hung over the side of the unmade bed. Elliot’s shoes were still on, still tied, but his jeans and
boxers were at his knees and his shirt was shoved up under his armpits, exposing the lines of his chest, the
dark trail of hair on his navel.
Brandon was right: Elliot was passed out.
But so was Emma, lying naked across his torso.
I took a step back, right into Brandon’s chest.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
I’d known heartbreak before, but this was a different sensation, like a lit match held to the bloody organ
inside, holding steady, waiting patiently for it to dry out, harden into coal, catch fire.