VOIR DIRE

{to speak the truth}

The cinder blocks are painted Deutzia white.

Y/N knows this because Deutzia white is, humiliatingly, the colour of her bedroom walls. What she's been metabolising over the last seventy-two hours—between the ceiling tiles, which are doing the bare minimum, the ceiling tiles again, and, for variety, the concrete, projecting no such aspirations—is that Deutzia white is just white, and white is not really a colour so much as it is the absence of one.

At some point, she went through the considerable trouble of selecting the same paint swatch as whatever benighted custodian was tasked with the aesthetic vision of this particular facility. She chose it because it felt clean, noninvasive, and neutral; as it turns out, that is more or less the design philosophy of a jail cell.

That's the thing about Irony. She is personified, and she is laughing at you, even when she is the only witness.

Unlike Y/N’s bedroom, there is a single metal bench (no cushion) and a lidless stainless-steel toilet angled for indecent exposure. The county-issued jumpsuit smells vaguely of a hospital after the patient has died and does absolutely nothing for her skin tone. This is not the primary problem with orange jumpsuits, but it's the one she chose to fixate on because the other problems are too large.

One week closer to AP exams. Her college counsellor is probably having an aneurysm. He has been treating her life trajectory like it's personally offensive since she chose not to apply early decision to Yale. This will give him actual heart failure.

The woman in the cell next to Y/N’s has been humming the same agonising tune for two hours. It's driving her slowly insane, but she can't bring herself to tell her to stop, because she sounds like she's the one maintaining sanity through ritual. The humming is hers. Such silence would be Y/N’s. They're both clutching their respective coping mechanisms and neither has the moral high ground.

Y/N’s been reflecting. Primarily about how she ended up here, which is the sort of reflection her father wants, but also about how cell walls feel colder on the left side than the right. How teenage mistakes feel like they matter more when they're written in abstruse legalese. How being eighteen feels exactly seventeen, but with voting rights and the capacity to sign your own arrest paperwork.

When that became tedious, she spent her newfound solitude renaming Deutzia white (Morning Guilt, Midmorning Guilt, Afternoon Guilt. Now, Guilt after Dinner), and trying to hate her father efficiently—and succeeding, mostly, in intervals—although it keeps folding into self-hatred, origami of shame. Ten-thousand-dollar bail is the balance of her tennis camp fund. Dad could fax the cheque between conference calls. He isn't, because consequence is expensive only when someone you love pays it.

The opium-smooth voice of a guard calls, "Up and at 'em, Princeton. You're being released," before he fumbles keys that rattle like tin bones. She contemplates refusing—polite hunger strike until her father arrives to scowl her out—but lets the lock slide without protest. Turns out resolve collapses quickly when the alternative is internment.

Y/N’s been pining for this moment, but now that it's here, it feels like being told she's being moved to a different kind of incarceration. The guard marches her past a series of doors identical to the one she just left. From behind one, a grumbled lullaby in Spanish. At the release desk, he dumps a clear plastic bag onto a counter. Her phone, wallet, keys, tennis bracelet—a mockery of her own social class. She signs her name four separate times, making an effort to keep the loops loose and illegible.

The clothes she wore that night—a soft linen skirt and blouse she should have chosen more carefully given how it would photograph—arrive in a different bag that someone labelled with her name in permanent marker. The guard tells her where she can change. It's a small room with a bench bolted to the wall and a mirror that definitely observes. The skirt hangs differently now, remembering what happened while she was wearing it. Just down the hall, a small vestibule opens into institutional law-abiding Tuesday.

"Congratulations, you're free. Don't drink and drive—also don't drink and park. Accidents cause people." The guard tries for jocular, lands profoundly short of it. She mutters thanks, as good breeding conquers contempt.

The waiting room is everything the Deutzia white walls were not. Sunlit, for one thing. Windows that show actual sky rather than cyanine approximation. Couches that have been sat on by people both more and less fortunate than her. She scans for Dad's bespoke cashmere, his exacting posture, eager to explain how she's disappointed him categorically. He's not there. Nobody's there. Just a room expecting someone who isn't coming, and her, standing in it wearing the weekend's mistakes.

She powers on her phone, but the screen blinks weakly. A dead, pensive brick. The polished brass timepiece above the window displays 9:17 p.m.; the world has continued scoring its evenings without her. After day two, she swallowed her pride and asked what became of her car. Impounded. She pictures it caged behind a chain-link fence, its taillight busted, her Spotify paused mid-croon. Functionally, she's stranded, and stranded feels different when you've spent three days in captivity. Less romantic than it sounds in novels.

The room isn't that big, but he's not that quiet. Charlie from that county thing Dad did last spring. Marcus, who handled the stock transfer. Just another eternal element in her peripheral vision, yet this one does not stay peripheral; her head lifts like a dog's as expensive Oxford leather squeaks linoleum with no hurry. The man approaching has been assembled by a committee for sexual disorientation. Tall, civilised scruff, dark curls brushing collar—not long enough to render as careless, but long enough to remind you other rules apply to him.

His top button is undone, forecasting restraint rather than imprecision. Ink creeps just above collar and cuffs—a cross, an anchor, three-leaf clover—and his eyes are green. Wild green. Mid-thirties, maybe thirty-seven, but impossible to pin because "tricenarian" looks like a decision he made rather than the inevitable. He smells like cedar and cold air, absurd in here.

Y/N’s seen this man before. Not often, but enough. The country club when her father was angling for something. Always on the perimeter of her family’s empire strategy, never quite in the middle. He stops two feet away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets as though he frequents jail exit lounges.

"Y/N." His voice is soft grain whisky, neat, no ice. "Your father asked me to collect you."

She draws herself straighter, some dumb tether of posture. "That's exactly what someone says right before the trunk."

The pause isn't hesitation. It's him choosing delivery. "Harry Styles. I'm a friend of your father's. We've met."

Harry Styles, a name that has skated across benefit galas, firm letterhead, her father's mouth casually attached to superlatives like "rabid dog" or "absolute shark" but always with undercurrent respect. The one who makes problems disappear.

"I don't recall."

"You do." His head tilts; the overhead light slides along the jawline shadow. "I'm afraid your father is still in Tokyo. He asked if I'd step in—legal representation and retrieval."

She swallows the indictment. Something makes her skin feel too aware of its own imprudent boundaries. "You're my lawyer?"

"At least one of them."

"And you just happened to be available on a Tuesday night after nine?"

"I bill by the hour, so yes." If humour were a dessert, this would be the unsweetened dark chocolate someone leaves for those who've outgrown frosting. "Car's outside. I'll take you home."

Wooden benches at confirmation creak behind them, but the memory tinged with pity fades the moment Harry—Mr. Styles?—opens the exit door. Wind, city-early-April, slides across her cheeks like cool silk on a sunburn. She follows him because tenacity, while admirable, would grant her nothing but another night of sleeping on cement.

His car is conspicuousness disguised as lavish discretion, yet he opens the passenger door as an absent courtesy, suddenly indifferent to opulence. Y/N slides in, and the seat assimilates to her back, as if anticipating her arrival. The door closes, he rounds the hood in a controlled whipcord motion, and settles behind the wheel.

He doesn't ask for her address.

They pull out smoothly, no engine noise, just forwards motion. They pass the courthouse, then the jail again from the outside. Seeing it from free air is surreal—the building looks designed to be intentionally forgettable. Her fingerprints are probably still drying somewhere inside.

"You didn't kill anyone," he starts, his tone a gavel. "That's where your luck begins and ends."

"Comforting."

Harry ignores the sarcasm. "Your charges: underage consumption of alcohol, driving while intoxicated, and reckless driving. In ascending order of complication."

He stares straight ahead as he rattles off the itemised list of her moral failings. Professional competence hypnotically wears a human face; the same features that look amiable in candid become punishing when discussing your immediate future.

"Your licence is suspended, automatic on the DWI. The reckless driving is the problem—that takes this from a first-time stupid decision to a possible criminal record." His fingers drum once on the steering wheel, an economy of movement that suggests everything he's not letting himself express. "Prosecutors see reckless, they know you weren't just drunk; you were driving like a drunk person. Different category entirely."

Y/N doesn't remember driving recklessly. What she does remember is the headlights on the wrong side of the road fluorescing her windshield, her chest aching with the epiphany that this was how people died—other people—and still somehow convincing herself she was two seconds from sobering up entirely.

"Is it the 'totally fucked' category?"

"Depends how much the DA wants to make a point. But whatever happens will be significantly less punishment than you deserve."

Two summers ago, there was a headline: Greenwich teen walks on vehicular manslaughter, probation and community service, judge cites promising future. The State loves redemption narratives, especially for adolescents with no priors. In this circle, consequences are a facade—anything is permitted; it's simply a matter of how much it's going to cost.

"Prosecutors respond well to narratives," he continues, merging onto the highway as the traffic reorganises around him. "We're selling you as a bright kid, Ivy-bound, made one mistake, but no pattern of behaviour and absolutely zero reason to believe this will ever happen again."

Bright kid (easy). Ivy League bound (check). One mistake (stretching it). She hears what's between the lines—the negotiation happening already in the space where this goes away or doesn't. She'll acknowledge fault in open court. She'll say the phrase out loud like she means it. Afterwards, she'll smile pleasantly while photographers she can't punch quantify her disgrace for the town-website notch on their bedposts.

"So, it's fine then?"

"No. It's not fine." His eyes track to the side, an antique projector of contempt. "But I'm telling the DA you're not like this, so you have to actually not be like this. Not so much as a tardy slip between now and resolution."

She ponders what "not being like this" entails for someone whose primary problem-solving strategy is typically "try harder to be perfect." There's probably an allusion to be unveiled, but she's too distracted by how his hands move on the steering wheel. Long fingers, deliberate placement. The tattoo on his wrist isn't delicate—the anchor seems to pulse, straining against the hold. Restraint is a secondary skill.

"I will be a caricature of impeccable."

The projector rolls, a three-sixty of brazen indignation. "You'll be good?"

Good is being quoted—a side comment in italics, patiently waiting for annotation. Somewhere behind his iris the same word is spelt in black lace: good girl, good job—arbiters and belts. As if being good is optional but preferred, as if it's something someone might ask for specifically, as if he wants a demonstration. It's a line of inquisition that sounds flirtatious if you aren't careful with your tone, and he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

"Yes," she says, the words tasting like submission and anticipation in tandem. "I can be good."

"Yes sir," he corrects. "I'll believe it even more when you say it like that."

The seats seem suddenly warmer despite the climate control remaining unchanged; the air thins, lurching towards something more illegal than what they're already discussing. His eyes flick to hers—one quick assessment—then back to the road like he's done nothing more interesting than check blind spots.

"Yes, sir. I'll be good."

"Better." The approval lands faintly frustrated—as if he didn't want it to feel so pleasing.

The houses are getting larger as they trace the spine of old money through the city. Most are set back from the street behind hedges or stone walls, their grand charades lit like museum exhibits. These are the types of houses that have names written on bronze plaques, though people stopped using them thirty years ago. Somewhere in here is hers, though defining "hers" feels increasingly private between the two passengers.

The road curves into the secluded area where the stop signs become more decorative than functional. When they roll past the stone pillars that mark her family’s property, the security gate swings open—the guards have his plates logged and approved. This feels like information she is not supposed to know.

"Your father's flight lands Monday," he says, following the long, gravel path to the house. "I'll have everything ready by then."

Y/N can't place if she's dreading that meeting for its contents or company, only that she's grateful to confront it wearing clean clothes and sleeping in a veritable bed.

The last stretch of driveway feels insurmountable, winding through landscaping that has never witnessed a member of her family being returned from jail. Floodlights illuminate the colonial brick house—three stories, predictable; white-columned portico, executive; black shutters bracketing windows, punctuation marks in firm rejection of any original thought. From the passenger seat, it appears as a production she inexplicably climbed out of, now complicated by explorations children aren't supposed to have.

Harry parks precisely parallel to the front steps, not quite blocking the entrance but close enough to broadcast procurement if the Johnsons were feeling particularly observant. The engine idle is the only sound in the million-dollar neighbourhood quiet; the automatic locks haven't released yet, so she is still his passenger until he decides she's not.

"Thank you for the ride, Mr. Styles."

He nods, the soft click of locks unzipping their détente. It's not until she's pushing open the front door that she realises he's still behind her, stepping inside without waiting for invitation. The chandelier above the foyer hangs, a constellation the wrong side of bail-release has shamed into silence.

"Car keys, please."

"Car keys?" she laughs. "Why? It's impounded. Unless you're wary I'll hot-wire the tow truck, in which case, I'm sure you could recommend less obtrusive felonies."

He doesn't smile, or even acknowledge the humour. He stands there in her foyer like he was installed along with the chandelier. "I'm aware. That's why I'm going to retrieve it for you."

"So this is about theft risk and daily ransom fees—not a subterfuge, then?"

"Bit of both, in case you forget every casual promise you've made in the last half-hour. Daddy’s orders."

If it came from her father, it must be praxis. She surrenders the set, hanging from the balls-for-all keychain that was ludicrous enough sophomore year. He accepts them without critique, although his eyebrow tilts. "There are at least sixteen other vehicles spread across this acreage. Unless your father has taken up eccentric lawn sculpture, they all start. I'll need those too."

Of course. Because temptation doesn't just wear the licence plate of the Porsche currently enjoying government custody.

From behind, there's a scuffle of soft-soled shoes that know this floor's every creak and avoid it out of respect. Alana appears from what her father persists in calling the "service corridor" despite her polite requests that he stop calling it that.

"Y/N! You're home." Her eyes flick to Harry, absorbing his ostentatious presence. "And Mr. Styles. Would you like a drink?"

"I won't be staying." An amalgam of dismay and relief, exemplified. "But thank you, Alana. Do you know where Dominic keeps his car keys?"

"He claims my own set isn't sufficient proof of caution."

Alana disappears, wordless and without protest—she's used to stranger requests at stranger hours. Her father once had a French diplomat's aide call at 3 AM because his boss was having an existential crisis about American butter standards and required immediate imported guidance.

"You're quite comfortable giving orders in other people's houses," she observes as Alana rustles around in what sounds like every drawer at once. "Is that natural talent? Do you teach seminars?"

He turns towards her fully, the movement as prepensive as a closing argument. "It's a talent derived from necessity. Usually when someone ends up in my custody, they're not looking for subtlety."

"And I'm looking for..."

"You, Y/N, are looking for someone to make you feel like this isn't your fault. But it is. Every decision you made three nights ago was yours. The good ones, the bad ones, the spectacularly stupid ones. Own them, or repeat them."

It's the tone that does it—like he's speaking from a place where choices aren't theoretical and repercussions aren't neologisms. Technically, it was Sarah who bought the tequila. Technically, the gas station bathroom was occupied. And technically, her APUSH tutor cancelled last minute, leaving her unattended and without her usual weekend obligations. So, no. It is not her fault. Except Y/N is a stickler for semantics, and even she can accept that technically does not mean actually.

"That's terribly helpful," she manages. "Truly, my self-awareness is transformed."

"Your self-awareness is shit," he says without heat. "But it's a curable condition."

Alana returns with a small ring of keys that looks like it belongs to a used car dealership. There's the Bentley, the European convertible her father bought during his Italy obsession, the vintage Mercedes supposedly owned by a Kennedy, the practical Range Rover, a motorcycle she didn't know they had. Alana hands them to Harry with the solemnity of a Eucharist. He drops them into his pocket, probably designed for this exact purpose.

"Thank you," he says, addressing Alana. "Dominic's not keen on investing in a follow-up performance."

Alana has gone very still. Watching this man stand in the house and speak to Y/N like she's actually capable of hearing difficult truths is novel terrain. Most people here address her hubris, or don't address her at all.

"Why don't you get some sleep, Y/N?" Alana offers. It is at this moment she realises the magnitude of her fatigue—and that three days of jail does something to your spine; it bends in ways you can't control.

Harry adds, "Best behaviour, please."

"Yes, sir," she says quietly. Maybe the novelty evaporated, maybe she wanted more of whatever it started, but the accidental intimacy turns flame-tip.

The stairs stretch above her like they're considering whether to allow passage. She must look like a stranger—a miscreant—because they have never witnessed her like this. No, that's wrong. They've witnessed everything; they're just very discreet.

Her bedroom door opens onto the same gallery it always was. Deutzia white walls, painted by someone her father paid to never speak of them.

IN LIMINE

{at the threshold}

"Remind me where you're going to university."

Harry is not making polite conversation. He is pining for a foothold, an angle for the judge, or perhaps a disqualifier for himself. That’s the purpose of this meeting—exhume, sculpt, condition—the holy trinity of fraudulent reformation that’s meant to replace what Y/N is with what she should be. Y/N is not offended by this. Everyone does it. It’s like deep cleaning only the rooms guests will see.

“Cornell. Is that my character witness?”

“It certainly doesn’t hurt.”

He flicks a page of her file, blinking at the details. He remains perfectly stoic, but every so often his prudence bleeds through—a slight furrow in his brow, a piffling eye roll. The man has tells, and Y/N has excellent retention. He has presented winning her case as an impossible feat, a labyrinthine negotiation requiring considerable goodwill from the prosecutor, but she has read the precedents, and she knows mercy is as certain as sunrise.

The hyperbole is not a lack of confidence, but rather a pedagogical extraction of contrition. If Y/N shows no remorse as is, he will engineer the conditions until she produces it naturally.

Some may call this manipulation. Harry would call it lawyering.

“Your blood alcohol came in at .11. Legal limit’s .08, but I may be able to get it downgraded.”

“To?”

He shrugs, the leather of his chair creaking. “DWAI, Driving While Ability Impaired. It’s a traffic infraction. Higher points on your licence, but no background check complications.”

“So a misdemeanour?” It’s less than that. Follows you like a speeding ticket and vanishes within three years if you don’t repeat the mistake.

“Not a felony.”

The same way sleeping isn't death. The ceiling of his reassurance, apparently.

“You’ll voluntarily enroll in alcohol education before you’re even required to.” Imperative disguised as suggestion, Juris Doctor knows best. “And community service—I’ll coordinate with whatever organisation fits the bill.”

Y/N has never been one to volunteer anything—not her time, not her attention, not her parking spot—but submission is a requisite for absolution, and absolution is the last lacuna in her otherwise unimpeachable portfolio.

“And the reckless driving?”

His hands stall, pointer finger tapping the black-and-white mugshot. Her own debased bingo card, captured by a somnolent booking officer. New, probably. Or at least, new to her antics. Crimson, black-rimmed eyes rebut, but there’s the tiniest hint of a smirk she genuinely thought she was suppressing. It’s instinctual, as automatic as breathing or blinking. “Candid” and “camera” are not a natural pairing in her experience.

“Most likely, DA won’t play ball on that one.” Two truths and a lie, delivered with the conviction of three truths. “You were going 83 in a 35. That's a misdemeanour. Comes with possible probation, mandatory licence suspension longer than the DWI alone would carry, and Cornell could–in theory–rescind admission if it hits your record before you enroll.”

His phone vibrates on his desk—he glances at it, but doesn’t reach for it. The screen illuminates his face in ghost-light, revealing the affect he wears when he’s building something inside himself, how other people build things outside. She notices he never asks questions directly, but makes observations and waits.

“I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I meant your legal proceedings, not your academic standing.” His assistant trails down the corridor, stopping right in front of the brass name plate. Harry shakes his head no. No—what? No, cut your losses. No, push it to Monday. No, move the reservation. No, cancel the car. The assistant closes the door, courtesy or consequence.

He leans back in his chair, arms perpendicular, head tilted for inquiry. The starter shot has fired; the only wonder is who will make it to the finish line first. “Absolute best-case scenario, reckless driving gets reduced to a lesser charge, maybe careless driving. It’s like the DWAI, carries points and a fine but nothing criminal.”

“You really should have led with that.”

“The caveat is: you represent me as much as I do you. I negotiate with the DA using my reputation. If I promise you're worth the charity and you prove otherwise, I look foolish."

She surmised, even with his histrionics, this was a formality, a foregone conclusion. Harry's allegiance with her father has made it personal—confounding—and personal is its own jurisdiction, but the dynamics are, at least, transparent. Dominic is in Tokyo, and the discipline made the trip without him; Harry is the intermediary, except intermediaries aren't supposed to mean it.

“Does that happen often?”

He acknowledges this with a small nod that might be pleasure or meagre employment politics. “More often than you would think.”

She crosses her legs, over-under, his eyes hone the mugshot. “Perhaps you should exercise discernment.”

“And what—” he flips the page like it’s gone up in flames— “do you think I’m doing right now, Y/N?”

The file has three more pages. He's not going to reach them. "So is my obedience for you or for the court?"

“It’s for the court, and for yourself. I’m merely the third signature line.”

Nobody who was actually the third signature line would imply any awareness of being more than that. Cognisance is a conflict of interest.

“Do all your cases pertain to some form of quid pro quo?”

His lips quirk up, dimples making their debut. “You will soon come to learn all things in life pertain to a quid pro quo.”

Equivalence is a prerequisite, interchangeable in value, function, or meaning. He is domineering in both function and meaning; value is the only column left to Y/N, and she has always been good at being valuable. Attention, for example. Undivided, unconditional, even if unrequited, is a reverent phenomenon.

“You’re supposed to get me off,” she says, testing boundaries. “That’s what you said. If I’m good, you’ll get me off.”

“I said I'd believe it more. I didn't say to what degree it’d have utility,” he acknowledges, glancing at her sideways. “But that would be a different conversation between us than this one.”

"Is that what you’re in pursuit of?” This is either humour or petulance and Y/N’s always chosen the more useful option. “A man so enamoured with compliance becomes the authority. Is it virtue, vanity, or a simple obsession with control?"

He returns to the first page of the file, circles the mugshot, and adorns it with an exclamation point. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

“It’s how the interesting people find each other. I consider it my most redeeming quality.”

He sits up straighter, posturing his stringency. Hanging behind Y/N is a Richter—the first contrivance she noticed when she walked in, after the absence of personal photos and the visitor chairs that inspired the hostile architecture downtown. Like all art inspired before the twenty-first century, you don’t have to squint for the meaning. The paint was grazed into surrender, vigorously shoved rather than gently coaxed by bristles. Lawlessness, guided without resistance, or fortitude. Harry’s eyes track where the scarlet and cobalt bleed into Tyrian, scouting. He seems to have forgotten—paint isn’t sentient. It never stood a chance.

“I’m not obsessed with anything but resolution.”

“The process doesn’t interest you?” Her eyes narrow, filling the answer before she’s asked the question. “You don’t want to see me on my knees, begging?”

The dimples demand an encore; his lips curl, a slow smile spreading despite his attempt to conceal it. “It seems you’re the one in pursuit of something more. Don’t you think I'm a bit old for you?"

A leading question, designed to affirm or deny, irrefutably. Thankfully, semantics are, again, a divine endowment.

“That’s not what I asked. And that’s not a no.”

“There are bar association rules about this that exist for good reason.”

Still, not a no. “I didn’t take the bar.”

“And you’ll never have the chance, if you’re underrepresented and charged.”

Y/N is privy to catastrophising, too. Fear is her most considerable motivator; at present, it has taken an extended leave of absence. She finds herself studying the way his shirt collar sits against his throat, how the top button creates this angular shadow that’s somehow both strict and inviting. Much like the night that acquainted the two of them, she is not thinking about deliverables, or reputations. She is not thinking at all.

RES IPSA

{the thing speaks for itself}

Y/N’s piano teacher taught her two manners of refrain. One: abstention. To resist the impulse, desist before the inevitable. Two: recurrence. Repetition, returning without apology. Harry’s quid pro quo had her faithful to the first. In time, her case closed, she thought again about his top button, and proceeded to reconsider.

The refrain is the theme—the thesis of a piece, the part that gets smudged in your ear and reveals itself between waking and sleeping, linking one idea to the next. Like O Fortuna, or Boléro, or literally anything by the Beatles. Indelible, impossible to dislodge, eject, or replace.

Take Mr. Styles, as Y/N calls him, although he is Harry in her head. Harry is the thesis made flesh. Since the hearing, every night as she lies, she envisions him beside her, his deft fingers tracing the column of her throat, teasing against her collarbone as his lips savour hers. His tongue coaxes between short gasps as his hand trails lower, lower, lower. Her legs part, imbued, as he tugs the elastic of her underwear, finding his way beneath.

She fathoms his touch is like cool water on the back of the neck—astonishing, then ambient. Gentle fingers wading in arousal, steadily circling her clit. Each paltry, unrestrained moan swallowed with a kiss, a hum, a praise of “good girl,” as the pleasure coils taut in her belly. He laughs, because even in Y/N’s own imagination, he finds delight in her surrender.

Lust is a poor choice of word. Too simple, too common. This is more like a geological event happening inside her, something tectonic and patient and unstoppable.

So this—standing here with her palm against the cool door handle of his office—is not about her not thinking. Rather, that she is having the same thought, over and over, ad infinitum, like a pendulum returning to centre.

Y/N was going to leave it be. She was. The refrain had been playing for two weeks solid, and she had every intention of letting it fade into background noise, as all desires do if you starve them long enough. But if she doesn’t do this, the fantasy will keep growing, and fantasies that grow ignored become worse than reality; they become unassailable. Her piano teacher also taught her that there are few things in this life worth being unassailable.

The handle turns without resistance. She’s greeted once more by the Richter painting; black smears appearing vindictive, vaguely self-congratulatory chartreuse. She glances right, where Harry is standing with his office phone pressed to his ear, absorbed. The sleeves of the burgundy dress shirt he wears are rolled past the elbows, exposing an atlas of ink that retires into fabric she wants to strip back.

He looks up as she enters, but the look is not one of surprise; it’s foreboding. Harry doesn’t do surprise—or perhaps he doesn’t like surprise. Y/N will soon find out.

“Mm,” he says into the phone. “No, that’s not going to work. Tell them we’ll take the deposition Thursday or we’ll file the motion. Those are the options.” He pauses. “Yes, both are terrible. That’s why they’re the options.”

The door latches shut behind her; stillness expands to fill the room. The sound is microscopic but docks leaden. She feels the tap in the tendon behind her wrist. He sets the phone down, and then his eyes find hers, reading the fine print. She is in here now. There’s no accidental exit, or pretending she wandered into the wrong office looking for the water fountain.

“Y/N.” No rising inflection. He never uses it when he knows the answer.

“Hello, Mr. Styles.”

She stays by the door, because progression feels like a commitment, and she is suddenly reneging. From here, the desk is a cordial episode before the refrain. From here, she can still pretend this is an act of social decorum, something her father has instilled in her to do when someone has done her a professional favour.

“The court shouldn’t be reaching out with anything new. I’d have been notified.”

Her thumb brushes forefinger, flicking hesitation beyond. “They haven’t.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“No issue. I came to say thank you.”

His eyes do something that allies a narrowing and a roll, the facial equivalent of an ellipsis. “Most clients email.”

“I prefer in-person gratitude.”

While she doesn’t know if Harry does surprise, she does know, incontestably, that he doesn’t fill silence. Most people do—they rush into the gaps with small talk or nervous laughter or questions that aren’t really questions. He lets it fester, boiling, until you’re the one who feels compelled to fill it. It’s a lawyer trick. It’s also, she suspects, a Harry trick.

But since her sanctioned foray, as it conjugated in her head, she’s learnt that silence is only uncomfortable if you’re trying to hide something in it.

So she lets it fester too.

“You came all the way to the city,” he repeats, slowly, testing the words for structural integrity, “to say thank you.”

“Well, you talked the DA down to 50 hours of community service and a fine.” A parody of righteousness, her father celebrated with a round of golf and Macallan Sherry Oak. “So, yes.”

