Hearts Take Time

Ronit had been hurt and most recently widowed, and she once cheated on a devoted boyfriend out of boredom with everything in life but him. She determined that avoiding those kinds of offenses offered rock-solid protection from adding future fear and guilt to the fear and guilt already breaking her back.

That afternoon, Ronit and her psychologist spent the session discussing the wisdom of this approach. Ronit reviewed their work on the drive home. Once tired of ping-ponging around her headspace, she looked forward to her dogs and a quiet evening.

It surprised her to see Noak's muddy bike locked to the porch of her three-flat. Had he ever worked at her place on a Friday? Not that it mattered to the dogs. They greeted her like rescued castaways, as if Noak had ignored them all afternoon while working at the dining room table.

At present Noak lay stretched out on the back deck. He wore cycling pants, and his shirt covered his face.

"Hey, beautiful," he said when Ronit opened the door. "I now practice extremely hot yoga. And humid yoga."

She shot a squinty glance toward the June sun. "You know, you don't have to put the furniture back the way you found it."

"I disagree. Those little aggravations always pile up into anger."

"Lashir used to say loading the dishwasher caused more marital conflict than money."

"A wise man," Noak said.

From the water on the deck, she assumed Noak had sprayed his head and neck with the hose. He moved to sit at the top of the steps. Ronit leaned against a post facing him and shaded her eyes with her hand.

"I made the Spanish soufflé thing," Noak said.

"Which you can tell me the name of, along with its entire history."

"Know-it-alls never prosper. My last date from the app asked me if I was 'annoyingly intellectual.' My answer disappointed her."

Ronit nudged him with a bare foot. "And you don't have to cook for me."

"We can't have you eating cereal for supper three nights a week."

Their friendship, though genuine, for a long time existed on the periphery of Noak's relationship with Lashir. During their time together, the men used up the oxygen extending their bond. When Lashir died, Ronit called his parents first and Noak second, and whenever she saw Noak, unwelcome visions of that day rematerialized in her mind.

On the other hand, Noak had never let her down or hurt her or excluded her. His love for Lashir was beyond doubt. She knew better than anyone what their friendship had meant to her husband.

Ronit's physical attraction to him had been there for years. After one or two subtle incidents at parties--grinding her hips on Noak, standing close enough to feel his breath on her face--she policed her actions whenever she drank. Low-level heat remained, however. Noak once even gauged her interest in getting together. True, his words contained all the romance of an offer for a boatload of cod, but he spoke with the confidence of a person who thinks they've hit on a can't-miss idea.

"What's your goal with all this exercise you're doing?" she asked.

"We must win the war on man boobs," Noak said. "No mercy in the war on man boobs."

"No, honestly."

"I need to be in good shape to wrestle my demons." When Ronit waited for a straight answer he added, "Making changes, Rone. Having no expectations. Turning off my overthinking. Being present. The shit Yoda kept stealing. When life barrels downhill in the day-to-day, you gotta take a long look inside." Noak tapped his chest. "Signs said maybe it would help to get right with mindfulness."

"Woo-woo, you mean," Ronit said.

"You better be careful hating on the Buddha. Buddha gonna strike you down with loooooove."

"God forbid."

Ronit invited him to stay and eat what he'd cooked. Noak accepted but only if they sat outside for, as he said, adequate ventilation of his sweaty body. After the meal, he got ready for the ride home. Did she really want to hug him? he asked. Ronit did.

Their hugs lasted longer than in the past. Ronit's goodbye kisses, meanwhile, kept drifting from his cheek toward his mouth.

Noak turned back from the sidewalk. "Your hug means business. It says, 'I care about you, and I don't want to hear any sass.'"

"You're getting the message," Ronit called.

An hour's rest, a joint, and two warm dogs relaxed her, though the weed turned the type in her book into cuneiform.

Ronit paused to chase away zig-zagging notions of what she might want from Noak. She had reason to remain unattached. She long ago had used up her energy for men's shit. Lashir's shit, in fact, formed the deepest layer of a shit mountain that started rising in high school and came to include a stupid mid-twenties engagement, eight exhausting years with Tayut, and divers relationships and rendezvous. Not to mention her grief and fear, and the fear-squared of piling on more of either. Besides, calm reigned in other areas of her life--friends, health, money, job. Why disrupt a healthy situation?

That said, Ronit's loneliness harmonized with her strong, guiltless appetite and she rang Rek. Emotions messed up her thinking. Raw satisfaction she could manage.

