When I wake, he’s still there, arm heavy across my ribs, breathing slow and regular. My phone is on the nightstand. No new messages.
I get up, careful not to wake him, and stand in the bathroom, staring at my reflection in the cold white light.
My hair is a mess, my lips are bruised, and my eyes are bloodshot. I look like a guy who’s trying to fuck his way out of a problem and failing.
I run the tap, splash water on my face, and dry off on a towel that smells like bleach.
Back in the bedroom, Vincent is awake, watching me.
He pats the bed. “Come back,” he says, and I do, because it’s easier than arguing.
We lie there in silence, his hand tracing lazy circles on my chest, and I wonder if this is all I’ll ever be: a warm body, a half-empty space for someone else to fill.
But for now, it’s enough.
———
Vincent keeps his apartment at 68 degrees, which is apparently the optimal temperature for both whiskey and seduction. I’ve been here so many times the doorman stopped asking my name.
Vincent always texts “just come up,” and by the time I make it to the twelfth floor, he’s waiting at the door in a fresh shirt and a smile you could bottle and sell as a Schedule I controlled substance.
It always starts the same.
Takeout, ramen, tacos, whatever’s trending in some food blogger’s Instagram that week, eaten cross-legged on the cold marble countertop, two sets of chopsticks and a single bowl, because “sharing is more intimate,” which is Vincent-speak for “I want to watch you eat.” He tells a story, makes me laugh, pours the drinks.
He always pours; I’ve never so much as twisted a bottle cap in his kitchen.
It hits me, somewhere around the third week, that I never chose any of this. Vincent pursued me. Vincent pushed the first kiss.
Vincent escalated every time, set the pace, decided when and where and how.
I've been a passenger in my own relationship, just along for the ride, saying yes because I forgot what it felt like to want something enough to reach for it myself.
Then the move. It’s so smooth I don’t see it coming, even now. Hand on my thigh, just above the knee, thumb tracinginvisible circles, until I flinch and he leans in to brush his lips against the spot just below my ear.
He whispers something, sometimes my name, sometimes nothing, just the hush of breath and the implication of want.
Every time, I go with it, because saying no feels like flicking a switch that could kill the only lights left in the room.
The first time, I thought he was just enthusiastic.
Now I know it’s choreography. He guides me to the couch, the bedroom, the shower, always on his terms, always with that same calculated intensity.
He undresses me like he’s solving a puzzle, slow, piece by piece, every button a riddle, every zipper a test.
When he kisses me, it’s with purpose: lips, teeth, tongue, never too much, never too little, just enough to make my pulse jump and my brain empty out.
But there’s a line I won’t cross, and every time we get close, I dig in my heels.
The excuses are automatic now.
“I’m tired.” “Long day at practice.” “Can we just… not tonight?”
Vincent never pouts. Never gets angry, never complains. He just adjusts.
Switches to a different routine, hands, mouth, the familiar territory mapped since night one.
He makes me come twice in twenty minutes, then curls up behind me and strokes my arm, like he’s tracing the border of a country he wants to annex.