“That’s all.”

“That is all.”

His weight shifts from his left foot to his right, and his fingers tap against the desk in contemplation. He’s reading her. Trying to, at least.

“What are you really doing here, Y/N?”

Her hand finds the tie of her dress. “I told you, I wanted to say thank you.”

It’s the colour of a swimming pool at dusk, and it wraps around her how a river swathes a sunken pebble. This dress is not frequent in her rotation, because one swift motion and you’re nude, intention be damned. (Ask her how she knows.)

The fabric glides off her back, relieved to be free of obligation, and gathers at her feet into a puddle. Her heels click as she step forwards, abandoning any and all nuance.

It’s a Trojan horse. What’s more pertinent than the dress is what it’s meant to conceal: black lace, a set she bought at a store she’d never been in before, from an associate who seemed to figure exactly what she was planning and approved, dimly. The bra is strikingly transparent, letting her nipples peek through, and the thong is cut to sit high on her hips, magenta detailing reinforced along the trim. Between her thighs, she’s already soaked.

Harry doesn’t look away, which is saying something. He doesn’t pretend he’s not looking, which is saying even more. But he also doesn’t move. He stays perfectly still, aside from his left hand, which reaches behind him and yanks the cord for the blinds. They descend in a rapid whir, cutting off the post meridiem sun in increments that make the room dance with furtive shadows.

She checks his hand—no ring. She’s checked each time she’s seen him. If this were the time for it to premiere, she’d have cut it off.

He squints, short-lived. “You’re cute.”

Cute. Cute as in, adorable. Cute as in, something a child does that amuses an adult. Cute as in, not serious, or tempting, and certainly not worth the energy of a substantial response.

Neurotically, he turns away and begins rearranging the desk. He closes his laptop, slides it into a drawer. Gathers a heap of files into a neat little stack. Collects the pens and returns them to the holder. Y/N is not disrupting anything he’d struggle to put back in order.

“Cute? That’s your assessment?”

He glances over his shoulder, the bare minimum of validation for someone standing functionally naked before him. “You’ve got a crush. It’s normal, and I’m flattered, really. But we’ve been over this. It’s not happening.”

“Yeah, when I was your client.” She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them because her breasts push together, and right now, she’s not trying to be lewd, she’s trying to be understood. “Which I’m not anymore.”

“No,” he agrees, sounding just as definitive as he did in court. “But I’m still thirty-seven. You’re still eighteen. And I’m still close friends with your father, who would—”

“I didn’t plan to tell him.”

“And I don’t plan to tell him about this.”

It suddenly occurs to her that the refrain may have been the quid pro quo.

Her dress is on the floor and her nipples are visible through her bra and the only praise she’s getting for her seduction attempt is related to the production value. Something resembling shame blooms behind her cortex, but she declines to evaluate further, because that would be confessing that this has deviated beyond repair from her itinerary.

“So the ethical consideration—”

“Is one of several.”

“It’s not unprecedented.”

“No. It’s just generally a bad idea.” Men are notorious for their bad ideas, surely this one in particular is licenced. “And even if neither of those were issues, it’d still be cruel.”

Cruel is less dismissive than cute, somehow, although it’s just as much a rejection. She doesn’t understand what he means, but she understands that he means it.

“Cruel to whom?”

“To you.”

He rounds the desk the way a planet orbits and leans against it, crossing one foot over the other. They are two feet closer than before, but miles away from consensus.

Y/N’s heart hammers against her ribs, shoving her to retreat or advance. Advancement implies achievement. Achievement is relative to success. If she looks at it that way, this is a recess, not a verdict.

“You don’t find me attractive.” An observation extending opportunity to mince words. She takes a step, teasing the elastic of the thong. “Shame. Because I clearly find you very much so.”

Harry rests his hands behind him on the desk, unintimidated, for appraisal. His gaze falls to the mesh panelling that veils her heat, blemished with slick evidence. This has mutated into a standoff between two people who seldom welcome defeat. One of them is about to have a new experience.

“Turn around for me.”

Her lips twitch a smirk. Perhaps, between now and his laundry list of objections, he has learnt the value of switching sides. She turns, painfully slow, a ruby in a display case pining to be scored, as he beholds every curve of what the lace doesn't cover.

It’s more reverent than she anticipated. She expected to feel like prey, but as his eyes track the small of her back, the smooth, plump skin of her arse, Harry is preoccupied with maintaining his restraint. She turns back to face him, exhaling the fear that, even still, this conversation will end the way he presented it: her dressed, him unchanged, the hierarchy intact.

“If it’s validation you want, fine. I’ll play along.” Y/N notes, with satisfaction, the argument straining against his trousers. “You’ve got a mouth that needs managing, an arse I’d kill to mark up, and I’d fuck you ‘til you'd never dare walking into someone's office like this again.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He briefly lifts his hips, accommodating the argument. “Because you couldn’t take it.”

A challenge cloaked in concern. She scoffs. “I can handle myself, thank you.”

“But you can’t handle me.”

Boys Y/N’s age—she calls them boys, because that’s what they are—are lacking in both the sapience and the self-control that makes refusal possible. But Harry is more mature. He has a type (presumably), and standards (evidently), and an acquired taste for something specific (unknown). Abstaining from the convenient means sex—for him—is not a hunger that accepts alternatives, and attraction alone is not grounds for rationale. That he could want her and still say no only makes her want to dismantle his principles.

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“Yes.”

A mind without bars entertains both, and while he’s disciplined, he’s also not a monk.

“So, in your fantasy, could I take it? Or was the fantasy that I couldn’t?”

He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and exhales just the same. Any other context, Y/N would marvel in the triumph of pinning a man against his own logic. But in this one, she is mostly starting to grow concerned that the lingerie is losing its novelty.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, flicking his eyes open, a match struck and caught. “It’s not an insult, just the truth. You’ve had sex, I’m guessing, but you haven’t had this. You’d get more than you bargained for, and then you’d be in my office, crying, and I’d be the prick who made the princess cry.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“I’m making one assumption.” The light tosses his shadow against the wall behind him, staggering and regnant. “That you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the one assumption that’s never wrong.”

“That is also an assumption.”

“Y/N.” He says her name like he’s reading the riot act, scolding and unimpressed. “I’m serious. I don’t share control. I'd take what I wanted, and you'd be expected to give it.”

The feeling of wanting to be used—immorally, exquisitely, used—is not one she often entertains. But she wants him to put her over his knee and remind her how to behave, to make her regret every sardonic thing she ever said to him, to give her something to actually be sorry for. It’s not control that she’s after; she can find control anywhere. No—what she wants, for once, is for him to make her.

“I told you I’d be good. I’ve been good, haven’t I?”

He laughs, puncturing what’s left of her self-righteousness. “You haven’t been anything but the brat you always are. You’re so used to getting whatever you want, to wearing people down until they give in. If that’s what you think of me, you’ve read me wrong. I’m not doing that.”

She tilts her head, courage seeping out. “Then what would you do?”

His face stalls, the exasperated crease in his brow turning spellbound. “What would I do? I'd put you right on the edge and keep you there. I’d make you beg ‘til you cried, and I wouldn't let you cum unless you earned it. And I’d be pleased to do it, too.”

The wetness between her thighs is getting worse, a slow ache that’s forcing her knees together. It’s becoming unbearable, much like—she’d imagine—the argument in Harry’s trousers, growing into a critical, needs-attention obtrusion. And, no. She doesn’t believe it’s attributed exclusively to the arousal of saying all of this aloud.

Naivety is mistaking someone’s reluctance for patience, or resistance for denial. Y’N’s never been cited as naive—not by anyone of importance—but as she considers his bulge, the realisation strikes her like lightning: this is a game of chess, a war of attrition. Their perversions are selfsame, indistinguishable from each other. He wants her insolent just as much as he wants to be the one who makes insolence concede.

She stares at his lips and wonders what he might taste like. “What makes you think you can make me cum?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. Mint, she decides. Or cinnamon. “Please. You’re practically dripping into your shoes, and I haven’t even touched you.”

She looks down, where desire has migrated, then back at him. Her cheeks are burning. Not with embarrassment—or not only with embarrassment, but with impatience. “Well, are you going to?”

He runs his tongue along his teeth. The clock ticks, quarter-til, but time is the last thing on their minds. This will take as long as it will take.

Two taps on the mahogany, and he shifts left, liberating space beside him. “Come here.”

She’s standing in front of him before she considers the request that’s not so much a request as it is a command. Today, he smells like vanilla bean and tobacco leaf, which would be intoxicating if she weren’t already incapacitated by this very moment.

His hand reaches out, grasping her bare hip. After this much anticipation, the subtle touch is enough to make her legs consider buckling beneath her.

“Can you be quiet?”

She nods, then remembers she might be doing so too eagerly and stops. “Yeah, I’ll be quiet.”

He hums, disapproving. “I thought you told me you’d be good—what did we talk about, again?”

The words spill out like they’ve been preprogrammed in her brain. “Yes, sir.”

Her arse makes contact with the wood as he, without warning, lifts her onto the desk. Suddenly, he is standing between her, bracing her knees, and she is very, very quiet. He glances down at her slick heat, then at her lips, and then steps back, letting his hands fall to his sides.

“Touch yourself. I want to watch.”

Y/N quit piano for one reason and one reason only: performing is a spectator sport, and she has stage fright worse than death. Playing alone, or alongside someone, was fine. Playing for someone was not, because it’s an invitation for scrutiny; everyone is thinking of her phrasing, or her posture, or—especially in this scenario—what her face is doing. The moment she became the entertainment while others simply observed, something in her stuttered and refused.

Irony, who is personified, is no longer the only witness.

“What if I said no?”

This does not appease Harry. He looks at her like a door labelled “unlocked” that refuses to open. “I’d point out that’s not a ‘yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.” The sir rolls off her tongue asphalt-slick; she feels its acid etch her initials to her ribs.

She parts her legs, bracing on the heel of one palm. Harry watches, intrigued, as she trails her hand down her stomach, rubbing herself over the drenched cloth. She wants to touch herself, to let him watch her unravel just by the sight of him alone, but her hips jerk, a small pivot seeking friction, and then she stiffens.

“Look at that.” His voice is sly and taunting, making her stomach drop. “Someone’s gone shy on me.”

“I’m not shy.”

“No. Not usually.” He watches her fingers hover at the waistband, reluctant to commit. “Do you want to stop?”

“No—” She clears her throat, thinking twice. “No, sir.”

He crosses his arms, the fabric of his sleeves pulling taut across his shoulders. “Good. Go on, then. Touch yourself.”

Checkmate demands the king to fall.

Her fingers skim into her panties, and before she even grazes her clit, her hand is drenched. It would be embarrassing if you completely bypassed the detail of her being naked on her lawyer’s desk. As she circles her fingers against her clit, the pleasure swirls up her spine in a torrent so compelling she has to bite her cheek to keep from making a sound.

She wishes it were his hands. That’s the thought that won’t leave her, the one that makes this both tremendous and substandard. Their long fingers and the anchor tattoo that strains against his skin, the one she’s been staring at as they flex in suspense. His hands instead of hers, his touch instead of this pale imitation.

So she watches him, watching her. He doesn’t blink much. His eyes track the movement beneath the lace, the syncopation as she lures herself closer and closer to the brink. He keeps his arms crossed, gripping his bicep with enough pressure to make his knuckles grow pallid. Y/N tries to suppress a desperate sound—the same sounds that would get swallowed by her pillow at two in the morning when she’s alone with nobody to hear her wanting something she shouldn’t—but it comes out without permission, and his lower lip catches between his teeth.

His belt comes undone like a sentence being passed. The leather slides through the loops of his trousers until it falls to the floor with a heaviness that seems to shake the room. Y/N watches it land, coiled on the floor like a hibernating animal.

Her heart drubs persistently as he unbuttons his trousers. The zipper descends, and then his hands are at his hips, pushing the fabric down. His erection strains against his boxers, a thick line pressed against the dark cotton, and as he palms himself through the fabric, a low, raspy groan escapes him.

Settling in the space between her knees, his hand finds her chin. Steady fingers tilt her head back, and then his mouth is on her neck, and she has to bite down on every noise trying to climb out of her because her neck is her core weakness, her absolute undoing. His lips move against her skin, warm and soft, and then his mouth opens and he sucks—merciless—right below her ear. Another gratified moan slips out before she can catch it in time.

“Fuck,” she whispers as his hand grasps her hair, pulling to improve access.

Harry moves lower, utilising his free hand to push the bra aside, and his mouth latches over her nipple. The sensation is jolting, sudden and sweet, and she arches into it. His tongue spirals, flicks, sucks; the pressure builds in her core like a typhoon gathering.

Love bites. She’s going to have love bites, plural. At her father’s dinner table, at her graduation, at the country club pool where her bikini won’t cover his branding. All of it flashes through her mind in a titillating panic that lasts exactly half a second before his teeth graze her and it disintegrates into something far more urgent:

Orgasm. It builds, winding tighter and tighter in her abdomen. Her legs shake, her hips moving, unsanctioned and uninhibited. Harry’s hand coasts from her neck down her thigh, fingers digging into the muscle, and he squeezes firm enough to leave a bruise.

“Not until I say.”

The pendulum stills, snagged at the exact peak of its arc. Y/N nods, forcing her fingers to drag against her clit in slower, wider circles, the frustration of denial coming impalpable from the wanting.

He pulls back from her chest, his lips wet and slightly swollen. “Don’t make me tell you a third time.”

The understimulation pulls her back to herself. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s better.” He takes her wrist and brings it to her mouth. “Taste yourself.”

She licks fingers clean, the syrupy tang of her own desire distinct on her tongue: slightly sweet, slightly bitter, slightly undignified. His eyes eclipse as she sucks each digit dry, and the intimacy of it—being witnessed while she tastes herself on his command—only exacerbates the ache.

There is an unspoken rule to wearing lingerie that separates experience from incompetence: you keep it on as long as possible, if not throughout. Lingerie is not simply a means to an end, but the whole dissertation. Harry knows of this rule, and he chooses the former, shifting her underwear aside, exposing her completely. Cool air whips her wet core, and she quivers from the insufferable vulnerability—and also from the fact that he’s looking at her like he’s finally decided she belongs to him.

His thumb lightly circles her clit, almost sadistic after the urgency of everything it preceded, and then two fingers plunge deep inside her, kissing a spot that makes her vision blur. Any self-control she had stockpiled dissolves into a blatant, ragged gasp.

“Quiet, kitten,” he warns. “You asked for this. I’ll give it to you, but I need you to be quiet.”

It’s not an ordinary pet name, Y/N doesn’t think. But then again, baby is too soft, angel would be insincere, and princess would be satirical. So, kitten it is. Like she’s something small and demanding and dependent on whether or not he feels like being generous. It should read condescending—it does read condescending. That’s apparently what does it for her.

His mouth is on hers before the sound has time to recapitulate. The kiss is nothing like she imagined, which is to say it’s painstakingly ardent—messy, hungry, his tongue sliding against hers with none of the composure he’s held everywhere else. He tastes, in fact, like mint, but also something arcane enough she’d be able to pick it out of a lineup blindfolded. His other hand cups the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, pinning her exactly where he wants while his mouth works hers open.

“Fuck—just look at you,” he murmurs against her mouth. His fingers curl again, deeper, and she whimpers into his kiss. “All of this, and I've barely done anything.”

Y/N tries to respond, but she can’t. Her hands find his shoulders, then his chest, feeling the heat of him through his shirt, and she wants to tear it off, but she’s overwrought, trying to remember how to breathe around the sensation of his fingers inside her, and his thumb still stroking her clit, and his tongue in her mouth and—

“I’m—” she starts, but whatever she was going to say melts into a mewl as he picks up the pace, pressing firmly against her clit. The pressure builds, fast, her hips grinding against his hand of their own accord, chasing release. But every time she gets close, he slows his rhythm just enough to pull her back from the edge. It’s torture. It’s superb. It’s exactly what he said he would do.

He watches her struggle with naked amusement, and mutters, “What did I tell you, hm? You can’t fucking take it.”

She bites down on a sob. “I-I am taking it.”

But she is also so close to begging that the words are starting to form, polite and indelicate in equal measure. Please, sir. Please let me cum. Please, I’ll be good, I promise, just let me—

He slows his hand, divine agony. “Should I fuck you instead?”

Yes. God, yes. That’s what she needs, what she’s been asking for since she walked into this office with her stupid dress and her stupid, optimistic plan. Y/N doesn’t have to think twice about it. She doesn’t have to consider the implications or any of the other things she’s supposed to be considering. The answer is already there, written in the pool of pleasure that’s dripping onto his desk.

“Yes, sir. Yes, please. I—” she whines, piteous, pathetically whines. “I want you so badly.”

He plants a final, punitive kiss on her lips, and then he’s reaching for his wallet in the pocket of his trousers. He retrieves a condom—the man is nothing if not prepared—and sets it beside them.

Y/N’s never had the fulfillment of seeing him without his shirt, but it turns out to be everything her wet dreams suspected, and then some. As he lifts it over his head, she’s cordially met with chiseled, defined lines sketching each muscle, skin several shades darker than her own—tanned and silklike—and the tattoos—Christ, the tattoos. Mosaics she can’t make out in the dim light but wants to trace with her tongue: swallows below his clavicle, a moth below his ribcage, and two ferns adorn his hips, a path indicator to something far more pornographic.

He frees himself, boxers tossed absentmindedly into his heap of clothing. Her mouth waters—his cock is long, thick, and the tip is florid, already leaking a droplet of precum that traces the vein running along the underside, slow as a pulse. He wraps his hand around himself, giving a few slow strokes, keeping his eyes locked on hers. The distance between his hand on his cock and where she wants it feels supremely disgraceful.

His eyes drop to her feet, to the vermilion-soled heels that are still on because she never took them off. Undressing stopped at the lingerie and everything after that happened too fast to remember footwear.

“Keep these on,” he says, and then he lifts her leg, examining the bottom. The shade is proprietary and garish against her pale skin. “They’re meant to be pointed at the ceiling.”

Foil tears into crescendo, and the condom rolls onto his length. As his head slightly tips back in imminent bliss, she clenches around nothing.

“Actually,” he says, his voice rough and devious. “Turn around. Want you from behind.”

Turning your back on someone who has already seen you naked—it’s not the nudity, that’s been established—but there’s something that makes it punishing anyway. It’s the trust, or the illusion of trust, or the fact that at this point the dichotomy between the two has become academic.

She hops off the desk and turns without questioning, the movement mindless as a dancer’s pivot. At first, she looms, bracing her palms against the wood, and suddenly she’s the paperwork. But that is not enough for him. His warm palm pushes against her shoulder, flattening her chest against the mahogany until she can feel her heartbeat reverberating back to her. Y/N’s skin prickles everywhere it isn’t touching as he traps her wrists at the small of her back, one large hand encircling both, locking her in place. His knuckles dig into her tailbone, rigging her to the surface.

“Promise you’ll be good?” His free hand strokes down the dip of her spine, tracing each vertebra through the lace. “Gonna show me how good you can be?”

“Yes, sir,” she heaves, the words sticky with sincerity. “I’ll be so good for you.”

His chuckle ghosts across her shoulder blade. “We’ll see.”

She feels him shift behind her. The anticipation is its own form of delectable anguish—knowing what’s coming, not knowing exactly when, her body suspended for something it craves so badly it’s neglected craving anything else. Then she feels him, the blunt, silken heat of his cock sliding between her lips. Not entering, but coating himself in the undeniable evidence of how badly she wants this. The sensation wrings a gasp from her—buzzy friction against her clit, the teasing promise of abundance.

“Filthy,” he murmurs, dark and honeyed. “Knew you would be. Knew it since that night...” He thrusts shallowly, the thick crown stretching her entrance. “...this was exactly what you needed. For someone to make you earn it. Not just give it to you as everyone else does.”

He pushes in, the stretch pilfering her breath. He’s big. She knew he would be—she saw him—but knowing and feeling are different orders of knowledge, and feeling him now, Y/N’s afraid anatomy has limitations, and she’s found hers. But then his hands tighten on her hips, holding her immobile as he sinks deeper with infinite, tormenting control. The fullness is beyond anything she envisioned, a penetrating nuisance that ignites every nerve ending. He stops halfway, her body straining to accommodate him.

“So fucking tight, kitten.” His thumb rubs circles over her tailbone. “This feel good?”

She’s panting, her fingers scrabbling against polished wood. Her heels are on the floor, and she’s grateful for the height they add because without them she’d be climbing the furniture for leverage. “Yes, sir. So good.”

He withdraws slightly, just enough to make her whine, then sinks back in. “Want more?”

It’s not a question; it’s a fuse, lit with open flames. “Please. More, harder. Fuck, I need—”

And then he’s fucking her in earnest. The rhythm is severe, each thrust driving her forwards, slamming her against the desk edge and rattling the brass lamp. No more restraint—he pistons into her with deep, murderous strokes that steal her vision in bursts of white light. The sounds are abhorrent: the wet slap of skin, the creak of stressed wood, her own choked whimpers. His free hand fists in her hair, yanking her head back.

“Look at you,” he grunts, punctuating his words with each impulsion. “Absolutely gagging for it. Begging for my cock like a fucking whore.” The degradation makes her head spin, something close to nausea settling in her stomach. “And this…” He slams home, grinding his hips against her arse. “…is exactly what you’re useful for.”

He’s silver-tongued, weaving “good girl” and “filthy slut” in the same breath. “Taking my cock so well” and “such a greedy little thing.” The juxtaposition is devastating; it lures her closer to the edge with every crude, withering syllable.

Y/N tries to be quiet. She really does. She bites her cheek until she tastes iron, presses her face against the desk, anything to muffle the strangled sounds trying to escape. But as his thrusts grow more desperate, as the tip of his cock meets her cervix with each deep drive, a moan tears out of her throat—piercing, uncontrolled, perfectly tactless for an office building on a Wednesday afternoon.

Harry’s hand promptly clamps over her mouth, muffling the next cry. “I said quiet.” A pantomime of discretion; the moment it’s there he’s pounding into her with enriched force. “But you can’t help it, can you? Need everyone to know how well I’m fucking you?”

She yelps against his palm, eyes stinging with prophetic tears, and he eases his hand just enough for speech. “What was that? Can’t understand you.”

“Please, just—” she gasps, the plea catching in her chest.

“Please what? Use your words.” His thrusts don’t slow. “You were so smart with words five minutes ago. What happened?”

What happened is that she can’t think. What happened is that the only word she can remember is please, please, please, playing on a loop in her head. What happened is that he’s fucking her beyond coherence, beyond pride.

“Please,” she blubs defeated. “I need to cum. I can’t—”

“Not yet. Maybe I won’t let you at all. Maybe I’ll fuck you ‘til you’re begging me stop.” His hand returns to her hair, forcing her face harder against the desk. “Someone needs to teach you a fucking lesson. Break that bratty little attitude down.”

Y/N knows, rationally, that disputation won’t help her case. That pushing back when she’s pinned and spread and so close to coming she might actually die is not a winning strategy. But depravity, in this case, only ignites her audacity.

“But I’m being good! I’m being so good—”

“I like how desperate you are. But...” His hand slams back over her mouth as another moan builds. “...still too loud.”

Reckless insurgence: she lets her muscles flutter around him, thinking maybe he’ll let her cum when he does, but it only amplifies the sensations—the stretch, the burn, the friction as he pounds into her g-spot. The orgasm looms, inevitable, terrifyingly close despite his denial. Her thighs shake violently; her vision tunnels.

“Don’t you dare,” Harry warns, cutting through the haze. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

She shakes her head frantically against his restraint—I won’t. I promise. Then the tears spill without warning, a sudden slip of debility. At first, it’s just one or two, but then they keep coming, tracking down her cheeks and over his hand.

He must feel the wetness seep between his fingers, because his rhythm falters, and then he stops, a disorienting absence of motion, and pulls out.

He turns her back around to face him. She doesn’t need to see herself to know—her face is flushed, tear-streaked, hair sticking to damp skin. He props her back onto the desk, pushes her right knee up towards her chest, spreading her wide again, and locks his eyes with hers.

“Said I’d make you beg ‘til you cried.” His gaze pins her, as forcible as his hands, and he pushes in slowly, watching her face as he fills her up again. The new angle is deeper, more direct, his pelvis grinding against her clit with every shallow thrust. “Look at that. Such pretty tears for me, kitten.”

She’s already choking on her own sobs, but his hand wraps around her throat for good measure. His thumb strokes her crazed pulse, not squeezing, but letting her know that he’s thinking about it. The prospect scrunches her eyes shut—if she cums now, after all this, without approval, her subconscious will never let her live it down. But then the pressure of his hand around her throat tightens, just enough to get her attention.

“I can tell you’re trying so hard,” he murmurs, snide. “Ask me one more time. Maybe I’ve reconsidered.”

Eleventh-hour. “Please. Let me cum. Please.”

He tightens his grip; air vanishes. Y/N’s hand flies up, clutching his wrist in reflex. Suddenly, the cross tattoo, the anchor, the three-leaf clover—it all makes sense.

“There you go. Cum. Quietly.”

This is the part where pride gets stored in the overhead compartment and the body takes over. The orgasm doesn't build, it crashes, making her eyes roll back, blinding her in bliss. Pleasure scalds through every vein as she convulses around him, milking his cock in surges.

“Manners.”

“—thank you, sir.”

He watches her come apart, his thrusts growing heedless and uneven. “Oh, fuck you, Y/N,” he snarls, his control finally snapping. His hips slam into hers, his fingers digging into her thigh. “Fuck you.”

That one feels personal, but she’s too dissolved to care, because then he’s cumming, too. The groan that escapes him is low and bitten-back and sounds dragged out against his will. She feels the pulse of him inside her, and then stillness.

Her body twitches, tiny tremors running through her thighs and belly. Harry’s hand slides from her throat to cup her cheek, his thumb wiping away a tear track.

“Good girl.” He kisses her damp cheekbone, then her temple, his lips lingering. “You did so good.”

CONVERGENCE (9K)

INCIPIENT HOUR (7.8k)

MISS OBLIVIOUS (8.4k)

ABSTRACT THINKING (8.4k)

DEATH BY POLLEN (8.4k)

SHE'S THE LIABILITY (7.8k)

EPISTEMIC UNCERTAINTY (6.8k)

CANTILEVER (4.5k)

collin

I am an ambient nuisance in the tranquility of the library, three hours deep into a secondary literature review that was supposed to be a one-hour skimming session. My laptop is dying, my phone is at six percent, and I have seven browser tabs open to different academic papers, none of which have been cited in a peer-reviewed publication this decade.

I look at my phone and see that an entire hour has been siphoned from my life without notice. There are eight unread emails from other students, but none of these matter, because at the top of my notifications is a text from Harry:

You were supposed to be home a half hour ago.

I’m consumed by the immediate, panic-soaked knowledge that I’ve fucked up in some way I don’t yet comprehend, and then the next text arrives before I can finish cursing.

Harry: If you’re standing me up, could you at least have the decency to let me know?

My last memory of the clock is a glance at 4:36, where I told myself I’d be leaving in five minutes, although I can’t recall why I planned on leaving, or if I actually meant it when I said it to myself.

That’s when I remember: Erskine Contemporary has recently spent four million dollars and my last thread of patience prepping for a “community partnership event” to showcase and auction off work by students at the local art school. Harry’s been planning this for weeks, and I was supposed to be at the opening with him to smile at parents who want to know why their child’s self portrait is valued at less than zero dollars.

Me: i’m so sorry, i lost track of time. i’ll head out now

The typing ellipsis hover for a full minute before it resolves.