"It's been a while," Rek said after the hellos. "What's going on with you?"

"I need to fuck," she replied.

He laughed. "Drink first? Your usual?"

"Lovely."

An hour later, Ronit drank a mouthful of negroni and joined Rek on the bed. He tinked his gin and tonic against her glass. They talked about a show, people both of them knew, and recent work on his condo.

Rek put down his drink to unbutton her shirt. The conversation continued, with husky breaths bracketing pieces of what each of them said. Ronit watched him lower the straps of her bra. His hand caressed the freckled area between her breasts. Without speaking Ronit asked him to place her glass on the night table.

"Stand up," Rek said.

The bra straps slid down her arms as she complied. In her insecure younger days, Ronit more than once thanked her DNA for well-proportioned breasts. A practiced flick with his thumb and forefinger popped open the button of her jeans. Ronit pushed the denim and her panties over her hips. Gravity did the rest. Ronit watched him undress. Though light-years from being a gym rat, Rek showed his lovers a take-care-of-himself body overlaid with generous black hair.

"You have protection?" Ronit asked as he stretched out.

"Always. Want to take off your necklace?"

"Haven't you heard amber is the orgasm stone?"

"From what I remember you don't need help," he said.

Rek's lovemaking differed from her other partners by following no set routine. In each of their four or five encounters, he paid attention to--well, everything. But always he focused on a specific part of her body. He had checked off most of the obvious places. When he started with a quick kiss between her legs, Ronit knew he planned to finish the list.

Not right away, though. He brought Ronit into his arms. She lost track of the time they spent kissing. Rek's instincts, as usual, picked up on her readiness to move on. His mouth worked down her neck to her chest. She put her hands in his hair. As he worked at her breasts Ronit breathed his name and God's name and other words besides.

Her legs stretched as wide as possible. Even at this stage she felt ready. It went beyond technique. The man's energy inflamed every cell of her body. His tongue swirled around her navel before he continued his descent. Caresses ran parallel over her waist and hips. Eyes closed, Ronit sensed rather than saw his face over her sex, and she let out low moan as his mouth found her entrance.

Kabai's oral was meticulous yet perfectly paced. People referred to him as Gigolo for a reason. This time, however, he surpassed his standard of attentiveness. Ronit wondered later if he worked from a map of her nerve endings. A finger toyed with her hole now and again. His mouth, meanwhile, moved from labium to labium but always lingered in the middle ground, now licking, now pressing hard with his lips. Ronit's cries ran the scale from high pitched to guttural.

The orgasm flowed through her, an animal release. Shockwaves left her flat on the mattress except for an involuntarily arching of her back.

Afterward, Rek cupped her crotch with his hand and moved up beside her. She turned into him, waited for life to return to her limbs. Ronit sipped her drink. They toyed with each other as they talked until Ronit returned the glass to the table and encouraged him onto his back with a gentle push. Her hand brought back his hardness--the Gigolo's natural state, people joked--and he took her waist as she straddled him.

"Wet enough?" Rek asked as he entered her.

"You look very proud of yourself."

Ronit pressed her hands into his chest and wiggled into her preferred position. At that point she threw aside sensuousness. Rek had seen it all, anyway. Her hips fast-forwarded to making quick circles against him. The increased effort flexed the muscles in her thighs. Rek's eyes locked onto her bouncing breasts. Ronit accelerated to what she liked best. It took time, and one or two pauses, but her second orgasm broke, this one the great but familiar kind.

Ronit was embarrassed by her bright red cheeks and slick chest and the swelling between her legs. In other words, not by feeling great, but by the fact she felt like an open book when it came to admitting gratification. It seemed uncool, too much information, and unwise to share with a man already too proud of his reputation.

To deflect Rek's attention she said, "From the throb inside me I'd say you're raring to go."

"What can I tell you?" Rek said. "I like to watch you work."

"I need to recover to return the favor."

"Let's skip to the end. Whenever you're ready."

She pitched her voice to mimic his earlier offer. "Stand up."

Ronit rolled off the condom. She took the head of Rek's penis between pursed lips before moving her mouth and tongue over its length. He tasted of the condom and her juices and the drops of cum that had risen to the surface while she rode him.

Ronit had no intention of matching his meticulousness. She moved her mouth around his girth in a spiral. One hand squeezed his scrotum, the other worked first the base of his shaft and then, as she worked her way along, returned to the first few inches.

Ronit stopped.

