“No, you don’t.” He smiles at me. “You feel like being made love to. There’s a difference.” He looks at me, eyes sparkling. “Candlelight, soft sheets beneath you…”

“No! Where’s your sense of adventure? Against a wall is fine.”

“Your hair spread over the pillow, every stitch of you naked…”

“No, I just want hard sex, partially clothed. I don’t like being naked when I’m having sex, it makes me wonder if I look okay, and I don’t like wondering.”

He lifts his brow. “Really.”

“Fact. You can ask the members of my club.”

He looks pissed off. “The members of your club don’t seem to do a very good job of making you forget yourself.”

“Well, not all of them get to have as much experience as you.”

He doesn’t laugh, only eyes me.

“Not even with putting on a condom?”

I laugh. “God, don’t remind me.” I shrug. “Maybe I do want to be made love to. I deserve it.”

He pulls one curl of hair from behind my ear, smirking. “That very much makes me want to be him tonight.”

“GINA?”

Startled, I look up and struggle to my feet when I see Trent stepping off the elevator with my drink in his hand. “Someone saw you two come up here.”

I glance apologetically at Trent, then at Tahoe. “I’ve got to go.”

Tahoe purses his lips and clamps his jaw, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stands and watches me leave. I’m smiling as I board, as he stands and just looks at me with a slow smile that flashes just for me, and when I tell Trent we may need a rain check for a make-out after all, I’m still smiling when I get home. Did he really mean what he said?

Do I want him to mean it?

Do I want to do anything about it?

I hit the bed and pull out my iPod, play some music with headphones, wondering if I have the courage to do anything about it or if keeping the status quo would be best. Hours later I stand up and go to my drawers, opening the top right one and peering under the clothes to the bottom, where I set Paul’s letter months ago. I didn’t even tell Rachel about it because, luckily, I was the one who retrieved the mail every day while she was busy falling for ex-manwhore Saint.

Yeah, it’s still there.

I slam the drawer shut. Because I won’t give the asshole the satisfaction of reading it.

NOVEMBER

The first weekend of November I get a call from Rachel. She sounds so happy and so far away. As we say how much we miss each other and I ask her about her honeymoon and she tells me all about the places they’ve gone, I wonder if I’ll ever even leave Chicago. Or better yet, leave Chicago with a guy, just because we’re each other’s best person to spend time with on Earth.

She asks me if I’ll be going to Wynn’s gallery exhibition this weekend.

I tell her I can’t go, that I’m working overtime, which is partly true. She drills me for more information, so I say I’m making house calls now, and that I spent all Halloween doing monster faces, which was fun.

“Have you seen Tahoe and Callan? What are those two up to now that my guy is gone?”

“Mischief,” I say. “Tahoe keeps asking me to one of his lacrosse games.”

“Yeah, he told Saint he can’t wear you down. He really wants you to go!” She laughs.

We talk a bit more, and I hang up the phone, increasingly unhappy about not going to his games, not feeling the relief I thought I’d feel by avoiding him. Instead I’m dissatisfied and curious, wondering what he’d say or do if I showed up.

* * *

For the past three weeks, Trent has been asking me out every Saturday. I hesitated at first but I finally decided I want to see where this leads, so I’ve said yes all three times.

I glance around my apartment while Trent snores in my bed.

We could work out.

For the first time in a long time, I think I have a shot.

I pull my knees to my chest and stare at him. I feel much more relaxed now about us and the sex. It was good. I get up and hurry to make breakfast, trying to make the tray as pretty as I can, the breakfast as perfect as I can.

I suppose I could chalk it up to the smidge of guilt I felt last night when occasionally I got distracted during sex and thought of…well. You know.

I wish my best friend were in town, so she could remind me of all the things she knows from Saint about Tahoe that bug me. There are so many things but right now I cannot name any except one: the girls he always hangs out with.

Again, I wonder why he’s good enough for them, but not for me.

“Back in bed, Regina,” Trent yells from the bedroom as I finish fixing up the tray.

I bring it over. “I hope you like eggs.”

“Ahhh, no, I’m vegan.” He frowns. “Haven’t you noticed?” I look down at the tray I made and want to just drop it and dip my face in a tub of water out of pure embarrassment. I’ve been going out with him for a few weeks and I hadn’t noticed he never ordered meat or dairy?

I hate admitting it but I thought it was because he’s a bit of a pinchpenny, to the point I’ve started ordering only appetizers as main dishes too.

“No worries, come here. Let’s have another go.” He lifts the sheets.

“I’d like that. Yes.” I set the tray aside grudgingly, trying to work up the enthusiasm for morning sex.

“I’m one hundred percent sure I’m not messing up with the condom this time either,” he says sheepishly.

“Good, ’cause I don’t want to go through that again.”