Harry: Don’t bother.

The tension in my stomach doesn’t abate. There are at least three ways to interpret that sentence, and all of them end with Harry firing me via Google Calendar.

Me: no i want to be there

Me: i’m leaving rn

Harry: It’s fine. I can’t wait for you any longer.

I start shoving papers and loose sticky notes into my bag. My laptop makes a hideous scraping noise as I drag it off the desk, making every student turn to look at me. I keep my head down and try to avoid eye contact as I walk past them and text him back without running into a shelf.

Me: i’ll be late but i’ll be there

He starts typing, then stops. Then starts again. He has, in effect, rendered me on airplane mode, emotionally.

Is he angry? Is this what angry looks like when executed in text? Harry never says “it’s fine” unless it is absolutely not fine. Or is this the other, worse scenario—where he’s so disappointed he can’t even muster the energy to fight about it? The possibilities swim before me like guppies on meth.

Harry: I’ll send someone to collect you. You can get ready in my office.

I am being handled, and there’s a part of me that resents how easy it is to comply.

The driver appears not even five minutes after I send my location. For the entire car ride, I alternate between staring at my phone and trying to come up with a plausible excuse for why I’m almost an hour late to the only event I was supposed to attend this week. Of course, I have nothing. “I lost track of time” is as honest as it gets.

By the time we arrive, the building is floodlit and crawling with well-heeled art school parents and administration. The driver pulls up to the back entrance and opens the door for me as if ejecting contraband.

“Collin! Christ. You’re here,” Sari chirps as soon as I step through the door. “He said you’d be late, but not this late. Come with me, quickly.”

The force with which Sari pulls me through the staff entrance is enough to send me skidding on the polished concrete. I follow her along the warren of galleries and hallways, and even though she is technically escorting me, it seems like she’s trying to make it look as if she’s not. Maybe Sari is hoping to avoid being infected with my delinquency, but it makes me feel like I’m following her around like a dog.

We round a corner, and there, between a massive Hirst dot painting and the sign for the toilets, I see Chase Benson talking to none other than Matthew Welles.

The sight is so jarring I nearly sideswipe Sari. Matthew is one hundred percent in lecture mode, but his eyes are on Chase, who looks simultaneously amused and bored out of his skull. My neck itches with the anticipation of Matthew’s gaze, but I don’t look back. I pick up the pace behind Sari, matching her stride so I can use her as both a shield and emotional airbag.

If Matthew is here, he’s here for a reason, and knowing him, not a good one. As much as I’d like to believe the universe isn’t actively plotting to ruin my life, the pressure behind my eyes is all but conclusive.

We ride the elevator up to Harry’s office, which I forgot was basically an entire apartment stapled to the top of the gallery. She gestures to the en suite bathroom. “Your things are in there. I’ll let Harry know you’re here.”

I’ve been here exactly one time, so I’ve never ventured this far into Harry’s office, but the bathroom alone looks as if a luxury department store has been forcibly merged with a laboratory. It’s also somehow become a staged diorama of my own personal effects—the green dress his stylist picked out for me is hanging on a hook, and someone has packed my favourite pair of heels, my curling iron, hairbrush, and my entire makeup bag. The makeup bag is particularly impressive, as I left half of its contents on the bathroom counter this morning because it was too full to actually zip.

Next to my hairbrush is a black velvet box with a sticky note affixed to it in Harry’s handwriting— “Should have given you this sooner.”

I’m not sure what I’m expecting when I open the box, but I’m surprised to find an expensively excellent vintage Cartier watch, more my taste than my actual taste. Tucked into the padding are a pair of my favourite earrings, the three necklaces Harry is always obsessed with when I wear them, and the charm bracelet he gave me.

It is impossible to stay annoyed at him when he does things like this, and I start to feel an overwhelming sense of actual guilt for not being here on time. He pays more attention than I thought; he knew exactly what I’d need for tonight, and he didn’t even have to ask me. He just packed it all himself, and then some. Or maybe instructed someone, but the accuracy is too weird to be the work of a stranger.

There’s not time to dwell. Wrestling the dress over my hips and reveals its fatal flaw: the zip in back is a two-handed operation. I spend a comical amount of time twisting in the mirror, flailing like an injured cephalopod, but there’s no way I can fasten it past the second vertebra.

I shift to makeup, finish it and record time, and just as I’m done touching up my hair, there’s a knock on the office door. It opens, and then Harry’s reflection appears in the mirror, already looking directly at the open back of the dress. He doesn’t look angry, but he’s wearing a black suit like it’s an imminent threat.

“Figured you might need a zip,” he remarks. “You look nice.”

“Sorry I’m late,” I say, for the fifteenth time in my head, but the first time out loud. “I totally dropped the ball.”

He shrugs, so unconcerned it almost irritates me. “It’s okay, really. Just…try not to make it a habit.”

The good news is I rarely keep habits. “Are you sure you’re not mad?”

“Frustrated, I guess. But I know you didn’t mean to—” he pauses. His eyes flick up to mine in the glass, and suddenly all the playfulness is gone. “Wait. Are you alright?”

I unplug the curling iron and turn to face him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’ve not known you to be the worrying type. You never care if I’m mad or not, you just move on.”

I’m not the worrying type. Harry’s made me someone I don’t even recognise, and it’s becoming harder and harder to compartmentalise. If he were just a garden-variety arsehole, I could box him up and bury the shame. But he isn’t. He’s never made me feel like an obligation, even if I am objectively acting like one. All of the times he’s lost his temper with me, it’s been justified—hell, I’d have left me by now. But he never does. Even when I show up an hour late, or forget my entire life at his apartment, or blow up at him for reasons I can’t even articulate.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I mutter. The urge to actually apologise again almost overpowers the more familiar urge to brush him off. I turn around and gesture at the zipper. “Can you help me?”

He moves my hair out the way. I feel his fingers at the base of my neck and the whisper of the zipper all the way up my spine before he turns me back to face the mirror and starts arranging the jewellery for me. He fastens the watch, the bracelet, then starts putting on the necklaces.

The moment is too reverent not to ruin, so I blurt, “Why is Matthew downstairs?”

His face shutters for a second. “Did he say something to you?”

“No, but I saw him when I came in.”

This is clearly not a topic Harry enjoys, judging by his look of irritation. “He’s gone now. He wasn’t here for the event—he was in the archives, looking at old show files. Chase asked if I’d let him for his research, and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no.”

“Are you sure he’s gone?”

He moves to grab another necklace, but the second the question leaves my mouth he does an actual double-take in the mirror and sets it down. “I walked him out the door myself, just before I came up here.”

I pick up the necklace and put it on. “Alright.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asks. “You seem on edge.”

I force a smile. "I’m fine. We should go downstairs.”

Harry’s not convinced, but he nods and offers me his hand. I thread mine through it and let him lead me to the ground level, where the lobby is riddled with participants who are not quite old enough to drink, but are nonetheless dressed like they expect to be doing shots in the toilets. There are packs of students clustering near the entrance, their parents chaperoning them at respectful but vigilant distances, and the rare loner already posted up at the food table, collecting every appetiser.

Harry’s hand remains in mine as we descend the staircase into this wetland of awkwardness. Everyone glances up at us. He’s got a knack for being the centre of attention without effort, but the effect is tainted slightly by the way he keeps checking his phone. Given that I am here exclusively because I forgot to check mine, it feels like poetic balance.

Sari directs us to “mingle,” which I interpret as an order to behave. Harry ignores this and pulls me towards the far end of the gallery with clear intent.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“There’s someone I want you to meet.”

We zigzag through a tangle of legs and arrive at the foot of a massive canvas. There is a girl standing next to it as if she might need to physically defend it at any moment.

She doesn’t notice us until Harry prompts, “Trinity?”

The girl startles, turns around, and then instantly tries to hide the fact she was startled. “Oh, um. Sorry, Mr. Styles.”

“Collin, this is Trinity,” Harry explains. “Trinity, this is Collin, the woman I was telling you about.”

She extends a hand. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you.”

I accept the handshake, trying not to crush her fingers. “Nice to meet you too.”

Harry adds, “Trinity’s working with something, and—honestly, I’ll let her explain it. It’s much more interesting coming from her.” He gives her an almost fatherly look and, to my horror, takes two steps back and starts talking to someone else, leaving me alone with this clearly terrified teenager.

She shifts from foot to foot. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this.”

“At what? Standing?”

“Um, talking,” she whispers, as if we’re being secretly observed by the other paintings.

“Oh,” I whisper back. “That’s fine. Me too.”

A streak of relief cuts through her, and she gestures at the canvas. “You…do you want to see my piece?”

“Definitely,” I say, hoping I can pass for the sort of person who “gets” art without having to actually say anything clever about it.

The painting is even larger up close. I imagine it was smuggled in through the loading dock, possibly in the dead of night. The piece is mathematically precise gridwork, overlaid by successively tighter bands of fine lines, which are then overlaid by faint washes of reds, blues, and greens.

The closer you get, the more the gridlines seem to shiver and slip. When you move to the right, the red layer pops; to the left, it’s the blue. The effect is like a lenticular, but infinitely more elegant, and much less likely to be found on a postcard from Las Vegas. I start to feel slightly sea-sick, and I have to plant my feet to avoid listing sideways.

“You see it?” she asks cautiously.

“It’s oscillating,” I reply, keeping things just vague enough to avoid being wrong.

“Right! It’s just overlapping wave patterns. If you get up close, it’s all lines, but from far away, it’s—well, a moiré, basically. The patterns interfere in a way that…um…” she trails off, looking at me for help.

“Are you thinking of constructive and destructive interference?”

She lights up. “Exactly, but in two dimensions. If you lock onto one part, it drowns everything else out, so it like…changes.”

“It only appears to change, though,” I say, still inspecting it. “The image is static.”

“Well, yeah. But sometimes the appearance is all you get.”

My instinct is to interrogate it, but I decide to listen to understand for once in my life. I take a step to the side and the colour shifts from blue to a dirty gold, then to maroon. “So I’m seeing red because I want to see red?”

She shakes her head. “Not because you want to. It’s the first one you notice. If you really tried, you could see all the other colours, too.”

This is more sophisticated than any art I have ever made in my own lifetime. I lean forward and try to see if I can notice all the colours at once. I can’t. The second my focus lands anywhere, it selects one, and the rest become like afterthoughts.

“Try going to the far left,” she says. The entire grid tilts and suddenly the most apparent colour is green. I’ve changed my position, so it’s a new effect, but the art itself never changed. Just my perspective.

“It’s the illusion of difference,” she goes on, “built out of something fixed. My teacher said it was an analogy for cognitive bias, but I think it’s more about how easy it is to think you’re the only one seeing something clearly.”

I glance at the title card. The painting is called “Parallax.” The apparent shift in position of an object when viewed from different points. Astronomers use it to estimate the distance to stars; humans use it, apparently, to concoct metaphors for “perspective is everything.” I read the name and immediately feel less like a viewer and more like the canvas.

Why the fuck would Harry want me to see this? My internal monologue loops—he’s making a point, Collin. He wants you to see what potential looks like before it calcifies into cynicism. Maybe he thinks you’re squandering your potential. Maybe he’s reminding you of how you were at that age, before your own brain fucked you up permanently.

I keep staring at the painting. Trinity’s nervous energy has nowhere to go, so it begins to pool between us. I can sense her sizing up whether it’s rude to walk away, or if she’s expected to entertain me further.

“Are you and Mr. Styles married?” she spouts, as if the question had been in her mouth for hours.

I nearly choke. “No. Definitely not.”

“Oh,” she remarks. “He told me you’re a physicist.”

The imposter syndrome washes over me so fast, I forget to ask how those two things could possibly be related. “Yeah. At least, I’m supposed to be.”

“Like Bose-Einstein condensates? That kind of thing?”

I can’t help it. I smile, but it feels unnatural on my face. “More like disordered systems, but there’s some crossover. I once built a trap that held atoms at a few nanokelvin. Colder than interstellar space.”

She beams. “That’s so cool.”

This is the first time in recorded history that anyone has ever called my work “so cool.”

“I think I want to something science-y,” Trinity continues, “but I’m no genius. My dad says I’ll be weeded out and I should just do economics.”

“I’m no genius either,” I admit. “Just stubborn.”

We’re both saved from having to expand on this by the return of Harry. He’s already halfway through the process of being annoyed and has to consciously uncross his arms before he speaks. “How’s the show and tell?”

“Very insightful,” I tell him.

He steers the conversation to Trinity, asking about her school and her plans for the holidays. He’s a genius at making people feel like they’ve won a contest simply by being noticed. Once he realised her social battery is running on low, he says, “Well, I’ve got to steal Collin if that’s alright.”

She nods, probably grateful for the out. “It was nice meeting you, Collin.”

“It was nice to meet you, too. Good luck with the next one.”

She smiles and backs away, melting into the crowd like a professional introvert. Harry slides his arm around my waist, steering us through the density of people as if we’re a matched set of luggage. Instead of winding us to the bar, which is where I expect us to go, he pushes through the side exit and out into the walled courtyard. There are two men arguing about tax write-offs near the hedge, but otherwise it’s quiet.

I wait for them to leave, then pin him with what’s been circling my brain. “I thought you said you weren’t mad at me.”

He furrows his brow, looking genuinely confused. “I’m not.”

“So you didn’t just use a child as a pawn to try to teach me a lesson on perspective?” I’m dead serious; my voice sounds like someone else’s idea of calm.

He stares at me blankly, then slow blinks. The effect is more surprising than I expect. “That would be insane, darling. And impossible. If I wanted to teach you something, I’d have to start with an abacus.”

Insane has felt relative lately. “Why else would you want me to meet her? You’d only deploy an emotional chess pieces if you’re pissed.”

“I swear on my mother, the only reason I introduced you is because Trinity started using words I didn’t understand and I figured you might be the only one in the room who would,” he asserts. “I have a degree in art history—anything beyond ‘diffraction’ is out of my depth.”

The answer is so plainly stupid and mundane it’s almost disappointing. I fire back, “And anything beyond ‘taking it literally’ is probably out of mine.”

He rolls his eyes. “You know, now you mention it, would’ve been a smart setup. Fits the motif—you latch onto one version of something and decide that’s all it could possibly be.”

“Or maybe the motif is that you can’t see the whole picture if you’re standing too close.”

I’m anticipating him to return fire, but Harry just…glitches? That’s the only way I can explain it. His face stalls, but then he catches himself doing it and shoves his hands in his pockets so I can’t see them clenching. “This is so like you, Collin. Is that what you want? Space? Distance?”

Space as in, right now? This week? Physical or emotional? Is he asking if I want to break the contract? I don’t even know why I brought it up. All instances is a hard pass.

“No,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Harry’s shoulders drop a fraction. “I don’t want that either.”

There’s a voice inside me screaming: Matthew’s in the city, Matthew’s in the archives, Matthew’s in Harry or Chase’s ear, building a hit piece on me. I’ve been overcorrecting every micro-action, every thought, to the point it’s starting to annoy even me. I wish I could just tell him why I’m acting like a system running background checks on itself, but then he’d start asking questions I can’t answer.

His phone starts to light up with notifications stacking like Scrabble tiles, but he doesn’t glance down. I have all his attention for the price of a heartbeat, just until the auction software buzzes again and reality claws him back.

“Sorry,” he sighs. “Silent auction closes in a half hour, and it’s a mess.”

This is divine intervention. I try to look sympathetic, but I’ve never understood the economics of charity auctions, let alone why he cares so much about this one. “How so?”

“Half the lots haven’t been bid on, but the others are going for triple estimate. There’s no logic to it.”

I never considered that not every piece would sell. “What happens if not everything sells? The whole school goes without paint brushes?”

He chuckles as he scrolls through his phone. “Yeah, finger-painting only.” He glances up at me, then back down. “No, actually. The gallery ‘buys in’ at the reserve. We absorb the loss, and the kids gets the credit and the scholarship cheque.”

“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“Only if we resell it for profit. Not if it sits in my office, or if we donate to a hospital or library.”

“That’s surprisingly wholesome for you.”

His smile flickers. “What did you think happened?”

“Figured you’d throw it all into the incinerator, or repurpose it as insulation for the wine cellar,” I joke. “Can I look?”

This might be a breach of some social code, but he hands over his phone instantly. Each bidder is identified by a three-digit number. The lots are sorted by title and student name, then by current bid. I scan the highest ones and see three pieces have been bid up to over $5,000, but the majority are sitting at the minimum. I look at the patterns—#128 bids on two or three pieces in a cluster, skips a dozen, then picks up again on only those that have already been bid on by others. #211 only bids on the installations, nothing two-dimensional. #83, the highest single spender, seems to only go after works that are already close to their upper estimate.

I scroll further, and at the bottom is a forest of zeroes.

“Do you know who #142 is?” I ask, because nothing about their history is making sense.

“Al Carrington,” he answers. “He’s not bidding to win, I think he just likes to drive up the prices. Couldn’t make a move to save his own life.”

Sounds like him. I peer through the glass walls and check the layout. “Everyone’s theme-stacking. You’ve got twenty lots that fit the bill, but they’re physically hidden behind sculptures, so no one’s seen them.”

“We’ve already rotated twice.”

“But you’ve got everything dispersed. There’s no grouping.”

He follows my eyeline, then starts typing up a message to Sari about increasing comparative visibility. “Remind me to never take you to a casino.”

A weird flush rises up my chest. “House edge is still bigger than mine. I’d bankrupt you.”

“You already do,” he teases, taking my hand and leading us back inside.

Staff are already rotating the lot, and we join the slow-moving river of people through the gallery. It’s always easy to fall back into step with him, as if nothing’s ever really broken, just misaligned for a while.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

At the end of the night, once the guests have cleared out, I find myself wandering the perimeter with no real purpose except to check if the paintings look different now that nobody’s watching me look at them. Some pieces wear their abandonment proudly, others seem to shiver under the weight of inattention, their beauty entirely propped up by the brief energy of being wanted.

The guests are gone. Harry is somewhere, but Sari is the first apparition to materialise, bursting out of the admin suite with her bag and coat already on.

“You don’t need to wait,” she says, either relieved or disappointed to find me still here. “You’ve already won the girlfriend lottery tonight.”

I smile and reply, “Goodnight, Sari.” She vanishes through the front doors as if she intends to never return.

I do another lap, this time in reverse, and linger in front of “Parallax” for the longest. From this distance, in this light, the oscillation is gone. It just looks like a grid with no sign of the warring colours or the pleasantly nauseating shimmer. Trinity’s name is scrawled in the bottom left corner, next to a little red dot that signals “sold,” but the sticker is missing, replaced by a blue one I’ve never seen before.

Harry appears out of nowhere, doing a scan of the lobby. When he sees me he asks, “You’re not waiting for me, are you?”

“Wasn’t sure if I was allowed to leave.”

“You’re always allowed to leave.”

I glance at the floor. “Did it go well?”

He makes a face that means “define well,” but then he nods. “All but three sold. Best year on record.”

“Which ones?”

He points. “There, there, and—” he gestures at Trinity’s piece. “That one.”

“That’s not bad.” Out of almost a hundred pieces, three not selling is the equivalent of a rounding error.

“It’s not,” he agrees, glancing back at the painting. “If you want this one, it’s yours.”

“What would I do with it?”

“Hang it? Burn it? I don’t care. But if it stays here, nobody will see it for at least five years.”

I consider the offer. “I like it, but I don’t know where I’d put it, honestly.”

Harry looks at me for an extra second, then does a nervous cough. “Come with me.”

The words are always an order when they leave his mouth, but he also gives me the option to refuse, although he knows I won’t. He doesn’t wait for my reply, just walks to the door and holds it open. I let the lobby of the gallery linger in my peripheral, and then I follow.

After midnight, New York City is always one degree away from being hostile, one block away from being beautiful. Harry gives me his jacket before I can shiver. When we walk past his own building, I start to worry if I’ve finally pushed him to the point where he’s going to throw me into the river, but then he leads us another three blocks, to an address I’ve probably passed a million times but never looked twice at. It’s a glassy, new construction building wedged between a bank and a corporate office.

The doorman recognises him, of course, and says, “Evening, Mr Styles,” without a trace of surprise. Harry greets him back and leads me to the lift, where he presses the button for the top floor.

The numbers climb. Fifty. Sixty. Sixty-four. Eventually the display reads “PH” and then stalls. Harry punches a code in without hesitation, and the doors whoosh open into a space that defies every law of conservation of taste.

Some might call this an apartment, or a penthouse, but I would call it a museum of negative air. On a scale of one to vulgar, it’s twelve.

Harry waits by the door, watching for my reaction, but I’m not really giving him anything. It’s a beautiful space, obviously. It’s glass, floor to ceiling, with a conversation pit, a fireplace, and built-in shelving. The kitchen is a floating island of stone and steel, and I think the fridge is hidden behind a false panel; I can’t actually see it, but I can hear it cycling.

“What are we doing here?” I ask, acutely aware that the answer is going to piss me off.

He shrugs, as if he just happened to find it here. “Go look around.”

There’s a part of me that wants to be defiant and say “I’ve seen enough,” but curiosity wins out. I do a lap, starting with the terrace, which is glassed-in as well and, at this altitude, feels more like being suspended in atmosphere than standing on a roof.

There are three bathrooms, each one more unnecessarily advanced than the last. One has a tub set into the floor, which you’d have to be a gymnast to get in and out of. The other two feature dials for everything from the heated floors to the water temperature of the sink. I test the light switches at random, and each panel has at least eight settings—reading, night, party, serenity, etc. The entire unit feels like a spaceship.

There are also three bedrooms. Two of them are as blank as the rest of the apartment, but the third was clearly meant to be an office, because it has walls finished in black chalkboard paint anda rolling ladder.

I come back to the main space, where Harry is standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling. He is not looking at me, probably because he is trying to avoid a fight.

“Did you see it?”

I follow his gaze. The entire ceiling over the living room is a continuous skylight—one massive sheet of glass, currently framing the moon. The shadow it casts is so crisp I can see every detail of the structure.

“During the daytime, the lighting in here changes every half hour,” he goes on. “And it throws the heating off. Do you hate it?”

“I don’t hate it.”

I can hear the smile in his voice. “If there’s ever a tornado you’re fucked.”

“It’s a different grade of glass,” I tell him. “They make it for research facilities.”

He finally looks at me, and the smile’s replaced by a laugh. “You really are the biggest swot alive.”

“That’s what you like about me.”

He rolls his eyes but doesn’t disagree. He watches me watching the moon, and then asks, “Do you want it?”

I want to ask how much it costs, but I already know that, for Harry, the number is both irrelevant and absolute.

“The…glass?”

“The apartment.”

I try to buy myself time. “Is this you kicking me out?”

“Hardly,” he shoots me a sideways glance. “You’re always welcome, but I know you want space, and I know you don’t want to make a decision. So…”

We’ve been fighting about this on and off for about a week. I said I’d take whatever, and he said that’s not a real answer. He’s expecting me to be picky, but it’s hard to be picky when someone else is paying. I could never even imagine wanting something this excessive.

“Do you want it, Collin?” he asks again. “You can have this. Or you can have anything. But if you want it, it’s yours.”

It takes genuine effort not to say something stupid, like, “Can I see the lease?” or, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Yes.”

The tension drains from his posture. “Good, because I signed the lease. Whole thing’s paid. You can move in next week.”

I feel my heart trip over itself. “You—what? You already signed? What if I had said no?”

“That would have been fine, too. Subletting exists.”

He looks at me with the kind of vulnerability that would scare me if it came from anyone else. Now, it’s just a fact of existence, like Newton’s second law. Equal and opposite.

I lean in, but his lips meet mine first, perfectly unhurried. It would be hyperbolic to say this apartment is a monument to the unresolved tension between us, but only just. I’ve been obsessed with optimising the angle of approach—never too close, never too obvious, because if you never commit, you can’t be held responsible for the outcome. It’s only now that I realise maybe the full picture isn’t the one you get by pulling away, but the one you see when you’re willing to trust that, from the right distance, the whole thing makes sense.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

collin

My legs are shaking so badly I nearly set off the elevator’s motion sensor. By the time I step into the penthouse, the world is mostly nausea and endorphin afterburn, and my arms are too rubbery to properly work the lock. This is what happens when I let Lena talk me into pilates before 8AM—I come home as a puddle in a matching set with my hair leaking sweat.

The apartment is empty, or so I assume. Harry’s schedule is like a black box—inputs go in, outcomes emerge, but the process is ineffable. He leaves at 7:58 every day, a true model of punctuality and overcommitment, and the earliest he returns is dusk, or sometimes, midnight. The last two days he’s been in Philidelphia—something about a Rothko and “donor cultivation,” which I now understand just means he’s getting drunk and losing a bidding war on purpose—so my main interaction with him has been the dotted line of his location services.

But today, as I come in, the kitchen is occupied.

Harry stands at the stove, or more accurately, looms over it. He’s in track pants and nothing else, and the drawstring is knotted in a smug little bow like it knows I’m too wrecked to untie it one-handed. He’s holding his phone between jaw and shoulder, and his forearms are doing that unfair violin-string thing while he lowers an egg into a pan of barely moving water.

“Tell Frankfurt I don’t care if it’s still on the tarmac, insurance covers acts of God not acts of stupidity—” He sees me and instantly switches to warm honey. “I’ll call you later.”

“You’re back early,” I say, stating the obvious like it’s a federal offence.

“Last meeting got cancelled, flew in at dawn.” He nods at the barstool opposite him. “Sit before you drip on the quartz, it stains.”

My legs have entered the acceptance stage of grief, so I obey. He pours orange juice into a weighty crystal tumbler and parks it in front of me like medicine.

“How was Philidelphia?” I ask.

“Fine.” As I take a sip, he folds his arms and does a full-body scan that feels like an X-ray. “You look like you’ve been drowned.”

“Lena abducted me for pilates,” I croak, as if the words explain manslaughter. “She did not mention that it’s basically medieval torture with spa music.”

He laughs. “Fucking hell. That shit is hard, even for me.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised I lived,” I continue, because the egg is timing itself and I feel the story decaying, “anyway, you know the Carringtons?”

He rolls his eyes. “Cathryn and Al? Yes, darling. I know every socialite within a twenty-block radius,” which would be rude if it weren’t true. “But I haven’t seen them since that NYU fundraiser. You charmed them while I was hiding behind a sculpture.”

“Right. They have that son, the human lacrosse stick, totally empty upstairs. Cathryn cornered me and asked if I could tutor him.”

“Brady’s not entirely without potential, to be fair,” he murmurs, and the egg gets a gentle spin, like he’s hypnotising it. “Is that something you’d be interested in? You already abuse Columbia undergrads with thermo—do you even have time?”

“Well I’ve already done it twice a week for the last six.”

He’s freezes with his spoon poised mid-air. “You’re just mentioning this now because…”

I shrug. “Because unless you think ‘can you name three types of triangle’ is a market-moving detail, I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“Didn’t think it was relevant?” he repeats.

“Anyway—” I power through, before we get off track. “This morning at pilates she ambushed me with the news his score jumped to the fourteen-hundreds. She said, ‘Al will ring Harry this afternoon to finalise our commitment.’”

The spoon clinks on marble, and the egg starts to tornado in the pot. “How did you—what exactly did you say to them?”

“Nothing. I tutored their kid. Kid aced the test. Ergo, parental euphoria opens vault doors.”

He glares, but it’s more for show than for substance. “Collin, Al Carrington has been telling me for three years he’ll allocate ten million ‘when the stars align’ which is rich person for ‘never.’”

“Well I reckon the stars aligned as soon as Brady got his results back. Maybe you should’ve tried teaching trigonometry instead of offering to name a wing after them.”