"Oops, I have to leave," she said.

"You asshole," he replied, and they burst into laughter.

"Are you ready?"

"It'd be hot to cum in your mouth."

"Uh, no," Ronit said. "I've seen you ejaculate and that'd be an embarrassing way to drown."

She let him sit down, however. Ronit slid up and down half his length, her hands against the inside of his thighs, then progressively more, until she took what her mouth could accommodate. Rek's moans made it clear he was close. Ronit finished him with her hand and sprayed prolific gushes of semen in an arc across his bedroom rug.

Physical gratification carried Ronit through the next few days, but on an emotional level, intercourse with Rek fulfilled her as much as hiring a guy to fix the furnace. Again and again, she failed to articulate to herself the need nagging at her. On impulse she met a coworker for appetizers. Her heart sank at the realization he had become an Interested Party. Ronit batted away his attempts to turn the conversation in a personal direction. During one of these exchanges, she saw Noak fronting a martini at the bar. Ronit mentioned the dogs to head off an invitation to continue the evening. They rescued her so many times they deserved to be honorary St. Bernards.

Ronit waited for the coworker to get to his car before returning inside.

"The latest app date no show," Noak told her. "She speaks three languages. Ice skates. Exceptional text message spelling. You can see why it seemed like fate." He sighed into the last drops of his drink. "Mindful acceptance of the present eludes me at the moment."

"I'm sorry."

"Ah. No expectations. That is the way."

"It's still kind of shitty, though," Ronit said.

"Maybe I need to broaden my parameters."

"What do you count out?"

"Only three things. Best friend is Mom. Best friend is Jesus. Reality TV fanatic. I need me one of Lashir's pep talks. Reliably positive, that guy."

"Yes. It got exhausting." Ronit planted a no-sass kiss on his cheek. "You're all right?"

Noah raised a fist. "The sun will rise and we will try again."

Ronit next saw him at a party thrown by mutual friends. Noak brought an ex-. His former girlfriends were of a kind, cute in a funky threadbare way, and always anxious and wary. "Do you think he has a supplier?" the host muttered to Ronit. The former girlfriend talked to a couple of people independent of Noak. Otherwise, they mingled as a pair when they mingled at all--he obviously wanted to protect her. They left early.

Ronit enjoyed herself far more. She pitched a double header and arrived home both high and drunk. The scuttlebutt acquired at the party needed attention to digest, but there on the sofa in the dark, Ronit's musing turned to Noak. Had he reconnected with--which one was she? Did they stop at the party on the way to a show? As a test to see if she fits in with his friends this time around? As a pretend date to set up an overnighter?

The questions bothered Ronit, but to her surprise, the answer to the first tightened her stomach. Noak approached relationships the way he approached a project: grind-it-out, try different approaches to make it work, give in to reality far too late. If the two of them resumed, he might be unavailable for years.

Still, Ronit had yet to work out if she felt a genuine attraction--well, it was genuine enough. If she felt an actionable attraction. Whenever she considered a hypothetical future relationship, she wanted a man new to her life, unconnected to the painful past always lurking at the edge of her attention, even at times like now, as she rested in a state of high intoxication after a fantastic time. Noak's program included letting go of the past in favor of living in the present. Applying the idea, Ronit saw that, though part of her present, he also lived in the past tied to Lashir. That was unchangeable. To see Noak's face on the pillow next to her--and across a restaurant table, and everywhere else--meant forever contending with memory.

These reflections bobbed up at random from a swirl of Campari and THC. When she nodded off, the dogs wheezed approval. Ronit's mind settled. Thoughts spilled over boundaries and interacted with images unleashed in the early stage of sleep. The chaos half-sorted itself in her doze hours later.

Noak stood nude next to a long table. She saw him in his yoga togs enough for her subconscious to conjure an accurate body for him. A woman stretched the length of the table. Ronit recognized her. His date at the party. Ash brown hair brushed her shoulders. Dreamland's benevolent gravity shaped her breasts into perfect hemispheres.

A montage took shape. Splitting the bamboo. Noak atop her, thrusting into her mouth. Taking her from behind against a wall. The urges behind the images followed Ronit into the waking world. Wanting ached inside her. The overwhelming desire to have a man in her bed--between her legs--filling her heart--pulsed throughout her body. She didn't need her hand to confirm she her wetness, nor more than a pillow between her legs to reach an intense if not lasting orgasm.

"Thank God," she groaned into the mattress. "That'll buy enough time to forget the dreams."

