“So it’s an evolutionary thing? Hips exist solely for your hands?” I asked, remembering exactly the way he’d done just that, holding my hips, pushing and pulling me back and forth on top of him. I blushed at the very recent memory.

“I’m a doctor, Chloe. I know what I’m talking about,” he said very seriously.

“So I should defer to you on this one, should I?” I laughed, getting up to make some more pancakes.

“You should. All my patients do.”

“Well, if the poodles trust you, I suppose I should too.” I grabbed the mixing bowl and gave it another whisk as he chased one last bite around his plate. And as I watched him, I realized that this, this very thing, was what I wanted to do for the foreseeable future. Walk around my kitchen in one of his shirts, bare beneath, cooking for him while he watched me do it. Talk about poodles and hips and all manner of things. I was struck by the simplicity of it all; how easy and how perfect it was. And I smiled at him. “You want some more?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he said.

“Lucas?”

“Yep?”

“You gave me three orgasms in less than thirty minutes. Pretty sure that justifies a few more pancakes, don’t you think?”

His face was pure male satisfaction, with a hint of mischief. “Are you having any more?”

“Three was pretty fantastic,” I chuckled, ladling a few more circles on the griddle. Warm hands suddenly slipped around my waist from behind, pulling me snugly back against him. His hands found my shirt buttons and started unbuttoning them one at a time.

“Hey, I can’t be naked and cook you pancakes,” I protested, slapping at his hands. If by protested you mean using the least amount of energy to remove those gorgeous hands from my still humming body, then protest I did.

“You sure about that?” he whispered all hot and bothered in my ear.

“I’m gonna burn your pancakes,” I warned.

“I’m gonna watch you burn my pancakes,” he warned back, now sweeping my hair up and kissing my shoulders.

“I’m gonna hit you with this whisk,” I threatened.

“I’m gonna bend you over this counter.”

Pancakes were burned. An orange Formica counter was defiled.

“Am I hurting you?”

“Depends. Can you feel me breathing?”

“I think so.”

“Then I’m good.”

“I’d say you were more than good.”

“Well, of course you’d say it. You’re still inside me.”

“Dirty girl.”

“I’m not, though. Seriously, this is so unlike me.”

“Apparently not.”

“According to my track record, it is very unlike me. Official Chloe never gets to have sex in the kitchen.”

“Well, I don’t know who this official Chloe is, but I’m enjoying the shit out of unofficial Chloe.” Lucas punctuated this sentence with a kiss in the middle of my back. I was facedown on the counter, my shirt up around my shoulders. He had, in fact, bent me over the counter. And he had made it so very good. He was slumped across me, resting most of his weight on me, and I felt covered, cuddly, and content.

“Midnight-snack pancakes are my new favorite meal,” he murmured from somewhere just above my bum.

“Quarter-to-three pancakes, if you want to get technical,” I giggled, stretching my arms over my head and lengthening my spine.

“Isn’t that a song?”

“There’s a song called quarter-to-three pancakes?”

“Quarter to three,” he sang under this breath, “There’s no one in the place, except, you and me . . .” He placed a kiss in exactly the small of my back. “. . . and pancakes . . .”

“Oh, man.” I laughed, harder still when he bit me on the bottom. Quarter to three, what a long day this had been. Wait, it was tomorrow already. Which meant that he was leaving . . . Fudge. He was leaving for Belize the next day. For three months.

And that’s why we’d decided not to start anything. Well, there goes that bright idea. I moved a bit, just enough that he got the hint and stood up, pulling me with him. I hastened to pull my shirt down, my skin still flushed with the excitement he’d coaxed forth.

He sensed the change, and caught my hand. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I answered, resisting the pull for a second. But one look at that messy hair and I fell against his chest. There was no frenzy, no frantic now. I rested my head on him as he leaned against the counter, running his hands up and down my spine. I listened to him breathing, and even though it seemed blasphemous in the face of what had just happened, all I could think about was how I used to fall asleep to Charles’ sounds. First deep sighs as he settled in. Then tiny quick breaths as he found the best spot on the pillow. Then finally the slow, lingering exhales as he’d begin to nod off. And when I knew he was asleep, that’s when I’d nod off.

It’s funny that when something is over, it’s not just the big occasions, like anniversaries and birthdays, that bring up emotions. It’s also the little things. The shows recorded on the DVR that he loved to binge watch. It’s the sandwiches cut in triangles, never in half. It’s the breathing patterns you know so well you can tell the instant they begin to dream.

When I’d started this new life in Monterey, one of the things I’d looked forward to most of all was being patternless. For the first time in my life, I could be patternless. Untethered. No one would know when I came and went, no one would know or critique what I ate for breakfast. No one would know if I peed with the bathroom door open or closed. The answer is closed, by the way.