He comes around the island and stops between my knees. His palms settle on my sweat-slick thighs and he squeezes them like he’s testing fruit for ripeness. Before I can yelp, he’s kissing me like we’re drafting a contract with our tongues. When we pull away he mutters, “You impossible, accidental genius.”

I roll my eyes, but the pulse between my legs is embarrassingly enthusiastic. “Your egg’s experiencing a tsunami.”

“Symbolic of my prior inefficiencies.” He steps away only long enough to kill the burner, then returns, sliding a plate of fruit, yoghurt, and a slab of sourdough my direction.

“So you’re not mad?” I ask, just to make sure.

He shakes his head and smiles. “Your independence turns me on disproportionately. But I do have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

I’m still trying to decide if ten million dollars counts as a dowry when he sighs and says, “About your apartment…the city inspector red-stamped the whole building. It’s condemned.”

The juice suddenly tastes sour. “The entire…brownstone?”

“Well, that’s what happens when you find toxic mould in every unit.” He taps his phone so I can see a photo attachment of what looks like the inside of a lungs-of-London chimney, only it’s allegedly the drywall behind my bathroom mirror. “Your landlord is looking at criminal penalties. You, however, are getting your deposit and this month’s rent back by close of business.”

Part of me wants to mourn the studio—the crooked blinds, the graffiti on the windows, the patch of floor where the bed always wobbled—but mostly I feel the cave-in of options.

“You can stay here as long as you want, but I know you want an exit strategy.” Harry opens a laptop that was definitely not there five minutes ago. “My realtor sent listings. Morningside, Manhattan Valley, Washington Heights, whatever your preference is.”

“Those zip codes file taxes in a different galaxy,” I object. “That’s why I lived in the Bronx.”

“Yeah, and it took you over an hour to get to uni. The new commute is twenty-six minutes on the 1 train, thirty-one if the track’s on fire.” He tilts his head, letting the chain around his neck catch the pendant light. “Besides, you’re not paying, so your objections are decorative.”

“Decorative?”

He turns the screen and shows me a sun-lit one-bedroom on 116th with oak floors and a kitchen that doesn’t look like it was assembled from mismatched dollhouse parts. Monthly rent is a hair under six thousand. “We’ll view next weekend. If you loathe it, we’ll keep looking.”

I’m still gaping at the zeros when he flicks to the next listing— a brownstone duplex, community garden in back, laundry in unit. Then another. And another. The tabs multiply like bacteria themselves.

“I can’t afford gratitude at this exchange rate,” I mutter.

He leans across the counter and brackets my knees with his hands. “Let me be vulgar—I have more money than I could spend if I tried. I also have you. The overlap is called arithmetic.”

“I’m not unemployed. I can pay for my apartment, as long as it’s somewhere else.”

“Use your money to buy outrageous textbooks.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and reads my hesitation like it’s captioned. “I said I’d fix it. Let me fix it.”

I picture myself a year from now, contract over, addicted to filtered air and sheets with a thread count higher than my credit score.

He closes the laptop and slides the plate closer. “Eat something, please. You’re trembling.”

My post-pilates adrenaline is colliding with eviction vertigo. I bite the crust and watch him rinse the pot. I feel suddenly, stupidly possessive of this man who’s colonising my autonomy with air purifiers and municipal code.

“Next weekend,” I agree finally. “But no naming rights on the building.”

“You drive a brutal bargain, darling.”

“Non-negotiable.”

He glances back at me and nods. “Done.”

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The amphitheatre rises from the sod in a swoop of poured concrete, like someone dropped a Fibonacci spiral onto a suburban soccer field and left it to fossilise. Harry’s cuff brushes my knuckles as we hand our passes to a security guy who looks as thrilled to be wearing a tuxedo in this humidity as I am to be wearing four-inch heels on gravel.

We follow the signs of illuminated rectangles that look stolen from an airport down a turf ramp that leads toward the river. Harry steers me left, past a champagne tower arranged like an unstable jenga set. He plucks two flutes off the top without toppling the tower, an act of physics I file under the reasons he still wakes up interesting.

We are immediately intercepted by Al Carrington, who is the physical embodiment of wealth acquired through a hundred years of oil rigging. I’m acknowledged, admired, and dismissed inside of ten seconds, which is ideal because they quickly launch into a boring tennis match of “whose foundation did more for disadvantaged urban kids this year?” The answer is Harry’s, but he lets Al thinks it’s his, because there’s real shame in fact checking someone in public. Especially when they just wrote you a cheque for ten million dollars.

I sip my champagne and look around for someone else under the age of thirty. No luck. The only thing in my bracket is the install by JR, which takes up most of the amphitheatre’s south wall. It’s black and white, enormous, and was probably much more radical in the artist’s head. The faces staring out are all New Yorkers, meant to represent the polyphony of the city’s hope, but the only thing it actually accomplishes is make everyone feel surveilled while trying to use the restroom.

A hush ripples outward as the mayor ascends the portable dais. Harry’s hand lands on my shoulder as if it’s always belonged there, his thumb describing slow circles that map directly onto my pulse points. The mayor talks for a while about “new civic space” and “radical accessibility,” phrases that mean nothing and everything, depending on your status as a donor. Tom is acknowledged by name, as is Lena, who does not blink at the attention. When it’s over, everyone claps like their bonus depends on it.

“You want another?” Harry asks. He means the champagne, which I have already finished.

“Please.”

“Table two,” he says, pointing to a tented seating chart. “Find us.”

At this point, moving in a straight line is the only activity available to me. I make my way to the highest terrace, where the rows of circular tables are, and find table two in the second row, slightly off axis from the stage. Lena is already there, sitting in the seat next to my place card, which is written in copperplate next to Harry’s.

She immediately starts talking about the mayor’s speech, which I did not hear but am able to bluff through with noncommittal “hm”s and “that’s interesting”s. I’m mostly observing who’s arriving at the tables. I spot at least four more foundation people in our row, and two couples that are probably on second or third marriages, as measured by the visible age gap and the order in which they arrive—older men, then their dates, then the event manager, then someone’s bored kid.

When I glance back at Lena, it’s because Chase Benson is sliding into the seat beside her. It’s a bit surprising, but only in the sense that he’s not usually in public before 9pm. He’s wearing a white jacket and his hair is a little too long for the crowd, which means he’s making a point.

“Chase,” Lena says, as if she’s been expecting him for hours, “you’re just in time to help us rate the mayor’s performance.”

Chase beams, not at her, but at me. “Collin. I feel like I just saw you. We’re practically family now.”

I’m just registering the comfort of having another known quantity at the table when the universe snatches it away. The next chair shudders back, and a man in a dark blazer and perfect fucking hair sits down. My stomach hits my spine at seventy miles an hour—it’s Matthew.

I try to convince myself it’s just a lookalike, but then I see the way he looks at me, or rather, the way he doesn’t. He sees me, and then immediately looks through me.

“What are you doing here?” I blurt, because I am neither hallucinating nor prepared for his exchange. The one ex-boyfriend who could genuinely end my life with a phone call is four feet away, but this time I am alone and without any of the chemical weapons one might use to fortify against this.

“Nice to see you, too, Collin,” he laughs. “I’m doing research for my dissertation. Just meeting with a couple of archives in the city, and then back to Chicago.”

“You two know each other?” Chase asks.

“We go way back,” Matthew answers. “I hadn’t seen Collin since university, but then we randomly bumped into each other in Chicago last month.”

Lena, oblivious to the undercurrent, says, “Collin’s got a knack for showing up where the interesting people are. You should see what she did at the NYU fundraiser—half the floor was following her around by the end.”

“She does have that effect.”

It is at this moment that Tom and Harry return, the very picture of aesthetic opposites. Tom has taken off his sunglasses but still has the tan lines to prove he never goes indoors, and Harry has on a black linen shirt that looks like it was designed to make everyone else’s shirt feel self-conscious.

He hands me a fresh champagne flute and puts his hand on the back of my neck. I don’t know if he can sense the change in my body temperature, or if he’s just staking territory, but I am very grateful for the interference.

“Nice to see you again. Both of you,” he chimes, glancing between Chase and Matthew as if the seating arrangement is a mystery. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

Chase gestures beside him. “My foundation funds research at UIC, where Matthew’s finishing his doctorate. He’s here doing research.”

Harry’s grip on my neck tightens for a half-second, then relaxes. “Small world.”

For the next stretch, the table operates on two layers. On the surface, there is the flow of food and wine and the expected banter about real estate, sports, the state of the city’s infrastructure, as if those are the only civic topics permitted at donor tables. Below that is a pressure gradient, where every time Matthew addresses the table, his eyes cut to me as if waiting for a sign I’m about to spill my drink or lose my temper.

Lena does most of the talking, or maybe just fills every gap before anyone else can. She’s in full hostess mode, asking Chase about his work and quizzing Matthew on the pace of his research. He launches into a long, winding explanation about the phenomenology of negative space in postwar American sculpture, which is exactly as tedious as it sounds.

Halfway through dessert, he passes the grenade to me. “So, how’s your family, Collin? Your dad still on sabbatical, or did he go back to teaching?”

This is a trap, but I have no way around it. “They’re fine,” I answer. “He’s still taking time off. Might go back next year.”

Matthew frowns. “I thought sabbaticals were a year-long event. Hasn’t it been, like, half a decade?”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe it’s a soft retirement,” Tom jokes.

“And what does your dad teach, Collin?” Lena asks, who, unlike everyone else here, is not invested in social warfare as a primary means of communication.

“Philosophy.” I try to sound bored as I say it, because if you show interest, people start asking about your own thoughts, and that would require another glass of champagne at this point.

“Oh, so he’s more into thinking about stuff, not really…doing it?”

This is the most concrete understanding of the field I’ve ever witnessed. “Precisely.”

She looks pleased to have gotten it right. “Well, we all need a break from thinking from time to time.”

“I suppose when your personal life becomes a case study,” Matthew says, “it’s hard to keep teaching ethics.”

I set my fork down and fix him a look. “Say that again?”

Everyone goes silent because the question came out just as seething as I feel. There’s shared glance between Tom and Harry, and I realise nobody else understands Matthew is re-establishing himself in the social order by lightly throttling my reputation.

“What?” he laughs. “Universities can be sensitive about optics. It’s difficult to maintain authority when the lecture hall isn’t the only place people are looking.”

I scoff. “If you’re making an example, you should really choose your next words carefully.”

“I could think of a few. But I assure you, I’m speaking in the abstract,” he persists. “Philosophy is a discipline obsessed with moral consequence, and it applies to everyone equally.”

He always did prefer theory to accountability.

Harry puts his hand on my thigh, which means whatever the fuck this is, do not escalate, but I wasn’t going to.

I hold Matthew’s gaze until I see him squirm, then turn to Tom. “Anyway. You said something earlier about a stress test on the amphitheatre?”

The table looks grateful for the subject change, even if it’s to something as mundane as post-tensioning and its effects on urban landscaping. Matthew keeps glancing my way, but I focus on Tom’s monologue, and my champagne, which is cold and perfectly dry. At the opportune moment, I excuse myself to the bathroom and stand up so fast the chair nearly tips.

The restrooms are on the other side of the tent, and, predictably, overdesigned. The mirrors are digital, the soap is foaming, and and there’s not a single paper towel in the whole place, just jets of air that leave your hands clammy and a little sad.

I pull out my phone and dial Connor, because I know he’ll answer on the first ring.

I do not want to cry. I am not crying.

“Collin?” he answers, like he’s been waiting by the phone all night.

“Connor, I am at this banquet thing, and guess who’s here.”

“Oh god,” he groans. “Don’t tell me. Is it Harry’s evil twin?”

“Worse. It’s Matthew Welles.”

There is a long pause. The longest in the history of our friendship. “Wait—” I hear him rustling papers, probably checking for the notes he took when I gave him a crash course on the disasters of my dating history. “Is that the one that proposed to you over a calzone, or the stalker that started the subreddit?”

“The subreddit.”

I can feel him physically recoil through the phone. “Oh. My. God. Is he—did you talk to him? Did he try anything? Do you need an alibi?”

“He’s being…himself?” I rub my forehead, feeling the pressure drop as my blood sugar dips for real. “He’s already implied my father is a basket case because I’m a nymphomaniac. In front of a bunch of people.”

“Does Harry know about the Matthew situation?”

“Absolutely not! I didn’t start escorting to erase myself from the internet just to confess as to why.”

“What do you think he’s doing there?”

“He’s getting his research funded by this guy who’s a friend of Harry’s,” I explain. “Which is just proof that elite culture is six people passing grants back and forth if I’ve ever heard it.”

“Or he’s being pragmatic,” Connor counters. “I mean, think about it. You don’t see this guy for—what—six, seven years? Then you run into him in Chicago and now all of sudden he’s in your city?”

This is not the pep-talk I was hoping for. “Or maybe I happen to live in the global art capital and it’s a genuine coincidence we’d interact in the same circles.”

“Oh, yeah. Because Matthew Welles is famous for accidental alliances. I’ll let you run the probability on that one,” he taunts. “Do you want me to show up and punch him? Because I will.”

“No,” I say, but it almost comes out as a yes. “I just—I need to not have a panic attack at the table.”

“Right, right. Okay, um…don’t let him see you’re stressed. You’re a stone. You are the table.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “I am the table.”

“He wants to get a rise out of you. That’s all it is. Don’t give him what he wants.”

“Except he always gets what he wants!”

“And so do you, Collin,” he insists, which is the exact reason I knew he was the person to call. “You’re the terror of the Ivy League, and you’re fucking a guy who owns half of the city. You’re untouchable.”

“I am the table.”

“You’re the fucking table!” he agrees. “Look, don’t keep Harry waiting on you. Rich men hate that shit. Just cut off Matthew’s oxygen—act like you don’t even remember dating him, or anything afterwards. He’s just another idiot at the tutoring centre. If you need me, send the code word and I’ll find a way to extract you.”

I pause, then realise he’s right. The worst punishment for someone like Matthew is irrelevance. Or maybe it isn’t, but I have to believe it is for the sake of my own sanity. “Right. Okay—I can do that.”

“Call me later, okay? Love you.”

“Thanks, Connor.”

We hang up, and I suddenly feel a sense of immense dread knowing I’ll have to walk back to the table and face Matthew alone. I take a minute and try to conjure up my alter-ego—the one that is more indifferent than she is afraid. Usually I find that part of myself impossible to shut off, even when I want to, but now, it feels like it’s infinitely redshifted.

I push out of the restroom, braced for the city council, but I find Harry halfway down the ramp with his back against the brutalist brick, scrolling his phone. Except he’s not just standing—he’s smoking. An actual cigarette, not even herbal.

The first thing out of my mouth is, "That’s disgusting.”

He jumps like someone has goosed him with a taser. He looks at me, then at the cigarette, and then does the most counterintuitive thing imaginable and takes a long, defiant drag.

“You were in there for a while. I was left to my own devices.”

I cross my arms. “You’re going to get cancer.”

He shrugs. “I only smoke when I’m about to murder someone.”

It’s not a joke. His eyes are stuck in a radioactive green, like an alert system for imminent violence. Then I notice he’s holding my purse in his other hand—one of those gestures that would, from anyone else, trigger an allergic reaction, but from him it almost makes sense.

I point at it. “If you want to use my lipgloss, you don’t have to ask me to get it for you.”

“Funny.” He gives the purse a little spin around his wrist and hands it over. “I brought it to you because we’re leaving.”

“What do you mean, we’re leaving?”

“I mean, we’re leaving.” His tone brooks no argument. “This whole thing is a shambles, and you look like you want to set fire to the seating chart.”

I glance over my shoulder to make sure we’re not being watched. “We can’t just leave. You’re on the committee for this.”

“Well, I can tell you’re not exactly thrilled about sitting with your ex-boyfriend.” He stubs out the cigarette on the brick and tosses it in the ashtray. “So they’ll have to survive on their own. The rest of the itinerary is just drinking, congratulating the same people over and over, and then waiting for your car from the valet.”

“Dinner’s over,” I point out. “We can just avoid him for the rest of the night.”

“You don’t want to avoid him. You want to not see him at all,” he asserts. “If I wanted to go, we’d go. So the rule stands for you, too. You don’t have to stay anywhere you don’t want to.”

I’m supposed to be arm candy, not dead weight. “It doesn’t bother me—”

“Well it bothers me,” he interrupts. “Besides, I already told everyone I have a migraine. I’m not in the mood to walk it back.”

“You lied for me?” I ask, mostly surprised he’s the one who got my mystery illness, not me.

He smirks. “I’m not completely without cunning, darling.”

In my head, Harry doesn’t make decisions that aren’t, to some degree, self-serving. The idea that he’d cede ground, on a night with seven figures in the balance, just because I had a rough go with an ex does not compute. It’s hard to conceive someone caring about my own comfort when I don’t even care about it myself.

“You’re the boss,” I surrender. I mean it in the most literal, contractually obligated way possible.

“When it matters,” he murmurs. “I just need to wash my hands. Then we can go.”

“From the one cigarette?”

He nods, already pulling open the door to the men’s room. “Nicotine is a persistent beast.”

He’s in there for a minute, max, and then out again. We exit together, down the stone path and out into the parking lot, the residual sounds of the party trailing behind us like a sad wedding conga.

We manoeuvre the pedestrian wedge between two monstrous cabs. He holds my hand the entire walk, and we stay silent. He doesn’t even ask about Matthew, which is either evidence of his superhuman manners or a sign he’s decided I’m not worth the drama. If I asked what he was thinking about, he’d say he wasn’t thinking about anything, but I know from experience that means he’s thinking about everything, all at once, and is filtering it through whichever neural sieve keeps him from self destructing.

We get about a block from his building before his phone rings. It’s not Sari’s ringtone, it’s someone from his family’s. He answers, and the accent immediately ratchets up several notches.

“Hi, Isobel.”

I listen to his side of the conversation, because the way he tries not to be an asshole is almost a sport. For once, he doesn’t sound like he’s about to sue someone, he sounds like his sister has just confessed to crashing their mom’s Audi and he’s trying to reassure her she won’t be written out of the will.

“No, I haven’t spoken with her since the last incident,” Harry says. He’s careful to keep my hand in his while he talks, as if the continuity of skin contact is actually of importance right now. “Well, I thought she’d be in Portugal by now. She told me it was just a short trip—”

He goes quiet, shrugs a lot, and says things like “right” and “absolutely” but never anything specific. Isobel is clearly unloading, and I can tell he wants to say something cruel or at least accurate, but he flattens it out with neutral affirmations.

At his building, the doorman opens the door and greets us by name. Harry gives him a polite nod, and the the brass doors to the elevator roll aside as silent as the end of a library aisle.

“I know. I know she makes it impossible sometimes. No, I’m not siding with her. I’m just…” he glances at me and smiles, “you know how she gets when you contradict her, just—just let her have it, alright? It’s not worth the spectacle.”

He unlocks the door to the penthouse, flicks the lights on, and does his security sweep—front rooms, kitchen, the balcony, always the same order. I kick off my shoes, and Harry keeps walking toward the guest corridor. Not the usual hand-off in the kitchen, not the rote goodnight. I follow—too tired to be curious, too curious to be tired—and stop outside the guest bath’s double doors.

He’s drawing me a bath. He has learned, in the time we’ve known each other, that this is what shortcuts my emotional fallout, so he’ll start it and then leave me alone. This is how he nurtures, through absence as much as presence.

“She’s not going to apologise, Iz,” he says into the phone. “Don’t put yourself through it.”

Harry sees my reflection in the mirror and gestures for me to turn around, so I do. I feel his fingers on the zipper of my dress, sliding it down, and then his hands are gone. He steps around me and closes the door behind him, leaving me in the cathedral of a bathroom.

By the time I’m undressed and my hair is up, room is already steamy. He’s adjusted the water temperature exactly, just shy of intolerable. I sink deep and let the air bubbles chase the evening out of my pores.

About five minutes later, just as my mind starts to drift, there’s a knock at the door. Harry opens it immediately; the knock was just a polite formality.

He’s holding a bowl of sliced strawberries in one hand, a glass of water in the other, and is wearing nothing but a pair of slutty running shorts. He sets both on the rim and asks, “Want anything else? Glass of wine?”

I consider pretending to be asleep, but then I remember he’d probably call an ambulance, so I just shake my head and try to arrange my limbs under the bubbles. “No. Just you.”

He looks at me with a hint of admiration. “You want me to feed you, or just watch?”

“Whatever brings you joy.” I pluck a strawberry from the bowl and pop it in my mouth, then scoot forward to make room. “Or you could get in. I promise not to drown you.”

“I’ll take the risk,” he says. He peels off his shorts. Boxers, too, which I suppose is standard practice for bath entry. Every time I see him undress I find myself offended by how well he wears nudity, like he’s been engineered for sex. He slides into the bath behind me, a sigh escaping his lips like he’s just been granted a rare and exquisite mercy.

There is a brief period of adjustment, because every bathroom in his apartment has been designed by architects who have never actually bathed. My back settles against his chest as his knees bracket my hips, and his hands find my shoulders, kneading out the knots until the muscles give up their grudge notes.

“You’re tense.”

I tilt my head back until it rests in the hollow of his shoulder. “Yeah, I’m breathing.”

He works the pressure points until until I can feel the muscles start to unclench. “You really shouldn’t stress so much, Collin.”

“You’re one to talk.”

He makes a noise like he might actually dunk my head and shoves a strawberry in my mouth. “Shut up.”

I try not to choke on it from laughter, and he goes back to rubbing my shoulders. After a while, I realise I am holding my arms across my chest, so I force them to relax—which is harder than it sounds—and let my hands drift onto his knees. The heat from the water and the density of his chest against my back have nearly short circuited my ability to recall why I spent the last two hours in a fight or flight state.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I was hoping he had forgotten. “About what?”

“Collin,” he pleads, sounding almost disappointed. “Come on, love.”

I sigh. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think.”

One of his hands slides across my collarbone and gently twists the necklace I’m wearing, and the other ghosts over the inside of my thigh exactly once before retreating. It’s an offer wrapped in denial, and my hips instantly tilt in silent negotiation. “Is that why you wanted me to stay? Hoping I’d provide a distraction?”

“So what if it is?”

He hums in response and starts tracing my collarbone again. I try to think about surface tension, the relative permeability of skin to heat, whether it’s possible to calculate the precise displacement required to make us both overflow. But the moment Harry’s palm slides under my left breast and starts tracing my nipple, the only thing I can compute is how fast my heart is beating. The skin is already tight and hyperreactive from the temperature, and I have to bite my lip to keep from making a noise.

The other hand slips back into the water and parts my legs. His fingers drift upward, teasing along the inside of my thigh, never quite landing where I want them. It’s humiliating to be this aroused with so little input, but I can’t help it.

His lips touch my ear, the softest version of a shove. “Ask nicely, Collin. I can give you anything you want—you just have to ask.”

“Please touch me,” I whimper, not caring how desperate it sounds.

He explores slowly—slowly being his benchmark tonight—until he finds my aching clit. He starts with the barest pressure, just enough to make me grind my hips forward. I’m slick, even underwater, and his fingers glide with humiliating ease. As he touches me, he shifts his hips and I feel the undeniable, very hard evidence that he’s just as turned on as I am. He’s not shy about it, either—he rocks up, pressing himself against my lower back, just enough to make sure I notice.

“I like knowing you want it,” he remarks. “That you need it.”

“Fuck,” I moan. “I—I need it.”

I try to hold it together, but he starts kissing my neck in tandem with the rhythm of his fingers, and that’s my achilles heel. I tip my head back further, giving him full access, and feel the helium expansion of want in my gut.

He says something about me being sensitive, but I can’t even form words anymore. The pressure builds and builds until I’m right on the edge of orgasm when, like every other time, my body does the thing it always does and slams the door shut. I want to come so badly it’s painful, but I’m afraid to let go. I flatten my breathing, visualising wave interference and the concept of two crests meeting, then cancelling each other out, but really I’m just trying not to panic.

I need to change the subject. Fast.

My arm hooks around his shoulder, letting me twist just enough to catch his lips with mine. Somewhere mid kiss he groans something that sounds like my name but with extra syllables—music to my ears—and I reach down, wrapping my hand around his cock. Anything to distract both of us from my brain’s last-second derailment.

“Do you want me?” he asks, as if there’s a right answer.

I moan into his mouth, which is obviously a yes, but he bites my lip and demands, “Say it.”

“I want you,” I gasp. “Fuck—I want you inside me.”

He grabs my waist and repositions me forward so my legs are on either side of him, my calves hooking behind his thighs. I angle his cock and slowly sink down. The first inch steals the air so thoroughly we both forget noise is a concept, and his gaze is locked on mine as I take his full length.

Water is a terrible liar; it magnifies every thrust and droplet into orchestral feedback. Harry’s got a ruthless grip on my hips, his fingers branding marks through the film of bubbles. One hand releases, bringing a thumb back to my clit, but I already feel the quake approaching again, so I grab his wrist and redirect it to the side of my arse.

He groans when I move his hand, but he obeys. The water sloshes over the edge, sending a thin sheet down the side of the marble, but neither of us cares. With each thrust, the head of his cock drags against the tightest, most sensitive part of me, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming.

“Collin,” he gasps, “you feel so good.”

He grabs a fistful of my hair, tilts my head back, and kisses along my neck until I’m gasping. The feeling is perfect, but I’m still wary of chasing anything beyond this. I’m too afraid of hitting the wall again, so I stay focused on the control rather than the pleasure.

We settle on a languid rhythm, more roll than thrust, and fuck long enough for the water to start cooling and my knees to go numb. I lose track of everything except the pressure building and the look on his face as he watches me ride him.

I get the sense he’s been holding out, waiting for me to finish before he does, but after a while he moans, “I can’t—fuck—I’m gonna cum.”

He jerks my hips down and cums so hard I can feel his cock twitching inside me, pulse after pulse, until the heat fills me and the rest of the world is just steam and strawberry. My thighs ache in the most pleasing way, and I rest my head in the crook of his shoulder as we both catch our breath.

Eventually, he strokes my back. “Alright?”

“Mhmm,” I reply.

We sit there a moment, just breathing, and then we towel off in relative silence. He pulls on the same shorts he wore in, and I throw on one of his tshirts and a pair of sleep shorts.

We relocate. To call it lounging or sitting would understate the sense of two displaced animals arranging themselves on neutral ground. Apparently Harry is performing a seasonal affective disorder exorcism—he’s got the fire on. I settle on the corner of the sofa in the living room with my laptop, because despite all the day’s drama, the ungraded stack of first-year physics quizzes in my inbox will not fuck off and die.

He sits beside me with his legs propped on the ottoman and a book open in his lap. I did not even consider the idea that he’d read for pleasure; I thought he ingested all his information in angry, one-page PDFs. I find myself watching him to see if he’s faking it, but he’s genuinely absorbed it the story, turning page after page and occasionally looking slighted by the author’s descriptions.

Grading is somehow less of a challenge than usual. Either the students have caught on to my no late work policy, or someone has started an answer-sharing ring, because every submission is, if not excellent, then at least correct. I knock out ten in a row, and then a text from Connor pops up.

Connor: i’m assuming nothing else happened with ratthew? just awkward eye contact for three hours?

Me: harry made us leave after i hung up with you

Me: i think he’s grossed out by the fact i’ve dated before

The response is instantaneous.

Connor: oh he’s whipped. that’s hot

I almost chuckle, so I try to cover it up with a cough, but Harry has already noticed the shift in my attention. “You’re grading at half speed,” he observes. “Is it because of the day, or because you keep staring at me when you think I’m not looking?”