Ronit often went for days without contacting Noak beyond brief replies to messages about the dogs. But over the next week she texted him often, a wish to maintain contact she camouflaged as a funny work story or generic question. On Friday, however, Noak texted that the air conditioning had gone out. When she got home, the dogs and their bed lay in front of pair of box fans Noak had bought. Noak, meanwhile, chose to read and sweat on the deck.

"Hey, beautiful."

"Thanks for the fans," Ronit said as she stepped into the greater heat outside. "I'll pay you back."

Noak waved her off. "What's it amount to?"

"Do you want to get Thai with me? When we're done, we can relax out here and smoke a cigar. My department chair went to Toronto and brought me back a Cuban the size of a baguette."

The day's heat lingered by the end of the meal. But puffy cloud tops had blocked the sun as it touched the treetops.

After a drag on the cigar, Ronit asked, "Do you still miss Lashir?"

"Just today I saw a photo online and imagined him laughing when I emailed it to him."

"How's the cigar?"

"Good," Noak said, "but it's no White Owl cigarillo."

Each let out mouthfuls of smoke.

She said, "Tell me again that only Lashir could've helped himself."

"That's the truth, Ronit."

"Does mindfulness help with grief?"

"If I ever get mindful, I'll let you know."

They sat close and quiet, thoroughly comfortable in each other's company. Noak began to hold the cigar for her during her turn. When Ronit rested her head against him, Noak pushed back her hair from her face.

The cigar burned down. Ronit proposed to make drinks. Noak met her on the sofa. Less than a cushion separated them. The conversation drifted into friends and minutia. Lashir's shadow retreated. When Ronit brought him up again with a humorous anecdote, Noak put a hand on her cheek. She turned into his palm, eyes closed, lips pressed to the flesh.

"What do you want to change?" Ronit murmured. "You don't need to be better than you are."

"Ah, see, you're tapping the Wise Masters' frequency. Loving ourselves is fundamental to the whole project. Excellent job. Unfortunately, now you have to shave your head."

"Can I apply for ten minutes of total seriousness?"

Noak felt her stiffness and, seeing his mistake, settled into a demeanor that matched her own.

"My interpretation of mindfulness," he said, "is it's inevitable to be sad about the past, but that it's pointless to get lost in, what if? or would this've worked? or why didn't I?"

"Or why didn't Lashir? Christ, I'm so angry at him."

Neither remembered which of them made the slightest of slight moves forward. Their lips met lightly. Whatever the tentativeness, the emotion was undeniable. Noak rubbed his nose against her cheeks and the side of her nose.

"Should we pause to be present?" he asked, and Ronit sighed at the warmth of his breath. "If this is a pivotal moment in our lives, we'll want to remember it in detail."

She brushed her parted lips over his mouth, his chin, his ear. Noak answered the same way. While Ronit nuzzled his face his hand pressed on her next. Their mouths opened with the next hungry kiss. Ronit put a hand against his chest and at the same time took the back of his neck to pull him toward her.

"Do we want to go in this direction?"

She smiled against his mouth. "You promised no trick questions."

"Humor's back in play?" Noak asked.

"It's been ten minutes."

"I'm serious, Rone."

"I want to go... wherever we go. I think I'd like to give up overthinking, too, for a little while. One important request. Very important. Don't tell me you're in love with me, or anything like that, because I'll lose my shit."

Noak borrowed an unopened toothbrush--Ronit bought in bulk--and the two of them battled the forces of Thai food and cigar smoke. In the bedroom, undressing each other led to kissing and petting that took them to the bedside.

Ronit slid across the mattress to him. Noak took in the length of her bare body. "I have to change my greeting to 'Hey, breathtakingly beautiful.'"

"I love your bullshit when you time it right."

For her part, Ronit would have led or followed him into pure uninhibited fucking. Noak toed that water two or three times but always slowed down. She mimicked Noak's touch--that of a sculptor intent on finding any final flaws before declaring the work finished. Her concentration on receiving from him and giving to him cleared her mind and eased her impatience, until his firm grip on her breasts broke the spell, and his sucking invited in the buzz of high excitement.

Noak took his time on her chest before moving to kiss--and gently bite--the insides of her elbows. Next, he moved to the bottoms of her buttocks visible between her legs. To her stomach. To the hollow of her throat.

Ronit traced his erection whenever she could reach it and made sure he watched her wet her fingertips to do it. She went along with Noak's pace just as he fulfilled her requests about where on her body she wanted attention. A long moan rolled out of her when Noak's tongue reached her sex.