I refuse to blush. “A little from column A, a little from column B.”

He gives me a look that is somehow both offended and intimate, and then we go back to our orbits. Within minutes, he’s deep in his book, one hand curled around the spine and the other absently tracing patterns on my thigh under the throw blanket.

If this were a movie, there’d be a montage of us doing this exact thing for a full academic year—me grading, him reading, the ticking of a life that pretends to be secure. But it’s not a movie, and the scene only looks this peaceful because we’re both consciously refusing to talk about the things that are hanging over it.

Systems can look stable right up until they aren’t.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

harry

It's six in the morning, and I haven't actually slept. Technically, I've been in bed for eight hours, but the parade of intrusive thoughts has made any meaningful rest impossible. Most of it is the jet lag—the body's exquisite confusion at being launched from New York to Chicago with no time to recalibrate—but part of it is the new variable lying asleep beside me. Her: the thief of equanimity, the source of last night's awkwardness, the reason I am currently fighting a full blown crisis of confidence before sunrise.

I give up at 6:02. The bed is huge, but even so I find myself lying on the absolute edge of it, like a teenager at summer camp who doesn't want to risk accidental thigh contact with his bunkmate. Collin is cocooned in the sheets, dead to the world. Her leg is kicked out, foot nearly hanging off the side, and her arm is splayed across my pillow as if she's marking territory. Her face, in sleep, is both softer and somehow more defensive; even dreaming, she looks like she's about to call you out on a logical fallacy.

I peel myself away and tiptoe into the en suite, which is almost as large as my London office–and that is saying something. I stare at my own reflection, noticing my eyes are bloodshot and the bags underneath could be used as storage on international flights. I brush my teeth, floss, and spend a full minute just staring into the mirror and wishing I was someone with less of an internal monologue.

The urge to run is primal. I've always handled stress by running, sometimes to the point of injury, and the city outside is just beginning to lose its chill. The idea of bolting through unfamiliar streets is highly appealing. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to avoid the inelegance of Collin's post blowjob emotional hangover, which is the real reason I haven't slept.

I dress in silence. Running shorts, athletic tee, shoes designed for men who believe that minor improvements in foam density will shave minutes off their personal best. I lace up, double knot, and stretch my calves, then realise with a burst of secondhand shame that I'm still carrying the nervous energy of last night like a disease.

When I return to the bedroom for my watch, Collin stirs. She's disoriented, blinking in the half light, then clocks me standing in the doorway with a shoe in one hand and a fistful of anxiety in the other.

"Where are you going?" Her voice is raw and childish, like someone who's just been told Christmas is a lie.

I freeze, busted. "Go back to sleep, love. I'm just going for a run."

She rolls onto her back, and her eyes are barely open. "It's hardly light out."

"I like it that way," I say, wishing I didn't sound so defensive. I glance at the clock, hoping she'll take the hint and roll over, but instead she sits up.

"Wait," she says, "can I come?"

The question is so unexpected I have to replay it in my head to check for sarcasm. There isn't any. If anything, she sounds almost eager, which makes no sense.

"You want to run with me?" I ask, unable to mask the skepticism.

She bristles, tugging the sheets higher, and there's a microsecond of self consciousness. "Uh. I just said that, didn't I?"

I wonder if it's the time change or the new city or if she's just pathologically opposed to letting me have a single victory, even in the realm of personal fitness. But the more I think about it, the more the prospect pleases me. If she comes, she doesn't hate me, and I don't have to be alone with the part of my mind that's already started to draft an apology email, just in case I ruined everything last night.

"Of course," I say. "I'd like that."

She's out of bed in one motion. She moves like someone who's either completely at home in her body, or completely at war with it. I can't tell which. She pads to the bathroom and leaves the door open, so I hear everything: the hiss of the faucet, the scrape of her toothbrush, the thud as she spits with unnecessary violence.

She reemerges already dressed for the run in tight black shorts, a pink tank top with a black sports bra peeking out from under. Her hamstrings are absurd, like she deadlifts for a living. She grabs a hair tie from her wrist and yanks her hair into a bun. Then she sits on the edge of the bed, one knee jacked up, and fiddles with her running shoes.

I watch this with more interest than is probably healthy.

"Did you check your level?" I ask, because I have to. The spirit of my sister is in the room, glaring at me with all the menace of a well meaning guardian angel.

She sighs and gives me a look that is equal parts withering and resigned. "You want me to do it right now, or can I live dangerously for a few minutes?"

"If you pass out on the riverwalk, everyone's going to blame me," I report.

She pulls out her phone and opens the Dexcom app. "One eighty. It's basically perfect."

It's not really perfect, but she's an adult, so I let it go. If she hates being parented, I will simply parent by proxy, via keen observation. I just don't want to lose her to some random metabolic error in a city I only tolerate for its property values.

We leave the suite. The doorman is half asleep at his post, and the only other person in sight is a hotel employee polishing the handles of the revolving door. We push through into the gray predawn, the city still mostly asleep, save for the early morning dog walkers and the occasional street cleaner.

The weather is the kind of chill that forces you awake whether you want it or not. Collin immediately takes the lead, setting a pace that is both aggressive and sustainable. I match her stride, surprised at how easily we fall into sync. It feels almost normal, like two people running for the sake of running, not to escape anything, not to prove a point.

We cross onto Michigan Avenue, the buildings looming above us like sentinels. The city is in that liminal state between night and day, with the streetlights still on but the sky threatening to overwhelm them. I glance at Collin to see if she's thinking of me as much as I'm thinking of her, but she's focused ahead, scanning the horizon like she's looking for a finish line only she can see.

After three blocks, she finally breaks the silence.

"You didn't sleep last night," she points out. She sounds sincere, but I catch the implied: I didn't think you had anything to be anxious about.

It's not a question, so I don't bother lying. "Not really."

She nods, as if confirming a hypothesis. "Is it the time zone, or is it me?"

I almost choke on my own breath. "What?"

"Never mind, doesn't matter," she says, then accelerates, as if putting physical distance can also erase the question.

I believe her, but not entirely. There's a tension there, a residual charge, like the air before a thunderstorm. I wonder if she regrets it, if she's decided that I'm just another idiot in a long line of idiots who thought they could buy intimacy. The thought stings, and I pick up the pace, matching her stride for stride.

We loop around Millennium Park, past the empty amphitheater and the Bean, which is blissfully free of tourists at this hour. I watch our reflections warp and merge in the mirrored surface, two figures distorted by proximity and momentum.

At the halfway point, she slows to a jog, then stops altogether. She bends over, putting her hands on her knees and breathing hard but not winded. I stop beside her, trying not to look as desperate for air as I actually am.

"You okay?" I ask.

She looks up, sweat beading at her hairline. "Yeah. Just realised I actually hate running."

I chuckle. "You're the one who wanted to come."

She shrugs, straightens up, and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. "I am known for my poor decision making."

We walk for a bit, letting our heart rates settle. I'm struck by how easy it is, being next to her. There's no need for performance, no expectation to fill the silence with declarations of purpose or philosophy. We exist in parallel, two vectors briefly aligned.

The city is waking up around us. I can see lights flickering on in apartment windows and hear the distant sound of traffic growing louder. We resume our original pace with Collin running a little ahead, but she checks over her shoulder every now and then as if making sure I haven't disappeared.

When we get back to the room, I expect a quick collapse: she to the bed, me to a much-needed shower, and then separate meditative silences until I'm due at the gallery. But Collin seems to have other plans for herself. She throws her phone on the comforter and immediately starts pacing, then picks up her phone and starts skimming notifications with a speed that suggests a chronic, possibly terminal, compulsion.

I slip into the bathroom. I leave the door open, not just because the place is swank enough that even the corridor is private, but because there's something adolescently thrilling about the knowledge that she could walk in at any time. After last night, I am out of excuses to be shy.

The shower is one of those glassed-in rainfall affairs, instantly hot and designed to make you feel like a product being tested for waterproofing. I peel off my sweaty clothes and step in, letting the scalding water numb my brain. I try not to think about how weirdly invested I am in what Collin is doing out there, or whether she's still mad at me, or if she's even the type to get mad in the first place. I try to layout the day's itinerary: meetings, logistics, the collector who's known for making his assistants quit on the spot.

The water pressure here is not fucking around. I let it pound the back of my neck until I start to feel human, then reach for the shampoo. The water steams up the glass, but even so, I hear Collin's voice clear as day from the other side of the bathroom.

"Can I come in?" she asks, in a tone that implies she will, regardless of the answer.

I glance over my shoulder, even though the glass is basically opaque with fog. "I'm not going to stop you," I say, and my own voice surprises me by how hungry it sounds.

I turn fully so my back is to her, pretending a modicum of modesty, even though I'm already half-hard from the anticipation alone. The stall is small enough that her presence pressurises the air. Every molecule of steam is now both denser and less necessary.

She slides the door open and steps in without ceremony. I am not exaggerating when I say that my first instinct is to bow, but I shuffle to the left, making room, and steal a glance at her body through the steam.

Her hair is twisted up in a black clip, exposing her neck. She's all long lines and pronounced muscles, and there are faint tan lines at her hips, a scatter of freckles across her shoulders, and a few places where her skin has that milky, unselfconscious stretch that only women who don't care about photoshop possess. She is, for lack of a better word, stunningly unfiltered.

She shuts the door, turns her face to mine, and for a moment we just stare. It's feels like a contest of wills; who will check the other out first? I try to be a gentleman and keep my gaze on her eyes, but it's impossible. My line of sight drops to her chest, then lower. Her breasts are pale and tight, with areolae the color of cherry skin. I snap my attention back up, but she catches me, and there is a flash of amusement that makes me want to crawl out of my own body.

"Water's hot," I say, because that is the only part of my brain still operational.

She steps under the rainfall, letting the water wet her shoulders and run down her skin in slow, even lines. She soaps her chest and then runs her hands over her breasts, pinching each nipple between thumb and forefinger. There's nothing coy about it; she could be doing this alone, except that we are not alone, and the fact is inescapable.

I try to look away but fail in under a second. She glances at me in the glass, her eyes daring me to comment.

I want to kiss her, but she is not giving me the signal. She's in charge. There's a kind of martial discipline in the way she directs the scene—never saying more than she needs to, but making it clear she expects compliance.

When she's finished, she rinses the suds away and stands in front of me with her arms crossed. "You're not going to help?"

"I didn't want to intrude."

Collin sighs with the world weariness of someone who has seen every kind of incompetence. "Then watch," she says. "I like being watched."

I lean into the far corner, waiting for the next move. She runs her hands over her arms, then down her ribs, like she's checking for damage after a fall. She glances down and clocks my erection—there's no way she doesn't, it's pointed directly at her like a searchlight.

She says nothing about it. She just picks up the soap, rubs it into a lather, and starts washing her forearms with a level of indifference that's so at odds with the situation that it's almost comical. Then she turns around, showing me the full length of her back, which is scored with muscle. Her arse is taut, round, the kind of shape that makes you believe in the power of squats and genetics. I am so transfixed that I nearly forget to breathe.

She bends slightly to wash her legs, and I realise I am involuntarily flexing every muscle in my body just to avoid grabbing her from behind. The part of me that wants to be in control is now at war with the part of me that wants her to decide everything. The latter is currently winning.

She straightens and turns back around. Water beads on her eyelashes, making her look almost innocent, which is the most convincing lie I've ever seen.

"Are you always this bashful?" she asks, not bothering to mask the curiosity.

"Not always," I reply, but even I can hear the lie. If anything, I am more used to being stared at than doing the staring. This is new. I am newly shy, in the presence of a woman who is not.

Collin laughs, then closes the distance and finally, finally, kisses me. It's soft at first, just lips, as if she's tasting to see if I'm worth the effort. I let her take the lead, opening my mouth when she opens hers. My hands run along her waist, then down to her arse, and she presses her chest against mine.

There is something about kissing a woman when you are both completely naked that is infinitely more arousing than the act itself. It's the lack of pretense, the directness of skin on skin, the awareness that there are no more obstacles between desire and fulfillment.

Collin pulls away first, of course—she always does—and then she resumes showering, turning away to rinse the soap off her arms, as if the last thirty seconds didn't just rupture the entire concept of self control.

I stare at her, slack-jawed. The hot water is suddenly not enough to account for the heat in my face.

"You're kind of a tease," I say.

She turns her head just enough to side-eye me. I notice her nipples are hard, not from the chill, but from the sheer absurdity of the moment. I want to touch her, but she seems perfectly content to let me stew in my own desire.

She looks down at my cock, which is now at full, embarrassing attention, and then back up at my face.

"Touch yourself," she says.

I hesitate. Not because I'm ashamed, but because I need to be absolutely sure that's what she meant.

"You want me to—?"

She nods persistently, like I'm a complete idiot. "I want to see you do it."

I am not the sort of man who typically obeys orders, least of all ones as humiliating as this. But there is something about the way she says it—so certain, so matter of fact, almost bored—that I can't resist.

I wrap my hand around my cock, and instantly it feels both natural and deeply perverse. I start slow, stroking from base to tip, watching her watching me. The eye contact is relentless. She doesn't blink, doesn't shy away, just stares with this analytical hunger that makes me want to impress her.

"Faster," she commands, and the word hits me like a physical force. She's made it clear she is here to observe, not participate.

I pick up the pace as the embarrassment morphs into arousal—not too much, just enough to keep from coming instantly. I want to last. I want to prove that I can.

The water is still running, but I am sweating. My hand slides easily, the combination of soap and pre-come making everything slick. I try not to think about how weird this is, but she's not giving me an out. She's just watching, taking inventory every twitch and spasm.

"You do this a lot?" she asks, skimming her breasts with the tips of her fingers.

I tilt my head back slightly, groaning at the sight. "Not with an audience."

"You should," she replies. "It's hot."

She reaches out, touches my cheek, then drags her nails down my neck, over my clavicle, and onto my chest. She traces lazy circles around my nipple, then pinches it between her fingers. The sensation is electric, sharp enough to make me gasp.

"Fuck, Collin," I whisper, and her eyes narrow in pleasure.

"Yeah?" she says, and there's a note of mischief now, like she's finally letting herself enjoy it. "You're close, aren't you?"

I let out a whimper, which is pathetic, but also necessary. She steps even closer, presses her body to mine, and kisses me again. This time it's dirtier, messier, more tongue and less coordination.

I moan into her mouth, and she pulls back and kneels on the slick tile, unfazed by the water pelting her from above. She strokes me with one hand, her other hand bracing against my thigh. Her grip is perfect: firm but not punishing, and her thumb is rubbing circles around the head as if she's coaxing something out of me.

"Look at me," she says, and I do, because there's nothing else in the universe right now.

She keeps her eyes on mine as she strokes, and the pleasure builds at a rate that is almost alarming. I have never been this on edge, this raw, with another person in the room. I want to look away, but I don't. She holds me in place with the flat force of the intense eye contact.

"You want to come?" she asks quietly, and I almost do, but I bite my lip and hold on, just a second longer.

"Fuck—Collin," I whine. "Yes. Please."

She leans in, sticks out her tongue, and licks the tip of my cock, collecting the pre-come like a cat lapping cream from a saucer. Then she pulls back and strokes a little faster. "Do it."

I don't even last another full pump. I come, hard, and she opens her mouth to catch it, sticking her tongue out with a kind of hungry cruelty. She giggles and holds my gaze as she keeps stroking, even as the last spasm wracks my body, then licks her lips and stands up.

She rinses off, like nothing happened, and then steps out of the shower.

I'm still leaning against the tile, knees nearly buckled, wondering if I've just had a spiritual awakening or a nervous breakdown.

All I know is, I want more.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The basic dynamics of the contemporary art world can be easily understood if you just watch the preamble to a gallery opening. It's a kind of mass hallucination in which several dozen people, most of whom are in some stage of alcoholism, collectively decide that what the world really needs is another selfie in front of an enormous, nonrepresentational canvas. It's like an airport lounge for the terminally self-important. I fit right in.

Tonight's opening is, I am not kidding, held in an old shipping space near the river. When we arrive—me in a dark suit, Collin in a dress so blue it might have been carved out of a glacier—the air is already a soup of perfume, money, and nervous ambition. Every woman looks like she's been pre-screened by an algorithm, every man like he's just been handed a subpoena.

Collin clocks this instantly. "There's a lot of face in here," she says, scanning the crowd with a level of intrigue that borders on anthropological.

If she means cosmetic work, then she's not wrong. You can map the relative value of each guest's net worth by the severity of their surgeon's aesthetic philosophy. I suppress a laugh, which is not easy. We've barely set foot inside, and she's already filleting the clientele.

"Try not to insult anyone until after I close the auction," I say, sotto voce. "I need them to believe we respect their taste."

We make a circuit of the floor. The art is a curated hellscape of current fashion: a kinetic wall sculpture that's essentially three Roombas fighting to the death; a series of white canvases streaked with menstrual red, captioned "untitled (regret)"; a life-sized fibreglass cow, inexplicably fitted with a VR headset. It's all so relentless I'm tempted to go feral and start chewing the corners of the paintings just to see if anyone reacts.

We pass a series of photographs that are either profound or proof that you can teach a dog to use a digital camera. Collin whispers her unflinchingly honest commentary: "This is just a picture of someone's grandma." "This looks like an advert for antihistamines." "Is it really art if you're just stacking an appliance on a pedestal?"

She's not trying to be funny, but it kills me every time.

She moves on, zeroing in on a painting like a missile. She scans each label and reads the little white placards as if collecting data for one of her spreadsheets. Her literacy in art theory is nonexistent, but her appetite for information is predatory. I watch her take in a triptych—three massive canvases, each one a different iteration of the same winter field, scraped and reworked until the paint looked like old scar tissue. She studies the middle panel, then doubles back to the first, then the third. Her brow furrows.

"Why do the same thing three times? Is there a story, or is the artist just indecisive?"

I glance at the info card, which is itself three paragraphs of pretentious nonsense. "Maybe he's interested in the process, not the result," I offer. "Repetition as a form of—what did he call it—'personal erasure'."

She hums. "Seems like a good way to avoid picking a favourite."

We move on, and I am increasingly aware that our method of experiencing art could not be more at odds. I drift; I let my eyes relax and the meaning arrive on its own time, or not at all. Collin hunts. She stalks each piece, trying to extract a fact, a pattern, a flaw. It's like going to the opera with a bat; she isn't there for the music, but for the possibility that someone will misstep and make a fool of themselves.

At the centre of the room is the installation I'd been briefed on—a wide circle of shoes, all sizes and styles, arranged heel-to-toe on the pale marble floor. In the exact middle is a child's white trainer, so small it could fit in the palm of my hand.

It's simple. It's brutal. It's the only thing in the room that isn't trying to impress.

We stand at the edge, and I wait for Collin's reaction, because this is the kind of thing that usually sorts the wheat from the chaff.

"What do you make of it?" I ask, because I genuinely want to know if she'll go for the obvious reading or attempt to subvert it.

She stands with her hands behind her back, as if she's afraid of smudging the air, and gives the shoes a full inspection. "It's shoes," she deadpans. "A circle of shoes."

"It is," I agree. "And?"

She shrugs. "Is it supposed to be a metaphor? Or is the point that there's no point, and that's the point?"

"It's probably about migration," I say, "or interrupted journeys. The single sneaker in the middle, the ring of adult shoes all pointing inward." I gesture with my glass. "It's a meditation on loss, maybe the ones who don't make it."

Collin stares at the centre, silent for so long I think maybe she's found the thread. But then she says, "I was thinking more... garage sale."

The worst part is, I can't tell if she's joking. The second worst part is, I'm not sure it matters.

I press a little. "Does it make you feel anything?"

She thinks about it, and it's adorable. "It feels weird to look at the baby shoe," she says finally. "I get that it's tragic, but my brain keeps wanting to finish the circle. Like, pair up the shoes, or make them all face the same way. The asymmetry is bugging me more than the theme."

I'm a little thrown. "I think that's intentional. The artist wanted you to feel unsettled."

"Then mission accomplished."

Collin circles the installation once, testing it for hidden angles. I follow, watching the way the fabric of her dress hugs her hips. A group of investors shuffles by, and one of them recognises me and gives a small, ironic wave.

"I think I like art more when it's not explained to me," Collin says, watching the men go. "It's like horoscopes. If you know what you're supposed to feel, it stops working."

I could say something about quantum indeterminacy, about how the observer changes the observed, but she would just make a face and tell me to go fuck myself.

We drift into the back half of the gallery, where the crowd thins and the pieces get more experimental. There's a huge painting at the end of the hall—a forest, rendered in harsh blue and black strokes, with a single figure standing at the edge. The person is faceless, dissolving into mist. Above them, just barely visible, is a golden bird.

"That one's good," she declares.

"Why?"

She studies the painting for a long time, like she wasn't prepared to give an explanation. "I don't know. Maybe because there's nothing happening."

I wait for her to elaborate. When she doesn't, I decide to give her a nudge.

"The bird is a goldfinch. Perhaps it's—" I trail off, thinking she'll finish the sentence, but when she doesn't, I do. "—symbolic?"

She squints, then nods. "So it is."

I am dying to ask what she thinks it means, but I can sense I'm one question away from being sent to the docent's corner. "The artist survived a car crash as a kid," I say. "He told me once that he paints birds into every piece, even when it doesn't fit. Kind of a signature."

"You know all these people, don't you?"

I smile. "It's my job."

She looks at the painting, then at me. "Why do you think he put the person in the mist?"

I'm pleased by the question, even if it's just a conversational dead end. "Maybe he wants to show what it's like to vanish," I say. "How you can stand right on the boundary and still not really exist."

We've just started discussing whether the goldfinch in the painting is an allegory for something, or whether it's just a bird for the sake of being a bird, when a voice behind us says, "Collin?"

Her whole spine recalibrates. She turns around like she's been called to the chalkboard by a teacher she both loves and resents.

A man is standing there in the uniform of the Midwestern academic elite, which means good hair, bad blazer, and a tie that's either purposely ugly or a family heirloom. He's taller than I'd like, and—worse—handsome in a way that seems both accidental and extremely well preserved. Like the kind of man who has never once failed to return a library book.

He beams. "Oh my god. It's you."

Collin processes the man for three full seconds, a hard drive clunking through old directories. "Matthew," she says, sounding both disappointed and surprised. "I thought you were in Boston."

He laughs. "Briefly. I got the teaching position here last autumn. I'm working on my dissertation still, so the ink is barely dry." He glances at me, then back to her, appraising but not territorial. "Wow. It's actually been... Jesus, what, seven years?"

"I guess so."

There's a silence, not awkward but not seamless, and I take the opportunity to run a full threat assessment. He's wearing a university pin, possibly UIC, and his hands look like he's never worked a service job in his life. His wedding ring finger is naked but there's a faint tan line, so either he's recently divorced or hasn't been in Chicago long enough to commit to a jeweller.

Matthew turns to me, and his eyes do the thing every man does when confronted with another man in the wild. "Sorry, I'm Matthew Welles. Collin and I went to college together." He offers a hand, and his handshake is the kind that comes with a warranty.

"Harry Styles," I say. "Nice to meet you."

He gives Collin a sideways glance. "Still an architect? Or are you already running the firm?"

There is a micro-wince from Collin, but she's too smooth to let it live. "No, I left that track a while ago. I'm in a grad progamme at Columbia."

Matthew’s eyes get huge. "That's—honestly, that tracks. You were always too smart to be happy as an architect."

She blinks, and the compliment bounces off her like a rubber bullet. "I'm not sure that's how it works.”

He smirks, and it's like a weapon of gender-neutral charm. He's good at this. I dislike him on a fundamental level.

"You're not living here now, are you?" he asks. "I mean, in Chicago?"

"No, we're visiting from New York."

Matthew looks at me again, and this time there's a measurable increase in respect. "Oh, wow. That makes sense. I've actually read about you. Your firm's doing the New Modernist thing, right? You acquired those Gerhard Richter panels in the Lehmann sale."

I raise my glass. "You have a very good memory."

"I'm actually teaching art history now. Or, trying to. The undergrads are all high most of the time, so it's a bit like herding cats."

Collin grins at this, and it hits me with the force of a sack of bricks—she likes this man. Or at least liked. Not in a hot, panting way, but in a way that's unkillable by time or geography. He is an artifact from a previous life, and I am the newly acquired acquisition.

"You seem well, Collin. I mean—better than college. Like, less..." He waves his hand in the air, trying to remember the right adjective.

"Panic attack-y?" she supplies, and I'm instantly jealous she can finish this guy's sentences but not mine.

"I was going to say intense, but that works."

She rolls with the punch. "They give us mood stabilisers at orientation now."

Matthew finally notices my existence again. "So, how do you two know each other?"

I consider the possible answers. That we met at a party, that we're dating, that she's under contract to accompany me to major events. The last is the most honest but deeply undignified.

"Mutual friends."

Matthew nods, then checks his watch. "Listen, I have to meet the department head in like five, but I really am glad to see you."

Collin replies, "You too," but she's already started to recede. Matthew shakes my hand again, then vanishes into the crowd like he's always been a mirage.

We stand in the afterglow of his departure for a full minute, maybe more. Collin's posture is neutral, but I can tell by the way she chews the inside of her lip that she's reconstructing the last three minutes in granular detail. She doesn't look at me, but at the floor, then up at the goldfinch painting, then at the crowd.

When he's out of earshot, I turn to her. "You dated him."

"It was a long time ago," she murmurs. "Nothing serious."

"So why did he look like he wanted to crawl inside your skin?"

This is the first time I've seen her look remotely vulnerable. "He didn't handle the breakup well," she says. "He thought it was going somewhere. I didn't."

"Should I be worried?" I ask, kidding but not kidding.

"Not unless you play rugby and have unresolved issues with your father."

One of those things is true.

I want to press, but I don't. The truth is, I don't want to know. I don't want to find out that he meant something to her, or worse, that he didn't mean enough to even register as a threat. I let the silence stretch, and eventually she brushes off whatever residue is left and moves on.

We circle through the rest of the gallery, this time with a slightly different vibe. The crowd is thicker now, and we have to weave between micro clusters of art donors, grad students, and the occasional pseudo-celebrity. Collin doesn't seem bothered. She's adapted to the crush of bodies, the constant murmur, and even the dissonant noise of the "immersive" installation in the next room, which is just a looped video of a girl screaming into a bucket.

We pass a series of watercolours—cloudscapes, washed out and melancholic. Collin studies one for a long time, as if waiting for it to blink. "Do you ever think about what clouds must look like from inside?"

It's not a rhetorical question. She's genuinely asking.

"Not since I was six," I say. "But if you're hoping for an answer, I'd guess—white, wet, probably very cold."

She hums, noncommittal, and moves to the next, halting in front of a black and white photograph. Two boys are standing in the middle of a field, one with his hands over his eyes, the other with his mouth wide open in a scream. The title is "Game of Grief."

"What do you think?" I ask, just to see if she'll go literal again.

She looks at it, long and hard, like it's a standardised test. "One's pretending to be blind, the other's pretending to be dead."

"Or," I prompt, "they're both in denial."

"How can you tell?"

"Because there's no blood, but the second boy looks like he's been shot," I say, pointing to the way he's crumpled in the frame. "It's staged."

"Or they're playing cops and robbers," she counters. "And the photographer is just making it about grief for the sake of the gallery circuit."

It's the most engaged I've seen her all night, and I realise with a dull pang that maybe she's just more interested in the argument than the art itself.

We drift to a smaller side room. This one is empty except for an older couple bickering softly about whether they've seen this artist before or not. Collin moves to the far wall, drawn to a painting that I almost missed. It's a man in a business suit, submerged up to his neck in a tub filled with milk. There's a fly on the surface, perfectly rendered, and you can tell the artist lost at least one marriage to getting the wing pattern right.

"'Silence of the Brand,'" she reads aloud. "I don't get it."

"It's a metaphor," I say, aiming for patient but probably missing the mark. "He's drowning in whiteness. The milk is a symbol of—"

She shakes her head. "If you have to explain it, then it doesn't work."

I try not to take this personally. "You don't think the fly adds anything?"

"Maybe he's lactose intolerant," she deadpans. "Or it's about decay."

"It's never just about decay." I'm frustrated and amused in equal measure. "That's what the business suit is for."

"Looks like a banker who got lost on his way to a sensory deprivation tank."

This is the moment I realise she is fundamentally incapable of thinking the way the art world wants her to. She's not resistant to metaphor, she's immune to it, as if her brain has a built in firewall against suggestion. It's not that she's shallow. It's that she takes everything at such face value that, paradoxically, she circles back to depth by accident. This is not what I expected, and it's why I can't stop watching her.

We finish our pass around the gallery, which by now is mostly a queue for the bar. I need a piss and an aspirin, in that order. I tell Collin I'll be back in a minute, and she nods, already engaged by the next piece—an actual traffic light mounted to a steel slab, blinking at random intervals. I bet money she's trying to time it, like it's a game.

The men's is halfway down a long, echoing corridor lined with monochrome lithographs of farm machinery, which is probably a statement about the mechanisation of masculinity. I don't bother reading the artist's name. The bathroom is as you'd expect, meaning it's clean and has a soap dispenser that could double as a murder weapon.

Matthew is at the sink. He's rolled his sleeves up and is methodically washing his hands like he's about to scrub in for surgery. He clocks me in the mirror and nods.

"Hey," he says, shaking water off his hands. "Harry, right?"

I smile as neutrally as possible. We’ve literally just met. "That's right."

He grabs a paper towel and dabs his fingers. There's a beat where it's clear he wants to say something, but he's trying to decide if I'm receptive.

"She's something," he says finally.

I smile. "She is."

He studies his own reflection. "You two are together?"

It's not a question so much as a litmus test. I decide to take it as one.

"We are..." I say, keeping my tone flat and unimpressed.

He nods like he's pleased to have gotten it right. "I figured. You have the energy of people who've only recently agreed to share a toothbrush."

I try not to think too hard about what the fuck this means. "You two go back a ways, then?"

"Yeah, we dated our freshman year. She was in my frat's sister sorority, which is as terrifying as it sounds."

I picture Collin at nineteen, running a panhellenic council like a Stalinist regime, and it fits.

Matthew leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. "Listen, I don't know what you know. She's great. Really. But she..." He falters, and I can see the drama building like static electricity in his jaw. "She's not very good at the commitment thing, if that's what you're looking for."

I nod. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I'm not saying it as a warning," he goes on, the way people always do when they're definitely warning you. "It's just—she's a different species. She can love you and not even realise she's hurting you."

This is getting tedious. "We like each other, but I'm not exactly shopping for wedding rings right now."

He seems disappointed by this answer. "You will be, though. She's magnetic that way."

Yeah, I know. That's why he's still talking about her seven years later.

"I'll keep my wits about me."

Matthew tilts his head, as if weighing the odds of my survival. "Just—don't get too attached. Or do, but know what you're in for."

He's searching for camaraderie, but what he gets is a slow smile and a nod. "Thanks for the tip," I say sarcastically. "I'll be careful."

He looks like he wants to say more, but the theatre of it has already drained him. He tosses the paper towel and brushes past me.

Once he's gone, I look at myself in the mirror and notice the wall behind me is covered by a large format photograph of industrial cheese graters. I stare at the image and think about the power of suggestion. How much a man's sense of self can be altered by a single sentence from a near stranger. I think about the way Collin doesn't care about symbolism, about artifice, about the baggage that comes with a name or a rumour. I wonder if that's a freedom or a flaw.

When I return to the main hall, Collin is waiting near the bar. She's talking to a woman in a fitted black blazer, who is explaining the provenance of a piece with so much reverence I can hear it over the crowd. Collin sees me and excuses herself.

We resume our tour, and for the rest of the night, I keep my hand on her back, or her hip, or her shoulder. Not to prove a point, but to remind myself—and maybe her—that we are here together, and the rest is just context.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

When we return to the suite, Collin takes off her shoes and floats straight into the bathroom without a word. I hear the lock click, then the tap running, then the muffled sound of her brushing her teeth in a way that suggests she is attacking the enamel with intention. I drop my keys and wallet on the dresser, take off my clothes, and collapse onto the bed, all the tension from the night crystallising in the back of my neck.

My phone buzzes with a series of messages from Sari. The auction in Hong Kong went off the rails at the last second—two Korean buyers leapfrogged my proxy and now I have to "re-calibrate expectations for lot 5 before Tokyo." I thumb back a short response, deliberately bland, so Sari knows I'm not about to fire her for something outside her control. If anything, I admire the audacity of the move. There's nothing I respect more than a well-timed betrayal.

The bathroom light glows under the door. I expect Collin to take an hour, or at least a ceremonial twenty minutes, but she emerges barely ten minutes later with her face washed, and her skin is pink and shiny as if she's been scoured down to the bone. She's stripped off the dress, hanging it back in it's garment bag, and is standing in a matching silk pajama set.

Collin walks to the window, stares down at the city, and, as if completing a set of predetermined moves, comes straight to the bed and gets in next to me. She tugs at the corner of the duvet, then climbs under and arranges herself with her head on my chest and her legs sprawled over mine, claiming the territory with all the subtlety of a dog staking out the sofa. Something about how natural it feels makes me wonder if she's done this a thousand times before or if this is just how she operates: move fast, assume possession, wait for someone to tell you it's too much.

I wrap my arm around her and return to my phone. After a long event, even I'd fill it with small talk or a story about some deranged collector in Rome, but she seems happy to just absorb my body heat and do nothing. Her breathing evens out almost immediately, and her body goes slack in that way people do when they're with someone who won't kill them in their sleep. It's a trust I'm not sure I've earned, but I bank it anyway.

I read a couple articles, text Sari a link to an article about the provenance of a Kusama, then open my Twitter feed. The volley is definitely unhealthy, but I find it relaxing, the way normal people must find crossword puzzles.

Collin doesn't stir for a full half hour. The only sign of life is a subtle twitching in her foot, like she's running a sprint in her dreams. I let my hand rest on her hip, the warmth of her skin radiating through the silk. I want to believe this means something, that I'm not just another passenger on the Collin Eisenfaust Express, but I know better than to assign meaning to a position that could just as easily be dictated by laziness as by lust.

It happens at exactly 12:18pm. I'm passively watching a video of a mouse painting a self portrait when I hear it—the insistent, two-tone alert of her Dexcom. I don't need to look to know which one it is. After the last time, I recognise the sound the way parents recognise the cries of their infant. There's the soft, chirpy one that says "watch out, you're trending high," and the vicious, hardware-store klaxon that means "we have a problem, and it is happening right now." This is the latter.

She doesn't move. She's deep enough in the sleep cycle that the alarm does nothing but make her twitch once, then settle. I try a gentle shake by running my palm up and down her back. "Wake up, Collin."

Nothing.

I try again, this time with a bit more force. "Collin. Come on, love. Wake up for me."

She groans, and I know she'd drown in her own sheets if I left her to her own devices, but I also know from experience that this is not the time to be polite. I grip her shoulder, squeeze hard, and pull her up into a sitting position.

She gasps and blinks at me. Her pupils are so wide I can barely see the blue in her eyes. She looks at the wall, then at my face, then at the phone, and then she slumps back down onto the pillow. I check the Dexcom, which is now wailing on repeat, the screen lit up in frantic red. 54 mg/dL and dropping. That's almost as low as the last time. That's deep into the fuckery zone.

"You blood sugar is low," I say calmly. "You have to eat something."

She closes her eyes and says, "No," which is both impressive and reckless.

I get up and rummage in my bag for the container of glucose tablets I bought after the night she crashed in my flat. I grab a glass of water and return to her side. She's still lying down, curled in on herself like a snail.

I sit on the edge of the bed and open the tube, pouring out four of the orange tablets into my palm. "Take these," I say, pressing one to her lips. She tries to wave me off, but she's too groggy to muster resistance.

"Open," I say, and I slip the first one into her mouth. She chews, makes a face like I'm feeding her gravel, but manages to swallow. I repeat the process three more times.

She sips some water, shoves the glass away like it's offended her, and then starts slow blinking at the wall. I can tell she's trying to reset the system and get her bearings, but her brain hasn't caught up to her body yet.

I set the water on the nightstand next to the glucose tablets. "Why do you have these?" she asks, glancing at the bottle.

"In case you tried to die on me again," I say. "It's not good for my brand."

I can tell by the furrow in her brow that she has a witty response to that, but the effect is blunted by her general inability to move. She resumes her stare down with the wall, not even pretending to participate in the world. I watch her for signs that she's stabilising—the micro-tremor in her fingers fades, her breathing slows, and the pupils shrink back to normal size. Her body is a finely-tuned disaster, but at least it's predictable.

Her phone buzzes on the bedside table. She ignores it, so I reach over and glance at the screen, only to see that it's Connor. I try to pass it to her, but she's got the same level of disdain as she did for the water.

He seems like the type to send an actual search party if she doesn't respond, so I compose a message that is both formal and somehow informal, as if I'm a very responsible butler in a Jane Austen novel.

Collin: All handled. Go to sleep.

He replies immediately.

Connor: 👍🏼

Connor: night harry

Connor: ❤️‍🔥👑🇬🇧🕺🏻💦🍒

I can't tell if this string of emojis is a celebration, a short story, or a proposition.

I put her phone on the nightstand and sit on the edge of the bed, watching her ride out the last of the low. She doesn't try to talk, but she pulls her knees up to her chest and slumps against them. I reach over and brush the hair away, then run my fingers lightly down her back. She shudders at first, as if her nerves are still raw, but after a few passes she relaxes, like the tension is leaking out of her in increments.

The whole thing is over in ten minutes, but it feels like an hour. I stay there, alternately rubbing her back and checking her level, just in case she goes down again and I need to call the front desk for a stretcher. It's a dumb fear, but I indulge it anyway. She's not fragile, but there's a volatility to her that makes me want to pad all the sharp corners in the room.

When I'm sure she's out of the woods, I coax her back down onto the pillow and pull the duvet up over her shoulders. She lets me, which is either a sign of deep trust or utter defeat, but I don't care which. I shift next to her, pulling her into the crook of my arm, and she tucks her head under my chin, almost nuzzling, and I can feel the slow, sticky drumbeat of her heart against my chest. I kiss the top of her head and she sighs, a tiny, involuntary sound that makes me want to press her even closer.

It's the first time I've ever felt needed by someone who didn't immediately want to cash out on the feeling. I realise that the thing I'm most afraid of losing is not her, but the part of myself that only exists in her company.

collin

Harry and I are playing doubles against Tom and Lena at the Whitsett Club. I say "playing" because there's a ball and rackets involved, but what's actually happening is more of a slow-motion simulation of a tennis match, as performed by two people in the first stage of neurological decline.

Lena's skirt is shorter than the rules committee would prefer, and her serve is a cross between ballet and battery assault. Tom is pushing forty five, but I can tell by the way his polo hugs his torso that he has a body engineered for aesthetics and alcohol tolerance but has no idea how to use it. Harry—well—Harry is shirtless, because of course he is. I've literally seen him naked, but here, in the glistening heat with beads of sweat dripping down the ink of his tattoos, I finally understand why people claim the sun revolves around the earth. His body is an absolute fuck-you to anyone who has ever felt comfort in their own skin, and, just to drive the point home, he's got a chain around his neck that catches the light every time he serves.

I, meanwhile, am dying.

Not in the cosmic, existential sense—though, sure, always—but in the much more literal and humiliating sense. For the last three days, I've been in a spiral of allergy-induced misery so dense I've considered getting into homeopathic medicine. My eyes are red and itchy, my throat feels like I spent last night shotgunning bong rips, and I can taste the inside of my own sinuses every time I breathe in.

Harry and I have agreed, in advance, that we will throw this game. Not in a mean way. Just in a "let's let Tom have his win, he's been having a rough quarter" way, but I don't need to take it easy on myself to achieve this. I am playing like shit because I feel like shit. My first serve landed in the net. My second hit Tom directly in the calf, which counts as a point for them and a microaggression against his masculinity. By the fifth game, I have managed to return exactly two balls, both of which went out of bounds. Harry keeps giving me a look, like he can't decide if I'm being intentionally subversive or if I somehow lost all skill within the last week.

The point is in progress, and I'm up at the net, praying the next serve comes nowhere near me. Tom lobs it, and it floats harmlessly out of bounds. Harry calls it, but Lena insists we replay it. I look at Harry, and he just shrugs, as if to say, "I'd kill her, but then who would Tom have to marry?"

The next serve is aimed directly at my body. I could dodge, but the effort seems excessive, so I hold my racket in front of my chest and let the ball ricochet off the strings and into the netting. The scorekeeper, who is also the club's events manager, raises an eyebrow and marks the point for Tom and Lena.

"Are you feeling okay, Collin?" Lena calls from across the court.

I muster a smile and nod. "I'm at, like, seventy percent today. It's fine."

Tom smirks. "Seventy percent of Collin is still more than enough to beat me, so I'll take it."

Harry jogs to my side of the court with a towel in hand. "You want to tap out?"

"I'd rather die."

"We can fake an injury if you want."

"I don't want their pity." I want a dignified loss, but I also want to lie down in the shade and have a medical professional do a full system reboot.

He laughs and presses his forearm to my forehead like he's checking for fever. "You're clammy."

"It's a hundred degrees."

He wipes my face with the towel, which is a gesture that would be humiliating if anyone else did it, but when Harry does it, it feels more like being groomed by a very attractive monkey.

We're down by a point, which is the ideal scenario for me: defeat without disgrace. We rotate sides, and I take a deep breath of the hot, chemical-scented air. The only upside to being on the club courts is that they blast the surface with so many pesticides and fungicides that nothing organic can survive, including most airborne allergens. If I could, I'd sleep here.

I get ready to serve, but my hands are shaking. I chalk it up to the Benadryl I popped thirty minutes ago, except then I hear a faint beeping noise. It takes me a second to register that it's my Dexcom, and I feel a flash of annoyance. I was planning to check it after the set. If I do it now, I'll look like a hypochondriac in front of these people, and if there's anything I want less than their pity, it's their diagnosis.

Tom notices my pause and steps away from the line, twirling his racket in his fingers. "Time out?" he offers, already halfway to the cooler.

Harry intercepts me as I try to brush it off. He grabs my wrist, moves my arm to check my level, and then takes the racket out of my hand.

"You're dropping," he says.

I'm embarrassed, because now Tom and Lena are looking at us like we're starring in a PSA about chronic illness and personal responsibility. "Can we just play the next point?" I ask.

Harry ignores me and digs into his bag for the orange tube of glucose tabs. He shakes four into his hand and, without even waiting for protest, presses them into my palm.

I want to make a joke, something about the dishonor of being force fed sugar in front of the glittering beau monde of New York's social scene, but the truth is, I feel shaky and lightheaded and not at all in control. I toss the tabs in my mouth, chew, and wash them down with a swig of water from the bottle Harry shoves at me.

He waits, watching the colour come back to my face, or maybe just counting down the seconds until my blood sugar gets back above "danger to self and others" level.

"Better?" he asks after a minute.

I nod, but my eyes are stinging and I know they're redder than before. "It's just allergies. You don't have to make a scene."

"That was your low alarm," he points out.

"It was a warning alarm," I clarify. "Totally different."

We return to the court, and I can already feel the glucose kicking in. It's not a cure, but it's enough to bring me back to functional. Lena tosses her hair, winks at Harry, and mutters something under her breath to Tom, who pretends not to notice.

For the next few games, I manage to be less of a liability. I even manage a decent return, which lands just inside the line and earns me a nod of approval from Tom, who is the kind of man who still uses "attagirl" unironically.

But really, the whole match is an elaborate charade, a way to pass the time until the club's buffet opens and the real bloodsport—gossip—can commence.

When we finally lose the set, Harry congratulates Tom with a handshake that's more hug than shake, and Lena pulls me into a side embrace, her perfume wafting in waves strong enough to trigger a second histamine response.

"Let's get you some food," Harry says, steering me off the court with a hand at the small of my back. As we make our way to the shaded patio, I decide that if there's anything better than winning, it's having someone who doesn't mind watching you lose.

We sit on the upper deck, which overlooks the courts and the club's signature pond, a body of water so violently blue I almost wonder if they're using it to shoot a Gatorade commercial. There's a Caesar salad on every plate and enough raw fish in the middle of the table to start a sustainable aquarium. I stab at a pile of greens while Harry decimates an avocado toast so perfectly symmetrical it looks like it was 3D printed.

"You did well out there," Lena says, a compliment aimed at me but delivered like she's still deciding whether or not to poison my water glass.

"I have a competitive advantage," I reply, gesturing to Harry's side of the table. "He can run three laps before I've finished an internal monologue."

Tom laughs. "You two make a good team. That lob in the third set was almost professional."

"If I was a professional, I'd be dead by now. My only talent is not falling over."

Harry leans in, giving me the full effect of his green-eyed exasperation. "That's not true," he says. "You also have an unparalleled ability to insult the opposing team's serve without ever breaking eye contact."

"I have many skills," I say. "That's just the only one you've seen so far."

There is a moment of silence as Lena forks a chunk of salmon onto Tom's plate, then rearranges the cutlery to her liking. I watch her do it, noting that the motions are both sensual and deeply controlling, like she's trying to bring order to a universe that keeps slipping through her fingers.

"So," Lena says, pivoting from food to foreplay in record time, "how was Chicago?"

Harry swallows, then sits up a little straighter, as if he's preparing to be deposed. "It was productive. We met with a few collectors, saw the new installation at Kruger. I think Tom will be impressed."

Tom sips his club soda and turns to me. "Did you enjoy it, Collin? I hear the gallery is world class."

I know they want me to say something insightful or at least original, but my only real memory of the gallery is the number of people who looked like they'd already called their Uber to the next event, so I bluff. "I liked the field installation," I say. "The one with the circle of shoes. It was very—direct."

Harry glances at me, then nods. "It's the only piece in the show that wasn't over-explained," he says, which is probably the most sincere thing he'll say all day.

​​Lena is all teeth and dimples. "We're in Chicago next month. Tom's firm is opening a high-rise on Lakeview, so we'll be there for the launch and then do the gallery circuit. Maybe you two can recommend some highlights?"

Tom reaches across the table to refill Lena's water, which is either a cute marital quirk or he has picked up a few habits while their butler is on vacation. "If you'll be in town, you should come to the afterparty," he says to Harry. "There'll be plenty of art world people there. You might even get first dibs on a few pieces."

Harry demurs, "That's generous. But...Collin's not really a fan of parties where people use nouns as verbs."

"That's not true," I say. "I just prefer the verbs to be more violent."

The conversation meanders to real estate, the one topic that reliably gets Tom aroused. He launches into a long-winded story about a "problem client" who wanted to install a glass elevator in a prewar townhouse, and how the building's original architect would have "shit a brick" at the very idea. I tune out, watching Lena's hands as she traces small circles on the rim of her wine glass. She's not drunk, but she's had enough to lose the professional edge. I clock the subtle glances she trades with Harry, and then with Tom, and I realise with grim satisfaction that I am now in a situation I have only ever encountered through secondhand gossip and one disastrous night in Detroit.

There's an electric silence, like everyone's waiting for someone to flick the next domino. I'm sure it'll be Lena, because the whole time we've been sitting here I can feel her working up to something, like a python preparing to swallow a goat.

She doesn't disappoint.

"Remind me—how long have you two been seeing each other?" she asks.

Harry and I look at each other, like whatever we say will be turned into a balloon animal and handed to the nearest child.

Harry answers. "Not long. A few weeks."

Lena lets that hang for a second. "I thought it had been longer. It's always nice when you find someone who...fits."

Tom is, at this point, either oblivious or complicit. He stabs a slice of tomato, then points his fork at Harry. "Your family is in London, still? That's what Collin said."

This is a lie. I have never told Tom anything about Harry's family, but it doesn't matter, because he's about to use it as an entry point.

"Yeah, but I'm in New York for the foreseeable," Harry says. "Business needs more hand-holding here."

Tom nods, as if he's been personally consulted on the transatlantic management of rare art. "Bet you miss the scene there. Everything in New York is so...brisk."

Harry smiles. "I'm getting used to it." Then he looks at me. "Collin helps."

It's cute enough that I almost forget to hate it.

Lena is ready to pounce. "Have you ever been to Europe, Collin?"

"Not yet," I reply, and then I want to stab myself with my knife because now I've opened the door for a discussion about international travel, which is just a gateway to Lena flexing on her ability to drink men under the table in five separate countries.

Lena gasps. "You must come with us sometime. Tom and I do Paris every May."

"Not last May," Tom says, but Lena ignores him.

"We go with a group. It's very..." She pauses, looking for a word, "inclusive."

I can feel the subtle escalation. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't notice if you weren't expecting it, but I am. I feel a moment of panic, but it's quickly replaced by the relief that it's not my job to navigate the next few minutes. Harry was warned in advance, and we agreed: if this ever came up, he'd handle it.

"I'm not kidding, you'd love our friends. It's all intellectuals, but they're not stuffy. Very open."

I nod, and in the microsecond between that and my next breath, I see Harry smile with perfect, sphinxlike composure.

He says, "We'll think about it," in a tone that somehow manages to be both flirtatious and, with a flick of condescension, final.

Lena picks up on it. She backs off, but not all the way.

"There's no pressure," she says, "We just love introducing people. Sometimes the connections are...life changing."

There is a moment where I think about how Harry and I haven't even fucked yet. We are two adults, technically in a relationship, who have not done the thing that everyone else at this table assumes we are doing on a nightly basis. The idea of introducing another couple—or, hell, another person—is ludicrous.

The topic slides, as if on rails, to other travels and parties and various "adventures" that may or may not involve nude beaches or experimental pharmaceuticals. The way Tom and Lena manage to make being massive perverts seem like a refined and respectable hobby is actually impressive.

At some point, Lena reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. "You really should come with us next month. The gallery scene in Chicago is incredible."

"She's busy. New semester just started," Harry interjects. He says it without consulting me, and the implication is so direct I almost spit my drink.

Tom nods. "Smart. Never get distracted by a pretty face," which would be funny if it wasn't clear from the angle of his gaze that he's talking about Harry.

"Oh!" Lena lights up, like she's been asked to share the gospel. "Collin—our daughter just left last week for U-M. She loves it. She's decided to join a sorority."

Harry hums and then glances at me. "You know what that's like, right Collin?"

"Which part?" I ask.

"Rushing."

I look at him, and the feeling is the emotional equivalent of the "record scratch, freeze frame" meme. I never told him that. I never tell anyone that, because it's embarrassing, and I spent four years meticulously cultivating a persona that was not compatible with ritualised sisterhood.

I try to cover it up with a smile, like I find him knowing the intricacies of my college career against my will endearing. "How'd you know?"

"Matthew told me. At the opening."

This is deeply, fundamentally unfair. Not only did Matthew get a private audience with my current entanglement, but he also had the opportunity to rewrite my entire history while I was standing three feet away, oblivious. I stare at Harry, then at the table, then at Lena, who is oblivious to my inner turmoil.

"You don't strike me as a sorority girl," she says, which is a compliment in my book. "Which one?"

"Kappa Kappa Gamma."

"That's top of our daughter's list!" Lena says, and I know, with certainty that by the end of the night, I'll be getting a LinkedIn request from someone named either Tinsley or Bryn. "She'll die if she doesn't get a bid."

Tom seems nonplussed, like he's still struggling to reconcile the idea of Greek life with the modern world, but he plays along. "Did you like it?"

The truth is, the entire system is a pyramid scheme designed to convert social anxiety into eating disorders, but I don't want to tank their daughter's hopes. "It's quite the experience."

Lena beams at my answer, and then starts telling a story about her own college days, which seem to have been spent exclusively on beaches and in situations where someone's shoes went missing, but I zone out because I'm still thinking about what just happened: Harry, without warning, letting slip a detail about me that I never gave him. He doesn't look smug or even particularly invested in my reaction; he just sips his coffee and listens as Lena paints a portrait of her undergraduate years as if it's a personal Netflix Original.

After a round of stories about how Greek life ruined or saved various lives, the conversation circles back to the subject of travel and whether or not Paris is more fun with or without the burden of cultural expectations. Lena is running a masterclass in social pivoting, flipping from "would you like to fuck my husband" to "I hope my daughter joins your cult" in under three minutes.

I decide I like Lena, or at least respect her, which is basically the same thing.

We wrap up lunch with a round of polite goodbyes. Tom and Harry exchange handshakes, and Lena hugs me, her hair sticking to my cheek for a second, and whispers, "If you change your mind, let me know."

I say I will, because it seems like the safest possible answer.

Harry and I make our way through the club lobby, which is even more blindingly white than the tennis courts, and out into the parking lot. The sun is at that angle where it turns every piece of glass into a weapon. Harry slides on a pair of sunglasses and unlocks the car with a press of his thumb.

He waits until we're both inside and the doors are shut before he says, "You handled that very well."

"Which part?"

He starts the engine and lets the air conditioning blast for a few seconds before pulling out. "All of it," he says. "You didn't even flinch when Lena offered you a spot on the orgy tour of the French Riviera."

I crack a smile. "You were supposed to handle that part."

"I did handle it," he says, and I can hear the defensiveness in his voice. "I thought you were kidding when you first mentioned it. It threw me off, but I killed it before it got weird."

"It was already weird."

He steers the car onto the main road, one hand on the wheel and the other draped over the gear shift. "As long as you don't react, they'll never push past the subtext."

I want to say something clever, but all I can think about is what else Matthew told him about me. I chew on it for a few miles, watching the landscape change from fake brick condos to the leafy, slow-bleed sprawl of the suburbs.

Finally, I say, "Did Matthew really tell you I was in Kappa?"

"He said you were in a sorority," he confirms, "but he didn't tell me which one."

I know, statistically, that my college ex is the kind of person who would try to sabotage me out of a sense of wounded pride, but I also know that Harry is immune to that sort of thing. He doesn't seem the type to be easily swayed by other people's opinions, and even if he was, I'm pretty sure he'd just laugh it off.

But I still need to know.

"So when did you and Matthew talk?" I ask. "Was it at the gallery, or after?"

"He cornered me in the bathroom. Right after we met him."

I absorb this. "Did he say anything... else?" I ask, careful to keep my tone neutral.

Harry hesitates, and I know him well enough to know that if he hesitates, there's something he's trying not to say. "He tried to warn me off you," he admits. "Said you were trouble, basically."

"And what did you say?" I ask, since I have no sense of self-preservation.

"Nothing," Harry says. "His perception of you is...completely irrelevant to me."

I want to drop it, but my brain won't let me. "But did he say anything specific?"

Now Harry's face changes, just a little. It's a micro-expression of discomfort. "He implied that you cheated on him, if that's what you're worried he told me," Harry says. "But he also said it like it was the best thing that ever happened to him, so I think he just wanted to hear himself talk."

I feel a weird sense of relief, because at least it's not worse than the truth. "It wasn't even cheating," I say. "We were on a break."

I glance at him, and he's smiling, which is not what I expected. "You don't have to explain it to me," he laughs. "I've been divorced three times. I'm not exactly a puritan."

I'm trying to sparse out the undertones of judgement or disappointment, but there's none. If anything, he seems more amused than anything else.