"What do you think?" Ronit purred.

"Inviting."

"Do you want to do each other?"

Noak crawled over her and lay back. "Over here on me, queen."

"I have the ass of a robust fortyish woman," Ronit said as she rolled his way. "The air may get thin."

"Good thing I earned my scuba license."

Ronit straddled his face and sank onto him. Once she found her best position she pressed her clit onto his waiting mouth. This brand of cunnilingus never failed to electrify her, assuming a competent partner, but Ronit's enthusiastic response expressed more happiness than she expected to feel. She felt herself widening inside and swelling outside. Her cries became sharper and more frequent.

Noak hummed in appreciation and more loudly when Ronit gasped, "I may come. You're okay?"

He was okay.

Ronit turned up her pace and gripped the headboard. The bed frame shrieked. The legs thumped. The moment she thought Noak would die without a break the first starburst of an orgasm exploded. Twenty seconds later Ronit cried "fuck-fuck-fuck" and smacked the wall with an open hand.

She waited on her knees for Noak to catch his breath.

"You'll get five stars on your app." Ronit said as she smoothed order into her disheveled hair. "Stay right there."

She tended to Noak's shaft. When he became erect again, Ronit licked, nibbled, and stroked while she held his testicles. Noak murmured compliments and her name in equal measure. Asking for a break, he sat up with his legs apart--yoga clearly did wonders for the abs--and invited Ronit to sit back against him.

"Can I ask you to try a position?" Noak said. She stopped crawling forward and almost fell over with stifled, silent laughter. "It may be a request you haven't heard yet."

"Honey, that's impossible," Ronit said. "Okay, okay. Your naivete has touched me. Ask. But a question first. Have you performed this act?"

"Only one partner has ever agreed."

She pretended to be suspicious while leaning into his arms. Her hands rubbed his thighs. Noak wrapped her up and massaged her neck and shoulders. Ronit hooked her feet around his lower legs.

"Concentrate on the places I touch you," he said into her ear. "Breathe while you push everything else out of your mind. Anticipation. What you think you should do or how you should react. Looking ahead to the next step. Instead focus on the places where my skin touches your skin. My hands, my torso against your back--every point of contact. Feel the sensations. At the same time, as I'm touching you, imagine I'm learning the smallest details of your body and your reactions to my body. We're creating a circuit that carries pleasure back and forth between us."

Ronit reclined against his body. At his request she let her muscles go slack. Noak's hands--firm without pressing--slid over her stomach to the undersides of her breasts. He grazed the nipples several times. Ronit let out her breath when he twisted them between his thumb and finger. Energy flared wherever Noak touched, on her stomach or hips, between her legs.

Ronit could feel his diaphragm against her back. Their breaths fell into sync. She hummed as he tugged the top of her public hair.

Whenever random thoughts occurred to her, Ronit refocused. Noak's hard penis rested against her lower back and in the top of the gap between her buttocks.

"Let me move between your legs," Noak said. "Lay back. Don't do. Just feel."

The same fingertips traveled the length of her pussy. She yelped when a sharp tap landed on her clitoris. Current shot through her thighs and spread out inside her.

Without preamble, Noak dipped his mouth onto her clitoris. Ronit, more open to physical sensations, let out panting breaths.

Another sharp tap matched the first. The third struck her entrance, the fourth her clit again, and having gauged her reactions, Noak applied steady slaps to her clitoris, exactly as hard as the previous time, but ever-louder as her juices flowed. Ronit's yes-yes-yes became moans. The mound beneath his hand rose as if she craved each impact.

"Don't stop," she said in a throaty voice.

Ronit lifted her bottom or rather, it rose on its own. Twisting in a soundless scream, hands seizing the bed sheet, she let go--soundless no more. Joyful laughter trailed the fading intensity. Noak crawled up next to her. She peppered his face with clumsy, laughing kisses.

Noak offered to get her water. But Ronit accompanied him to the kitchen. Some water she drank. Some she splashed on her face.

"Just one person accepted that?" she asked. "Your fiancé?"

"Lord, no. Anxiety wouldn't let her stay still for more than three minutes. She's the only woman I've been with who always turned down a massage. Sexual, non-sexual--straight refusals."

An ice cube popped from the tray and skidded under a table. Once on her hands and knees, Ronit realized Noak would enjoy the view, and she took her time. She added a teaser of oral before she returned to her feet. Their pitch and catch continued beside the bed until Noak outgrew her mouth.