"I just didn't want you to think I was, like, some kind of serial non-monogamist who jumps from one boyfriend to the next."

He looks at me. "Collin, I hired you off a yacht. I'm not under any illusions about who you are."

It should sting, but it doesn't. In fact, it feels strangely... relieving.

I lean back in the seat and close my eyes for a minute, letting the motion of the car and the steady hum of the road lull me into a kind of half-sleep. When I open them again, we're pulling into Harry's building, the automatic gates swinging open like they've been waiting just for him.

He parks the car in his usual spot, cuts the engine, and then he leans over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, which is so unexpectedly tender that I don't know what to do except freeze and let it happen.

"I like you, Collin," he says. "The rest is noise."

"I like you too."

He unlocks the doors, and we walk into the building together. The air inside is so crisp and clean I almost forget about my allergies for a second, but as soon as we get into the lift, my eyes start to itch and my throat closes up again.

Harry notices. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I nod, but my voice comes out raspy. "The pollen count is just...really high."

He frowns, then grabs my hand and holds it all the way up to the penthouse. "You should see a doctor," he says.

"Who goes to the doctor for seasonal allergies?" I mutter, because that is a rich person activity.

Harry makes a face, like he's personally offended by the inadequacy of the American healthcare system. When the lift doors open, he leads me into his flat and immediately starts rummaging through the kitchen for something—anything—that might help.

He hands me a glass of water and then disappears into the guest bathroom, emerging a minute later with a bottle of over-the-counter antihistamines.

"Take one," he says, offering it to me like it's the solution to all my problems.

I swallow it, and then we collapse onto the sofa and sit there, just enjoying each other's presence for a while. My head is starting to clear, but my eyes are still burning. I rub them, trying to will the irritation away, but it's useless. Harry notices and pulls me into his lap.

"Don't do that," he says, as if I'm a child.

I roll my eyes, but I let him hold me, and he wraps his arms around me and presses his chin to the top of my head. My eyes are still watering, but it doesn't feel like an emergency anymore. Harry kisses the top of my head and says, "I'll take care of you."

It's the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't hope it was true.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The next afternoon, or whatever time it is, we're a tableau of accidental domesticity. Harry is slouched on the sectional with his feet on the ottoman. His phone is clamped to his cheek with one hand, and the other is absentmindedly tangled in my hair. I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to grade undergraduate thermodynamics assignments and attempting to will the answers into existence via psychic fatigue alone.

He's running his fingers through my hair as if absently searching for the reset button at the base of my skull. I pretend not to enjoy it, but every so often I tilt my head back a degree, and he takes the hint, sliding his thumb along my scalp with a pressure that borders on ecclesiastical. Occasionally, he pauses to answer a question from his mother.

"Yes, Mum, the invitations went out. No, not the navy ones—the white with the foil." His accent, which he usually keeps sanded down to a tolerable smoothness, has regressed into the motherland so aggressively that every vowel is now its own syllable. "No, I'll send the address again. Yes, I know she's gluten free."

He catches my gaze and, without missing a beat, pantomimes strangling himself. I mouth, "just hang up," but he's already on a trajectory that will see him either dead or knighted for services to filial duty before noon. When he was mad at me the other day, he went a little native—what I think of as "public school feral"—but here, with his mother, it's a different animal. He listens more than he talks, and his face cycles from attentive to wounded to blank, and back again, as if the phone call is scrubbing all the polish off him in layers.

He shifts in the seat, knees boxing me in on either side, and I can feel the minute pressure of his calves on my ribs. It's like a weighted blanket, if the blanket had opinions on modernism and was currently arguing about global shipping logistics.

I highlight a passage in the grading rubric and then delete it, because the student's answer is so catastrophically wrong I don't have the heart to explain why. I could have been halfway through the stack if my eyes weren't constantly streaming; I'm fighting a losing battle against the allergen content of this apartment, which, based on my symptoms, is roughly equivalent to the surface of Mars.

He's still on the phone, discussing the merits of some ancient champagne, but his hand wanders to the edge of my jaw, as if he's attempting to knead the tension out of my entire personality.

Yesterday, after the tennis thing, he drew me a bath. Not just a quick "here's some water, try not to drown" bath, but the full spectrum: epsom salts, eucalyptus, dim lighting. When I got out, he made me drink four cups of tea, not because he's a sadist, but because he genuinely thinks the cure for all ills is hydration and submersion. He then parked himself at the edge of the bed, patted the spot next to him, and said "c'mere," like I was a small, frightened animal he'd just rescued from a drainage pipe.

Most guys, in my experience, would take advantage of a moment of female vulnerability to either 1) make it about themselves, or 2) suggest that the best medicine is sex. Harry did neither. He rubbed my back, and when I got bored of being comforted, left me alone with his Netflix password.

I decide that it must be a result of growing up in a house of only women. Not just the mum, but the older sister, Isobel, who by all accounts is the more formidable of the two. It makes sense—Harry is the rare species of man who can nurture without immediately trying to leverage it for emotional capital. Maybe it's just the genetic lottery, but I am, for the first time in my adult life, being cared for by a man without the creeping suspicion that I'll eventually have to pay him back in some way that is humiliating and transactional.

He ends the call, finally, with a series of descending "yes, mum"s that are so perfectly spaced you could build a metronome out of them. Then he lets his head drop back against the sofa and groans, long and deep, like he's just finished a hundred pushups.

"Can I ask you something, or are you still in psychological triage?"

"Go ahead," he says.

I close the laptop. "What is the thing you're bidding on?" I've heard him talk about this one at least a dozen times, always with the sort of vague threat that if he loses, he'll have to "burn the house down and start over," which may or may not be literal. I know it's not a painting, because he said it was "not technically on canvas." Beyond that, I've got nothing.

He reaches over me, grabs his own laptop, and opens a new tab. "You've seen it before," he says.

"I'm sure I have not," I tell him, because unless the piece in question is the periodic table or a cartoon frog, I haven't.

"You probably just don't remember because you hated it."

I reach up and grab his wrist to halt the slow massage of my head. "How would I hate something I've never seen?"

He turns the laptop so I can see the screen, which is currently displaying an image so incomprehensible it could be a digital glitch—half of the frame is black, and the other is a tangled mess of geometry and what might be shredded receipts. I am convinced he's punking me.

"Did your laptop crash?"

He laughs. "That's the piece."

I look again, as if staring harder will resolve it into a coherent image. "You're bidding on... a JPEG?"

"It's not a JPEG, darling. It's a physical piece, but the documentation is all digital because of the provenance issues. It's in storage at an offsite in Geneva until the lawyers finish fighting."

He says "darling" so casually it takes me another two seconds to remember I should be offended. I ignore it, because the real crisis here is that this thing is, objectively, a dumpster fire.

"So it's a bunch of black lines," I say, trying to sound unimpressed and not, as I secretly am, wildly out of my depth.

He leans forward, his legs boxing me in tighter. "You can zoom in." He taps the touchpad, and the chaos expands until I can see the individual marks. They're not lines, more like tiny, repeated, compulsive slashes, layered so thick they almost look like hair plugs. There are patches of red so small I wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't pointed them out. In the middle of the mess is a single, perfectly square patch of white.

"This is what happens when my stylus glitches out," I say.

"The artist has severe OCD—he made these marks as a way to silence intrusive thoughts. Each one is like...a ritual."

Now I kind of feel like an asshole, but I still don't know what to say to that. "So it's therapy."

"Kind of. But it's also an attempt at erasure. He wanted to overwrite the canvas until nothing was left except the act of overwriting." Harry glances at me, measuring my reaction. "The artist died before he could explain any of it. The market went mad when they found out he'd been destroying his own pieces for years. This is the only large one left."

I can feel myself falling into a familiar pit. It's the feeling of everyone else having access to a secret code that I will never crack—a sensation I've been chasing since my first year at uni, when I realised that even in hard science, there are questions you can't answer by brute-forcing the math. I want to say I get it, but I really, truly don't.

I reach for the easy escape. "It's very...random."

Harry shakes his head, but he's not irritated—he's enjoying himself, as if this is just a game of testing my resolve. "I thought you'd be more into design," he says. "Didn't you do architecture?"

"Did. Past tense," I correct.

"Why did you quit?"

The answer is both simple and loaded. "Too much ego. It's not about structure or stability, just who's the most shameless at self-promotion."

Harry hums in a way that is, for him, almost affectionate. "That tracks."

"Don't say 'that tracks' like you know me."

"I do know you," he says, and the absolution in his voice makes me want to punch him and then immediately apologise for it. "You like things that have answers. Not opinions."

I can feel my face warming. "It's not like that, it's just...you spend a year designing a house and then the developer gives you a spec sheet for what's trendy that month, and you have to throw it all out and start over. It was annoying."

He squeezes my shoulders. "Show me what you've made."

I hesitate, then grab my laptop and pull up the portfolio I haven't looked at since I started grad school, appropriately titled "failed careers."

Harry watches me as I scroll through the old renders, flicking past four years' worth of buildings that never left the screen. One has a comment from my professors that says, "this is all function, no poetry."

"This is very..." He trails off, searching for a word that won't get him stabbed. "Linear."

The first-year stuff is mostly modular libraries and blocky health clinics, because the only way to get noticed in studio was to be more algorithmic than the guy sitting next to you. Every project looks like it could be in the background of a Kubrick film. I move quickly to the later years, the ones where the renders have a bit of shadow, a little glass, a cheeky slant. There's the eco-corridor, and the assisted-living centre I did for the London competition, and then the house I designed as a theoretical exercise for my undergraduate thesis. It's a tidy, two storey building that would fit on any suburban street in the country, as long as the country was Denmark.

Harry leans over, clicking through the portfolio. "You know, these aren't nearly as joyless as you made them sound." He zooms in on a set of site plans. "Is this a spiral staircase?"

"The idea was to make everything as efficient as possible."

He laughs. "That is the most on-brand thing I have ever heard." He scrolls to the next page and pauses. "This one's actually lovely."

I look, and it's the sunroom from the assisted living centre—a half-moon of glass that faces south, with a two-metre-wide strip of thermal mass to keep it warm in winter. My favourite detail is the glass roof, which was supposed to let in just enough UV for the residents to "feel like tomatoes," according to the brief.

Harry points. "Why don't you build this? You could sell it to every trust in the country."

"Because it got rejected," I explain. "They said it was too clinical."

He shoots me a confused look. "Is it not meant to be a healthcare setting?"

"It is," I agree. "I didn't get it, either."

We scroll through a few more, Harry narrating his reactions in a running deadpan. "That's a lot of windows, Collin." "I assume this one comes with a free ruler for measuring everything in the room."

Once we get to the last one, he leans back. "Honestly? None of these are bad."

"Right, but they're all pointless. Every project gets value-engineered to death, or else it's immediately obsolete because the market's already changed. And if you try to do something truly innovative, it either bankrupts the client or gets you blacklisted for being impractical."

Harry hums, then closes the laptop. "You know, there's a market for this. Especially the library. Minimalist design, severe functionality, a faint touch of loneliness. You could build a whole subdivision for emotionally repressed millionaires."

He says it like it's a compliment, but I hear the subtext: you could have been someone, if you weren't so stubbornly yourself.

I shrug. "After a while, the problems are always the same, and the solutions are always to make it look like a wine bar from 2012."

He wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulling me back into the orbit of his chest. "Maybe you're just not old enough to have developed nostalgia for wine bars yet."

"I'm never going to be old enough for that."

"What if you built a house for yourself, with no clients and no supervisors? What would it look like?"

I think about it, and the answer comes so fast I have to check myself for irony. "It would be small. Perfectly insulated. No right angles, except for the bookshelves. All the floors would slope two degrees towards the middle, so you could roll things into the kitchen from anywhere in the house."

 "That's not a house, that's an obstacle course."

I look up at him. "You asked."

He kisses the back of my head, which is so unexpected that I just freeze and let him. Then, in an act of supreme self-control, I gently elbow him in the ribs, just enough to reassert equilibrium.

"Anyway, what are you going to do if you win the bid?" I ask. "Just lock the painting in a vault and brag about it to your enemies?"

"I'd display it in the lobby at Mayfair for a week, then loan it to the Tate for a year. Maybe start a rumour that it's haunted."

He's never told me that he believes in ghosts, but I know him well enough now to know that he absolutely does.

He massages my shoulder again, and I let my head fall forward, enjoying the brief relief. I feel like a toy with a loose screw.

"Are you sure you don't want to lie down?" he asks, for the tenth time.

"I'm sure."

"Have you taken anything?"

"Not since this morning," I tell him. "You're only supposed to take one a day."

"That's a lie." He stands and gives me the once-over that has, on more than one occasion, ended in the suggestion that I come with him to the kitchen "for a consult on optimal snack distribution." But then he leaves me there to retrieve a bottle of Claritin, plus a glass of water and a slice of banana bread.

"You're spoiling me," I tease, accepting the offering. "Are you hoping to weaken my immune system so you can kill me more easily later?"

He sits back down and pulls me into his lap, like I'm a pet that needs constant supervision. "I just like taking care of you. Is that so strange?"

It is, actually, but I don't say so. I press my head against his collarbone, feeling the warmth of his skin through the cotton of his shirt. He resumes running his fingers along my scalp, and it's the first time in days my head doesn't hurt.

"Go lie down, love," he tells me, and this time it feels like less of a suggestion and more of an order.

I open my eyes and glance at the clock. "We have dinner with your investor in two hours."

"I'm not subjecting you to two hours of bad air conditioning and worse small talk."

"I've done it before," I mumble.

"Not with me," he says. "I already rescheduled. She was being weird about the location, anyway."

I sit up. "You've been talking about this for a week."

Harry shrugs, like this is a completely normal business practice. "I can't really impress her if you're suffering. It's bad for optics."

I realise that, yes, this is the first time in my adult life that someone has unilaterally rearranged their life to make mine easier.

"Go sleep," he says, giving me a gentle shove in the direction of the bedroom. "I'll make dinner."

I'm too tired to argue, so I comply. I close the door behind me and collapse onto the bed, the mattress sinking just enough to remind me that this is, technically, not my life.

If you had told me, a month ago, that I'd be here—being fussed over by a billionaire who genuinely gives a shit about my blood sugar and my sinuses—I would have called you a liar, or at least a con artist with a very specific kink.

collin

Erskine Contemporary looks the way I imagine Heaven would look. Everything is so aggressively white, it makes me want to drop a cranberry juice just to see what would happen. I sit in one of the minimalist "waiting objects" pretending not to gawk at the security guard, who looks like he was grown in a lab to wear suits that tight. The contrast makes my outfit—a plain oatmeal jumper, navy skirt, and the same Doc Martens I've worn for years—seem like an intentional "she's just like us!" bit of performance art.

I pick at the seam of my skirt and wonder, not for the first time, if I should have at least ironed it. Then I realise I don't even own an iron. I remind myself I'm here on a Thursday morning because I got an email at 11:58 PM last night from an address ending in @erskine.com, which sounded fake until I checked the gallery's site and found the assistant's headshot and bio. The assistant (her name is Sari, or maybe Suri, it autocorrected three times) requested that I "please arrive promptly at 10:00 for a meeting with Mr. Styles."

I'm not delusional enough to think this is a booty call disguised as a business meeting, but I'm not not considering the possibility. This was proper. Posh. It made me more nervous than if he'd just sent a dick pic.

I check my phone for the third time in two minutes. 9:56 AM. I could still leave and blame the MTA.

Here's what I know about Harry Styles, besides the obvious: He's British, a little full of himself, and the CEO of Erskine. That's apparently a big deal even in the cloistered, nepotism fueled world of contemporary art. He's thirty one, according to Google, which also serves up a pretty good selection of thirst trap photos if you dig past the business headlines, and he has a surprising number of tattoos for someone who now wears expensive watches and gets invited to Davos.

I met him last week, which already feels like a fever dream. I was on a yacht, called a "superyacht" because calling it a "boat" would be like calling Versailles a starter home. It was anchored off the coast of Sag Harbor, in that no man's land of water between technically the Hamptons and definitely the Hamptons.

I was there because I was hired to be there. Not in a catering or hospitality capacity, unless you consider my presence as emotional catering.

This is the part I can't say out loud to anyone except my best friend, and even he only half believes me—I get paid to hang out on yachts. Not always yachts; sometimes it's penthouses, or a ski lodge, or the back row of a Broadway premiere. Yachting, as a verb, means you're being paid—sometimes in cash, sometimes in handbags—to party with rich people. If you're very lucky, the rich people are only boring and not actively repulsive.

I'm not an escort, at least not in the way the word makes people purse their lips. Most of the time I just drink overpriced tequila and laugh at billionaires' jokes. Sometimes I listen to them complain about their ex-wives, or politics, or the state of the world. Sometimes, girls go off with them at the end of the night, and the unspoken implication becomes very spoken. I don't judge; I just don't want to be the "and then she disappeared below deck for three hours" story.

Harry was different, in that he didn't ignore me after the first ten minutes. In fact, he seemed to find me entertaining. He poured his own drinks, which was apparently a scandal to the other guests, and he asked actual questions, like why I was there and what I thought of the art that lined the yacht's interior. I told him that most of it looked like expensive Rorschach tests, and he laughed and said I wasn't wrong. We played gin rummy until three in the morning, at which point I lost ten grand of his money (Monopoly money, but he did Venmo me a hundred bucks as a consolation prize and wrote "for services rendered" in the description. I hope no one from the IRS ever sees that).

I left the yacht at sunrise with the rest of the hired girls, who had to catch a van back to Midtown. Harry hugged me goodbye, in that too familiar European way that should have been sleazy but wasn't. I didn't get his number. I figured that was the end.

And yet, I am here now. In the lobby. Picking at my skirt. Trying to not make eye contact with the assistant who's been watching me for the last three minutes.

She appears suddenly at my side. "Collin?" she says, as if she's making sure I didn't send a stunt double.

I stand, which is awkward because the chair is a Danish design that slopes backward at a perilous angle, and my knee cracks so loudly that the assistant flinches. "That's me," I say. It comes out like a question, so I clear my throat and try again, more assertive. "Yep. Collin."

She smiles with her mouth only. "Mr. Styles is ready for you." She glances at my shoes, then at my face, and I can see her weighing the likelihood that I'm here to vandalise the gallery. I want to reassure her, but I don't actually know what I'm here to do.

We take the elevator to the fourth floor. I trail the assistant down a hallway lined with paintings, but most of the art is weirder—a video of a woman rolling naked in black paint, a twisted mess of wires and what looks like human hair. I want to ask about it, but I have a feeling she would only answer if I used the exact right lingo.

She stops at a glass door, swipes a badge, and ushers me inside. The office is huge, with floor to ceiling windows that overlook what I guess is the gallery's private garden. Harry is standing by the window, staring out of it as if he's considering whether to jump.

The room is bright, full of glass and steel, and there are sculptures everywhere—abstract blobs on plinths, a chandelier that looks like it's made out of burnt forks. But the only thing I can really focus on is him, because he's turned at the sound of the door.

He's hotter in daylight. The last time I saw him, he was shirtless, covered in someone else's champagne, telling a story about how he accidentally set a fireplace on fire at Gigi Hadid's house. Now he's in a suit, but his shirt is open at the collar, and his tattooed wrists poke out at the cuffs like he's daring the room to call him a criminal. He grins when he sees me, not a smile but a slow rolling challenge.

"Collin," he says, and my name sounds different in his accent. Col-leen, like it's two words. "Thanks for coming."

I try to act casual. "You make it sound like a court appearance."

"If it is, I hope you're on my side."

He gestures to the only other chair in the room. I sit and try not to act too obvious about checking him out. There's an energy to him that makes me want to say yes to things before he even asks.

The assistant hands him a folder, says something about "the Basel report," and leaves. The door snicks shut behind her.

Harry sits on the edge of the desk, not in the chair, and opens the folder as if he's trying to remember what's inside. Then he closes it and looks at me.

I cross my legs and then immediately am reminded that my left sock is grey and my right is navy blue, and I didn't think anyone would notice.

"So," I say. "Do you bring a lot of girls back to your office, or is this a 'just me' thing?"

"No, I've got a rotating cast. You're Thursday's special."

I scoff, which isn't the noise I wanted to make, but here we are. "Okay, but am I here to be fired, or...?"

He rubs his hands together, which are large and heavily ringed. "I wanted to see you again."

"Very old fashioned. I feel like there are easier ways to stalk someone, though. Instagram? Twitter?"

"I didn't think you'd answer a DM from a stranger."

This is fair. I almost didn't answer the email. "So you summoned me."

He looks slightly apologetic. "I asked my assistant. She said you'd probably think it was a prank."

"She was right."

He laughs, and then the laugh dies away and he looks at me with a level of focus that's almost alarming. "I'm sorry if this is weird. I just—I liked you. Last week."

"I liked you, too. And your gin. And your yacht."

He rolls his eyes. "The yacht isn't mine. It belongs to the gallery."

I raise an eyebrow, because what gallery needs a yacht? And if he owns the gallery, that makes it his property. "Liar."

He lifts his hands. "I swear to you, Collin."

I file this away for later, because I'm pretty sure he's lying, but it's nice to know he respects my intelligence enough to lie to me directly.

"So what's this about? You want to buy my art? Because I should warn you, my last piece was a decoupaged pizza box."

He grins again, and I see a tattoo peeking out from the collar of his shirt. "You're not an artist."

"Excuse me?"

"I Googled you."

I open my mouth, then close it. "That's...flattering?"

"Don't be embarrassed. I Google everyone. It's a sickness."

"What did you find?"

He looks amused. "A lot of LinkedIn. A couple of dead Medium blogs. Nothing incriminating."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Disappointed?"

"A little. I was hoping for at least one mug shot." He watches me for a beat, the way people do when they're about to ask a favour or scream at you. "Do you want something to drink? There's a frightening amount of espresso in this building."

"I had cold brew already. The barista poured it like she was mad at me." I uncross my legs, regretting the visible socks, and rest my ankle on my knee instead. "You should just cut to the chase."

He glances down, almost sheepish. "Right. Well." He sets the folder aside. "Chase mentioned something, the other night. About...yachting."

I consider pretending I don't know what he means, but the odds of out bullshitting a professional art dealer seem low. "Yeah, yachting. As in, I was paid to be there. I didn't win a contest or anything."

He relaxes minutely, as if he's glad I didn't make him say it out loud. "It's not my business, obviously. But you don't seem the type."

"I didn't realise there was a type."

He gives me a look that's hard to categorise. "Sure there is. It's just usually more...eager? Most people in that line of work—they like to be noticed. You seemed like you wanted to be invisible."

"Yeah, I'm terrible at faking delight. That's why I get the weird gigs." I let that hang, because I can't tell if he's about to ask for details or politely change the subject.

"Are you in some kind of trouble?" he asks after a pause.

I'm almost touched. "You think I have a loan shark or something?"

He shrugs, looking at the window. "It happens. Rich men are supposed to ignore it, but I don't like ignoring things."

"I'm not in trouble," I say. "I just...hate my job, and this way I only have to be bored on the weekends instead of every day." 

He nods slowly, then looks at me like he's about to pull a rabbit out of a hat. "What's your real job, then? You don't look like a BFA dropout."

"Well, I'm actually a student," I explain, and he blinks. I almost laugh. "PhD programme."

"You're joking."

I shake my head, because people never believe it unless you're wearing a hoodie with the school crest. "Nope. I'm a TA, but the pay is basically slave wages."

"Impressive. You must love academic validation." He's not far off, but I bite my tongue. "I have a proposition."

I cock my head, feigning indifference but holding onto the edge of the chair. I've watched enough mafia movies to know that this is how you wake up with no kidneys, but also enough rom-coms to know that sometimes the proposition is sexier, or at least funnier.

"Proposition is a loaded word," I say with my best deadpan. "Are you going to ask me to dispose of a body?"

"Not today, though I'll keep you on retainer in case the need arises."

He stands, and circles the desk, sitting in the actual chair this time. The suit fits him like it was poured onto his body and then left to harden overnight. I can't tell if he's trying to intimidate me, or if this is just what thirty one looks like when you're wealthy and extremely well moisturised.

"Would you be interested in an arrangement?" he asks. I let the word sit there, unblinking. Arrangement. I could play dumb, but I respect the directness.

"Are you asking to hire me? Because you already did. On the yacht. I think you tipped me."

"That was Chase," he says quietly, but not in a way that suggests embarrassment. "He said you're with an agency, but I'd prefer no intermediaries."

I ttry to decide if this is the most flattering or the most serial killer thing that's ever happened to me. "What, you don't like the customer service?"

He ignores this, which is fair. "Look, I'm in New York for the next year. I have to do a lot of events. Fundraisers, dinners, shows. You've been to some of them, so you know the type of people I'm dealing with."

"Billionaire tax dodgers and their trophy wives?"

He smiles slowly. "You said it, not me."

"And you need...what? A professional plus one? Are you that allergic to Tinder?"

He tips his head, like he's trying to see me at a new angle. "You make it sound tawdry."

"It is tawdry," I confirm, which is breaking escort 101 of ignoring the elephant in the room. "That's the point. No one expects anything else."

He drums his fingers on the desk, then holds up a palm, as if promising to tell the truth. "It's not a sex thing. Or, it doesn't have to be."

My face must do something because he backpedals, sort of. "I mean, not that I'd object if it turned into a sex thing, but it's not the focus. I need someone with a brain. Someone who can survive a three hour auction dinner without dying of boredom or getting too drunk to stand."

"So you want an escort, but, like, one with a resumé?"

"Yes. But also: you. I want you, specifically."

My stomach flips like an experimental centrifuge. "You could literally have anyone."

"Anyone gets old. I want to see what happens when it's not anyone."

It's so sincere that I have to look away. My gaze lands on a sculpture behind him, a bulbous, vaguely obscene heap of chrome.

I try to buy time. "Let me get this straight. You want to hire me—just me—to go to events and pretend to like you?"

"You wouldn't even have to pretend. I'll keep your glass full and let you mock the guests."

"And the sex is optional," I repeat, because I'm not letting that go.

He nods, like he's amused that he has to repeat himself. "Entirely at your discretion."

I'm not used to this kind of directness. Most men try to worm around the topic, pretend they're different, or worse, that they're rescuing you from something. Harry just lays it out and waits for you to match his play.

I sit back in the chair and cross my arms. "I work for an agency. I believe there's a lot of—" I falter, searching for the right word, "—red tape with going off book. I feel like I signed something about this."

He shrugs. "I don't like the middle man. Send me the contract. I'll have my lawyer look it over, and I'll pay the penalties."

I don't laugh, but I want to. "That's a lot of faith in someone you met once. On a yacht. Who, I should add, lost your money at cards."

"It was only ten grand," he mutters, as if that's mere pocket change to him. "And it wasn't real money," he pauses. "You strike me as someone who values honesty. Name your number."

I almost say something glib, but stop myself and decide to test him. "Why not just date someone?" I ask. "You're not hideous."

"Thank you, Collin."

"Or, like, date a real person," I push. "You could have art groupies."

"That's not really a thing. He leans forward and puts his elbows on the desk. "What are you studying?" 

"Physics."

He slow blinks, as if I just confessed to running a cult. "What's your thesis?"

"Right now? Disordered systems. Spin glass models. Quantum entanglement at room temperature." I stop myself because he's glazing over. "Sorry. I forget that's not cocktail party material."

"No, it's great," he says, and he almost sounds genuine. "It's refreshing, actually. Most of the girls I meet are...not that."

"Not what?"

"Not as interesting."

There's a silence, but it's companionable. I realise my hands are folded tight in my lap.

"Will I have to get, like, waxed?" I ask, just to see if I can make him squirm.