"There's a phase two with my suggestion," he panted.

"I'm good. You have to go next."

"Stop at two orgasms? I won't be able to show my face. No, hear me out. You'll go to brunch with the girls on Sunday and it'll be like, 'Can you believe this guy stopped at two?' And they'll shake their heads and say, 'Ugh, men.' It's up to me to protect the reputation of the team."

Ronit held the high ground, however, and Noak gave way.

He introduced the second phase as a Kama Sutra pose called Piditaka. To Ronit's skeptical expression he promised non-gymnasts could pull it off.

Noak's hands guided her to the middle of the bed. He asked her to bring her knees to her chest. Ronit recognized what he had in mind. Piditaka gifted a familiar, though not frequent, position with a fancier pedigree.

A flirtatious smile spread across her face and a powerful affection for Noak swept through her. His attention and good humor in bed reflected his personality, their mutual comfort had followed them into sex, and even with the Kama Sutra name drop, he came across as the least pretentious lover imaginable.

Noak moved the head of his penis through the damp between her legs. At his request she placed the soles of her feet high on his chest and spread her toes across his collarbones. Hands behind her knees, he pressed her thighs onto the bed. As Ronit's bottom rolled upward Noak entered her. She reacted with a grateful ahh as his shaft glided onto her G-spot.

"Go at your own pace," Ronit whispered.

Noak settled inside her and became still, like a man taking in the details of a long-sought moment. Ronit, smiling still wider, brushed his cheek with her big toe, and he smiled, too.

"This is where I tell you I've wanted you," he said.

"And where I invite you to have as much of me as you like."

Ronit placed her hands behind her calves. He started slowly. Each thrust brought forth a wet smack. Her eyes widened at the sparks thrown off her G-spot while she concentrated on the lovely sensation inside her as Noak slid along the front wall of her vagina.

"You can see how this caught on," Noak said through his breaths. "A couple's sitting around a fire, the first asks, you want to paint more animals on the cave wall, and the mate says, uhhh, how about that business with all the screaming?"

Ronit's giggling overwhelmed her soft cries, for a moment. Noak settled at a speed exciting to both of them. The position admitted him to her depths. Ronit surrendered to the moment. Grunts began to accent his breaths.

"This is incredible," Ronit hissed, glee in her voice and on her face.

"Should I stop when I get close?"

"No. I know my body. You're good. We're good. We're fucking great. Both meanings."

They passed beyond words. Ronit's reactions encouraged him to go faster. Her hands locked onto Noak's forearms as he pounded her. Ronit heard his orgasm approach as clearly as she felt the onrushing avalanche of her own. His first ejaculation, his second, and both let out full-throated cries that escaped through the open window to echo off the garages across the alley. Incredible thrilling passion took over Ronit's present for a long moment until amazed breathless cries fell into rhythm with Noak's last movements inside her.

It took an effort for Ronit to raise her arm to cover her face. Whatever Noak mumbled passed her ears unheard, but she guessed it more or less matched her sentiments.

"What the Jesus fuck did you do to me?" she exclaimed.

Noak sat back with enough presence of mind to support Ronit's legs as they unfolded. A moment passed. He put his head against her stomach. A little while later, mumbled words saw them off to sleep.

Ronit awakened with a dim awareness of storms passing in the night. She opened her eyes to see Noak silhouetted against an early morning sky. When Ronit stirred he looked over his shoulder.

"Hey, beautiful," he said.

Ronit kept the covers over her body as she sat up. "Noak," she said, a word that meant a thousand words.

"The morning-after voice right out of the box."

"Will you sit?"

"I prefer execution standing up," he said.

"I am nowhere close to functioning in a relationship. With you or anyone. Last night has to be a one-time deal."

Noak spread his hands. "No expectations."

"You really feel that way?"

"Not so much," he said, and he tried to smile. "Guess they call it a practice for a reason."

Other words, many others, occurred to her. But none changed the message.

Ronit hurried through her start-of-the-day ritual. She threw on sweats and a hoodie, flipped on the coffee maker, and clipped leashes to the dogs.

The entire trip around the block, she knew she would return to an empty home. No trace of Noak remained except his odor, blended with hers, on her skin. That he kept his set of housekeys reassured her. Ronit sat with coffee, immersed in another melancholy present she had arranged, and wishing pleasure receded more slowly into the past.