He shrugs, which seems to be his favourite movement. "Whatever makes you feel most like yourself."

"What if I say no?"

"Then we play gin rummy and drink coffee and you go back to your life. No hard feelings."

I believe him, which is alarming. I should be freaked out, but I feel a weird sense of possibility at the fact I've just been offered a job that doesn't exist on Indeed. I think about my rent, and the fact that my advisor still hasn't approved my grant proposal, and how this seems to be the only outlet of control I have over my life.

"I'll consider it."

He looks pleased but not smug. "Thank you."

He stands, offers his hand. It's warm and dry, the handshake of a man who's never touched a dish sponge. He holds it just a little longer than necessary. "You'll have the paperwork by tonight."

"Looking forward to reading the fine print."

He winks, which should be cheesy but isn't.

I step out into the hallway, expecting the assistant to appear and frog march me to the lift, but I'm alone. The floors are polished to a mirror and every step echoes. I feel exposed, but in a good way—like I'm walking out of a bank after robbing it, with the loot zipped up in my backpack.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

It's ten o'clock at night and the only reason I'm still at the library is because the alternate was listening to freshman sob stories at the TA office hours table. I get more grading done in the fluorescent isolation of the stacks than I do in my apartment, because at this hour, the space is a zoo for the intellectually masochistic—everyone is either tweaking, whispering furiously over group projects, or, in my case, pretending to care about undergraduate lab reports.

I'm on my third cup of coffee and my fingers are going numb from trackpad friction when my phone buzzes with an email notification. I've trained myself to ignore notifications after dark, but the sender field catches my eye: [email protected]. I stare at it. No info@, no assistantto@. The man himself.

I open it on my laptop, expecting a courteous "thank you for your time, let's never speak of this again" or maybe a passive aggressive request for my "feedback on today's experience."

Subject: Exclusive appearance contract

No greeting, no emoji, not even a "Hi Collin." Just an attached PDF and, below it, three words: As discussed. H. and then his email signature.

It's so succinct it feels presumptuous.

I let it sit, because my instinct is always to wait and see if it's a phishing scam. I even hover over the attachment, as if it will trigger an NSA alarm. Then I open it, because curiosity is a disease and I have it terminally.

The contract is not what I expect. For one, it's not a boilerplate escort NDA, which I have, embarrassingly, read before. It looks like a legitimate employment agreement that probably goes through six rounds of legal before ever being shown to a human. There are enough watermarks and copyright notices that I'm tempted to print a copy just to see how much toner it burns.

The summary up top tells me everything: This is an "Exclusive Personal Appearance Agreement" between myself (the "Consultant") and Erskine Contemporary (the "Client"), dated, notarised, and already signed on the digital dotted line by Harry Styles.

The terms are...ridiculous? I read it three times, convinced I missed something.

Payment: $10,000 per monthly pay period.

Minimum commitment: four days per month, plus one full weekend as determined by the Client, to include but not be limited to art events, dinners, fundraisers, and off-site functions. Global travel included.

Additional compensation: all travel, lodging, meals, and incidentals provided by the Client, not to exceed "reasonable standards" (there's a parenthetical that lists St. Regis, The Mercer, and "first class or equivalent," which is so specific it's almost ironic).

Exclusivity: Consultant agrees to provide services solely to Client for the duration of this agreement. The term "services" is defined as companionship, conversation, and attendance; there is a clause that specifically says "no physical or sexual services are required or implied."

There's a lifestyle clause: Consultant agrees to maintain "lifestyle readiness" during the engagement. It sounds dodgy, but that's lawyer speak for don't show up drunk, high, or with a visible hickey.

There's a clause about "publicity and privacy": No photos, posts, or any social media references to the Client without prior written consent. Any and all disputes to be settled by private arbitration. There's also a "non disparagement" addendum, which makes it clear that if I decide to roast Harry Styles on Twitter, I forfeit the money, the trips, and possibly the rest of my life.

And then, the kicker. Upon conclusion of the engagement, Consultant may retain all gifts and compensation without obligation to return or disclose to third parties.

The money is laughable, in the way that winning the lottery is laughable, except this one requires no luck and only moderate dignity loss. I scroll through the whole thing, looking for the asterisk, the catch, the unspoken "but." There isn't one.

I read it again, this time out loud, whispering the more egregious phrases to myself as if they might make more sense with air behind them.

"Companionship and conversation," I say. "Attendance at events. Lifestyle readiness." I snort.

This is less "escort" and more "emotional seeing eye dog."

I open a new browser tab and Google Erskine + lawsuits, just to see if I'm about to become part of a class action. There's nothing. I try Erskine + scandal and get a couple of Page Six rumours, but nothing that screams run for the hills.

I sign the NDA first, because it's only a page and a half and I know the drill. Then I hesitate, because the contract is a different animal. It's not just the money, it's the implication that my life is about to get very, very weird.

I call my best friend, Connor, but he's busy pretending to be a person at a networking event, so I settle for texting him a screenshot of the first page, blocking out Harry's name and company, giving him absolutely no context. His reply is immediate.

Connor

ARE YOU SELLING YOUR ORGANS

Me

wouldn't get much for my pancreas 

Connor

do it. worst case you get murdered. best case you get flown to venice for free

Fuck it. I sign the contract and send it back to him. Within thirty seconds, I get a reply from [email protected].

I knew you wouldn't negotiate. Don't ever let me lowball you again.

Attached is a new contract, with an even more obscene pay scale—$15,000 per month, plus full medical and dental coverage and something called a 401k. I had to look that one up because I thought it was a race car or maybe a tax form.

This is either a really elaborate prank or the best hustle I've ever fallen into. I sign the new contract, because at this point, why not, and then there's another email, so instantaneous I'm starting to think they're automated.

Calendar attached. Please add your obligations. No need to specify; just block out the times you're not available so I can schedule accordingly. See you Saturday.

There's a Google Calendar invite, colour-coded with all of Harry's events for the next year—gallery openings, museum galas, some kind of auction at a literal palace, and a private island weekend.

I add the TA office hours, my advisor meetings, and two recurring therapy appointments, all labelled "unavailable" just to see if he'll notice, and then I check the obligations for this week. Saturday is a charity dinner at Cipriani Wall Street, and the dress code is "very formal."

I don't own anything formal unless you count my undergrad graduation gown, and I don't think that will cut it.

My phone buzzes again. This time it's from an unknown number:

Personal shopper for Miss Eisenfaust. I'll courier a selection tomorrow AM. What's your building code?

I type it in, then stare at my phone for a long time.

I realise this is happening. Not in a vague, what if way, but I actually just sold my soul to an art world oligarch, and now I have to pretend I know what a 401k is. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Saturday night in the back of a blacked out Mercedes S-Class, I am a parody of myself, legs zipped together, hands in my lap, and face half buried in the crook of a Tom Ford wool coat. The coat is not mine. The dress beneath it is also not mine. The Cartier necklace is definitely not mine. The only thing in this car that belongs to me is the rising sense of dread in my throat and the generic iPhone charging cord wound tight in my right hand like a rosary.

The driver is a professional. He hasn't said a word since "Good evening, Ms. Eisenfaust," delivered in an accent I can't place except it sounds like he could, in another life, break my kneecaps for missing a payment. I take this as a sign of class and also as evidence that the entire world of Harry Styles operates on a level of strategic ambiguity I'll never reach.

The car swings around the corner onto Wall Street, and I nearly laugh at the fact that anyone is expected to eat dinner here, like it's not a graveyard for ambition and old gold plated secrets. The driver pulls up to the curb in front of Cipriani, and I debate faking a seizure or, at minimum, projectile vomiting, but I bite my tongue and let the driver get out and open the door for me. It's all happening too fast, as if I've time skipped into someone else's Instagram story and now I'm contractually obligated to look like I belong.

Harry is waiting under the awning, one foot up on the velvet rope, leaning in toward the valet stand. He's telling a story so animatedly the valet has forgotten to open the doors for three consecutive arrivals. He spots me instantly, his gaze cutting through glass and glare, and raises a hand. I see the tattoo on his wrist first, then the rakish half smile. He's wearing an obscenely good tuxedo, black on black with a shirt that's unbuttoned at the collar in a way that screams he will absolutely get away with murder tonight, and I will thank him for it.

As the driver helps me out, Harry breaks off his joke with a conspiratorial wink at the valet and strides over, covering the distance in five steps of expensive, Italian leathered menace. He opens his arms, less for a hug than as if to demonstrate the sheer size of his own presence.

"Sorry I'm late," he says, and he sounds mortified in the way only someone who's never truly been late can sound. "Everything that could go wrong, did. You look beautiful."

"Are we going to dinner or to a ransom drop?" 

He smirks. "It's a bit of both, darling."

The staff at the entrance manages to nod at Harry with a mixture of terror and arousal, as if he's tipped them both money and secrets. He leads me inside, one hand on my lower back, and it's such a swift move I wonder if he's ever not done it. I scan the room for recognisable faces and immediately spot two women from the yacht incident. I decide not to make eye contact.

Cipriani is a fever dream of Old World opulence. Gold leaf on the ceiling, miles of white marble, everyone speaking too loud and pretending to look for someone while actually looking at themselves in the glass. Harry deposits me just outside the coat check and steps aside to take a phone call. I pretend to examine a gilt framed menu but am instead watching him through the corner of my eye. He's watching me, too. Every few seconds he flicks his gaze back to me, making sure I haven't run off or been replaced by CGI.

When he finishes the call, he walks straight up and plants his hand on my arm. "Sorry, again. I was supposed to pick you up myself. You must think I'm—" He stops, as if the word that came to mind was "flaky," but he doesn't want to sound like someone who's ever eaten a croissant in his life. "I just hope you're not annoyed."

"I got to ride in a car with a privacy screen. It's the most peaceful commute I've ever had." He smiles, but the apology lingers. I decide to give him a break. "So, which charity are we pretending to care about tonight?"

"You don't read the emails, do you?"

"I read the first three lines. My bandwidth for philanthropy caps out at UNICEF and the Trevor Project."

He fondly rolls his eyes, then leans in. "NYU School of the Arts. You're a secret patron now."

He hands off my coat to the attendant, who does a double take at the label, then at me, then at Harry. I can feel the attendant's judgmental eyes burning a hole in my borrowed couture. For a moment, I think about running, but Harry's hand is already back at my waist, guiding me towards a side corridor.

He glances around, then pulls me into a narrow, dimly lit coat closet lined with hundreds of $2,000 trenches and the scent of collective paranoia. I blink in the darkness, thinking he's about to murder me, but instead he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Ground rules," he says. "If anyone asks, we met at a Columbia fundraiser last fall. You were there for your advisor, I was there for the auction. Okay?"

I nod, trying not to giggle. "What's my advisor's name?"

He shrugs. "Make one up. Preferably not someone who's been indicted for fraud."

"That rules out most of the physics department."

He laughs. It's a real laugh, not the empty kind people fake in coat closets, and it makes me feel a little reckless. Then he continues at a rapid fire pace. "Don't mention Chase Benson, or the yacht, or any poker games. If you need to invent a story, make it boring. "

I raise my eyebrows. "You think I'm going to out you as a John in front of the Met board?"

"Just don't want you to get blindsided," he says. "That's all."

"Harry. I'm very good at lying for money. That's literally the job."

He seems to consider this, then relaxes by half a degree. "You are incredible."

The ambiance of this interaction is not as cinematic as I expected; we are in a coat closet, after all, and the only light is the thin, jaundiced beam that leaks around the door, catching the dust motes in a feverish haze. For a guy who spent all week orchestrating this, he's bad at hiding how nervous he is. Or maybe I'm projecting. I'm thinking about the way the crowd outside is probably full of socialites with political connections, or at minimum, people who could buy my entire extended family and then bulldoze us to build a better view.

I decide to be merciful. "Do you want to do a dry run?"

"Of what?"

I gesture between us. "The act. Are we, like, allowed to touch, or is it 'plague years' protocol?"

His eyes drop to my lips in a way that is textbook but also distinctly not for show. "You tell me."

"You should just kiss me to get it out of the way," I say. "You keep looking at my mouth and it's making me self conscious."

He does not look away from my mouth. "Maybe I just like watching you talk."

"You have a problem—" I start, but he interrupts me, which is rude but also kind of a relief, and he kisses me.

Not a polite, chaste, "I hope we can still be friends" kiss, but the kind of kiss that renders the closet's oxygen supply. He presses in, hands bracketing my jaw. His mouth is warm and persuasive, and I lose track of where my arms are supposed to go. I think one ends up tangled in his hair, the other grips a row of coats like a drowning person grabs at driftwood.

He tastes like expensive wine and a little bit of vengeance. I forget about the event, about the crowd outside, about my own name. It's ridiculous how easy it is, how much I want to keep kissing him just to see how far he'll go before remembering this is technically a business arrangement.

When he breaks the kiss, he does it with a slow drag of his lower lip, like he's not quite ready to stop. He pulls back just enough to see my face, eyes half-lidded, searching for a reaction.

"That helped," he murmurs.

I am not giving him the satisfaction of agreeing with him, so I let my hands fall away and glance at the racks of coats, as if I'm considering a quick wardrobe change to avoid suspicion.

"Well, that's done, then," I murmur. "Now we can focus on impressing the board of trustees."

He reaches up and tugs gently at the necklace I'm wearing—an actual Cartier piece, the kind you have to sign insurance waivers to even try on. His fingers brush my collarbone, just long enough to make my brain short circuit.

"Keep this on, please," he says. "It's my favourite."

Harry glances toward the door and then leans in, dropping his voice to a murmur. "One more thing. If you get cornered by Elise Stein, just pretend you don't speak English. She'll go away."

"Elise Stein?"

"Head of acquisitions at the Met. She thinks I stole her grant," he says, very fast, "which I didn't. It was a competitive bid."

I file this away. "Got it. Avoid the Medusa in Chloé."

I almost think he's going to kiss me again, but then someone on the other side of the door coughs so violently it sounds staged. Harry opens the door and leads us back into the fray, as if nothing had happened.

Every eye turns. It is exactly as awful as I thought it would be, but Harry's hand is at the small of my back, and I feel weirdly shielded. Like the wolves will have to get through him first.

He leans in close enough for only me to hear. "Let's get through this, and then I'll buy you a drink. Or three. Or ten."

I nod, and let him steer me into the crowd, feeling more like a co-conspirator than a date. Maybe this is what selling out feels like: not shame or regret, but the fizzy thrill of knowing the secrets of the universe before anyone else has the nerve to admit they're all just guessing.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

We're already a spectacle when Lena and Tom find us.

They introduce themselves like a lawsuit with the understanding that I'm about to be implicated. They're in their forties in the way a cat is not a kitten anymore—still up for chasing things, but likely to sleep for days afterward. Lena wears a silver slip dress, sheer enough to show the pattern of her tattooed ribs, with a high-gloss tan. Tom is the kind of guy who orders cocktails he can't pronounce and then brags about never getting hangovers. They are, as previously surmised, definitely trying to swing, but with a subtlety that almost makes it impressive. 

"Nice to see you again, Harry," Lena says. "We simply had to say hello. I'm Lena." She offers her hand, palm down, like she expects me to kiss it.

I take it, squeezing just a fraction too long, because if you're going to play games you have to commit. "Collin."

"Pleasure to see you again," Harry says, but the way he says it, you can't tell if he means the noun or the command.

Tom is watching me, but the way a surveyor watches a crumbling bridge. "How do you two know each other?" he asks, not in a casual way.

Harry gives me a look, a flick of the brow that means "your move." It's not a test so much as a challenge to entertain him. I take a sip of my drink, letting the silence run just a smidge too long.

"We met at an art auction last fall," I say. "He bid the ugliest sculpture in the room. I took pity on him."

"Ugly is subjective," Harry states, but I can see the corner of his mouth twitching.

Lena seems delighted. "That's so romantic! Did you win?"

"Second place," I say. "But I got the better consolation prize." I lean into Harry, and he doesn't flinch. If anything, his grip on my hip tightens.

Tom snorts, an actual animal sound. "Art auctions are all a scam anyway. You know half the pieces are never even delivered? They just get traded like stocks." He looks to Harry, expecting corroboration. "Isn't that right, man?"

"The art market is a lot of things," Harry agrees. "But at least it's more honest about its vices than real estate."

"So what do you do, Collin?" Lena asks. "Are you in the art world, too?"

I freeze for a second, out of habit. In the past, men like Harry have always answered this kind of question for me—spun a backstory, made a joke, written the next six months of my life in one syllable or less. But Harry just looks at me, genuinely puzzled, as if it never occurred to him to invent a biography for someone else.

"She asked what you do, darling," he whispers.

"I'm in grad school," I say, because truth is the one answer no one ever expects. "Columbia."

Lena's face goes slack with impressed, performative awe. "That's incredible. Where are you from? You don't seem like a New Yorker."

Again, I look to Harry, out of muscle memory. He just nods, as if to say, "go ahead."

"Detroit," I answer. "But I moved here from Ann Arbor."

"What brought you there? College?" I nod, and Lena lights up, almost thrumming with the tingle of social overlap. "My daughter is starting at Ann Arbor in August! Did you like it there?"

"It was fine. The city's kind of a mausoleum, but the school's good if you like people who correct your grammar."

She laughs too loudly. "She's obsessed with design. I think she'll want to do something creative, but you know how these kids are. So fickle."

I nod, knowing exactly how "these kids" are. "I studied architecture for undergrad," I add, which is not untrue but also not the truth she's expecting. "It's the same college. I'm sure she'll love it."

Harry gives me a look I can't parse. It might be confusion or it might be the rare moment of him recalculating the math on who I am.

Tom jumps on the architecture hook, latching on because he's probably been waiting all night to talk about himself. "I'm in the field. Did an amphitheater for the city last year. They're opening it next month with a new installation. JR, the street artist. You know him?"

I pretend to, because I want Tom to feel important. "Sure. He did the wheatpaste thing with the huge eyes on the cranes in Paris, right?"

I can tell he's not used to people listening to him. "That's the guy. Well, Harry here had something to do with bringing him in, didn't you?" He claps Harry on the back. "You must be very proud."

Harry lets out a noise I've never heard before—a cross between a sigh and a shudder. "It's all logistics and bribery, really."

Lena takes a step closer, and now I'm certain the night is heading toward a proposition. "You two make a gorgeous couple. Is it new?"

"Fairly new."

Lena purrs. "The best ones always are."

Tom is looking at me now with a speculative edge, like he's weighing the odds of a foursome.

"So," she continues. "What do you want to do with your degree? Do you want to teach? Write a book?"

I almost say "get paid to sit here and listen to you talk about your daughter," but I bite my tongue. "Academia, probably. But I'm not ruling out starting a cult if the funding dries up."

Harry chuckles so loudly I nearly spit my drink. "I know a few investors. Tech people love a good cult."

"You two are riots," Lena muses.

After a while, the conversation drifts into a territory I can only describe as pre-sexual. She starts telling stories about their "adventures" in Europe, and Tom starts nodding more enthusiastically. I can tell they're working up the nerve to either invite us to a private party, or at least exchange numbers for future networking.

The drinks keep coming. Harry's on his fourth Old Fashioned, but he's not drunk. If anything, he's gone a little...uppity. His jokes get faster, the sarcasm drier, his focus on me almost scientific. Every time I catch him looking at me, it's with an intensity that makes me want to either run or melt.

His hand migrates slightly up my side so his fingers rest just below the seam of my ribs. It's not sexual, but it's possessive. I don't know if that's meant for Tom, Lena, or both, but the effect is immediate. Lena's flirting goes down a notch, and Tom's bravado takes a hit. There's a lull, and then Harry stands up, throws an arm around my shoulder, and announces, "We've got to run, but it was a pleasure. You two are the highlight of my week."

Lena looks genuinely disappointed. "You're not going already, are you? The night's still young!"

"If I stay, I'll get too drunk and end up buying a timeshare."

We leave through a side door, and the car is waiting out front, driver exactly where he was when I arrived, like a monument to professional stillness.

Harry opens the door, then slides in next to me. We sit in silence for a minute. Then he says, "Want to do a play-by-play?"

"Yes, please."

He points to a couple we pass on the way out. A woman in white sequins and a man in a bow tie that is the monetary equivalent of a vintage car. "Go."

I squint, then make my call. "She's an actress, but only for, like, teeth whitening commercials. He's her manager, and also her stepbrother."

Harry bursts out laughing. "Uncanny. Next?"

We take turns all the way home, inventing backstories for every party guest we can remember—who was cheating, who was hiding an affair, who was probably laundering money through their charity. He confirms most of my guesses, adding in gossip that makes my jaw drop. Halfway through, I realise that this is the most fun I've had on a date in years, and the realisation makes me weirdly sad.

When we pull up outside my building, I expect Harry to do the perfunctory thing—kiss my hand, say a polite goodbye, and disappear into the night. But he turns to me and says, "Can I walk you up?"

I want to say no, just to see what he'll do. But the street is dark, so I nod.

My building is old. It's an antebellum that still has weird, haunted marble floors and a working dumbwaiter. The lobby smells like paint, and Harry studies it as we walk in, his eyes flicking to the keypad at the front door.

"No key?" he asks. I can tell it bothers him.

I punch in my code, waiting for the click. "It's safer than it looks, unless the wifi goes out, in which case you're just locked out until the super gets back from Queens."

He looks genuinely horrified. "Has that ever happened?"

"Only once," I say, trying to reassure him.

He doesn't look reassured. "I don't like it."

I stop at the lift. "What are you going to do about it? Install a guard dog?"

He smiles, but it's tight. "I have a feeling you'd argue with me if I suggested anything."

"Probably."

The lift arrives, and I get in, expecting him to say goodnight. Instead, he steps in too, and rides with me to the fourth floor.

At my door, I wait to put in the second code. "Thanks for the ride," I say. It sounds inadequate.

"No, thank you. Usually I feel like a lunatic at these things. It was nice to not be the only crazy person in there."

I smile. "Anytime."

He leans in, but not for a kiss this time. He presses his lips to my cheek, then pulls away.

"Goodnight, Collin."

"Goodnight, Harry."

He waits until I'm inside before he leaves. I watch through the peephole, just to make sure he actually goes.

When I close the door, I realise I'm smiling.

harry

The light through the shades is making a latticework of sun across Collin’s naked back, every inch of her skin welded to mine by a thin membrane of sweat. I’m on my side, watching the muscles in her shoulders relax with each breath. This is the kind of Friday afternoon that stretches out in sticky increments, like an ephemeral holiday or the hours before you turn yourself into jail.

“Don’t fall asleep,” I say into her hair. “I need you functional for the open house.”

“I’m not sleeping,” she rasps. “I’m resting my eyes.”

“You can rest them after the lease is signed.”

She sighs and pretends to stretch, which is really just her way of smushing herself into my ribcage. Usually, Collin doesn’t let me hold her for more than five minutes at a time, claims she feels “suffocated,” but she’ll tolerate physical affection if the context is exhaustion. Now, she’s almost limp with satisfaction.

Ironically, that’s not a word I’d have picked to describe her right now.

We have only slept together three times, properly, by which I mean the conventional sense of penetrative, non-cursory, “adult” sex. Each time, I am left with the distinct impression that, while I may be excellent at executing the act itself, there is something missing at the end. Not for me—I’m having the time of my life—but for her.

I have not managed to make her come, even once. It’s not for lack of trying, not for lack of effort, not for lack of patience or technique or any of the things I have previously considered my strengths. She’s not faking it; either too honest or too indifferent, but every time we fuck it’s the same—she’ll get close, I’ll feel the tension build, and then it’s as if she aborts at the last minute, content to hang in that space just before the end.

The first time, I chalked it up to nerves. The second time, I blamed the angle, or maybe the UTI risk. But now, three for three, I am forced to consider the possibility that the flaw is me.

I’m about to spiral into the existential dread of “am I bad at sex” for the millionth time this morning when Collin’s phone starts vibrating against the nightstand.

She groans. “I told you I’m not asleep. You didn’t have to set an alarm.”

“That’s not mine.” My phone is dead, on purpose, because I took the afternoon off for this exact reason.

Collin sighs and reaches for her phone on the nightstand, rattling its way halfway off the table. It’s an incoming call from an unknown number, but the caller is already leaving a voicemail and the transcription is filling up the screen like the opening crawl of a film. I watch her hit decline, and then she goes into her call log and blocks the number, which has already rang her three times today.

The reflexive paranoia is adorable. It is also deeply, fundamentally worrying.

I almost let it go, but something about it reminds me— “Someone’s been calling my office looking for you.”

She freezes, a perfect isometric hold. “What for?”

I’m already failing at my attempt to sound casual. “They didn’t say, but they rang four times before they got through to HR and asked to verify your employment.”

This is, of course, patently ridiculous. She doesn’t work for the gallery—officially, she’s a “consultant,” which is just a clever way of laundering her name onto the payroll so no one gets sued if she blows up a $400,000 sculpture by accident.

“Did they say who they were?”

“No,” I tell her. “Wouldn’t give a name, or a company. You didn’t apply for a loan, or like, another job, did you?”

She shakes her head. “Maybe it’s the IRS. Or a hitman. Lots of overlap, those two.”

I stare at her, weighing the odds. “Or, more likely, it’s a debt collector.”

I’m not trying to be rude, it just makes the most logical sense. It’s nowhere near tax season, and Collin’s not the whistle blower type.

“It’s not a debt collector,” she protests. “I don’t have debt.”

That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one. “Collin, I’ve seen the statements.”

“And I’ve told you, it’s illegal to go through other people’s mail.”

I sit up and try to meet her at eye level. “I’m serious. What is it, credit cards? Medical bills?”

“I’m not answering that,” she says, which is an admission in and of itself.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, darling.”

The lack of an answer means she is. But that is absolutely not the point of this conversation. The point is that I want her to ask me to pay it. I want her to swallow her pride and say the words. It’s not even about money, it’s about her deciding she doesn’t have to fight me on everything.

“Come on, Collin. How much is it, ten grand?”

She rolls her eyes. “No.”

“Twenty?”

“Oh my god,” she laughs. “You’re relentless.”

“Fifty?”

She shrugs. “Or more.”

The Collin I know is not reckless. She doesn’t spend on anything but rent, tuition, and the bare minimum amount of insulin to keep from dying. I can’t imagine what could generate that degree of liability.

I tilt her chin up and force her to look at me. “You do realise it’s less humiliating to just tell me than to make me guess forever.”

“I owe a lot of money to a lot of people. Could have been any of them calling.”

“How many?”

Now she looks genuinely annoyed. “Why do you want to know so badly?”

“So I’ll know how many phone calls I’ll have to make.”

“You’re not a bank,” she argues. “If I needed help I’d call a consolidation agency.”

I roll my eyes, because she’s blatantly being daft. “I’m not offering to consolidate it, I’m offering to erase it.”

“And all I have to do is sell you my soul?”

I scoff. “Are you trying to get a rise out of me? I don’t need you on your knees for me to feel powerful.”

Collin fixes me with a glare, and then, with a suddenness that knocks the air out of my lungs, she climbs on top of me. The sheet falls off her and tangles at our hips, revealing the consolation of love bites I left around her breasts and the gleam of residual arousal on her core.

She rocks against my cock, which is soft but, given the trajectory, won’t be for long. It’s so distracting, I almost lose the thread of the argument.

“You don’t want me to beg?” she taunts, although her tone could easily be construed as sincere.

I squeeze her hips. “I’d settle for a thank you.”

Her hands skim up her thighs, then her stomach, and she pinches her nipples so they stiffen into sharp little peaks. I can feel her clench every time the head of my cock drags across her clit. She’s getting off on this—maybe not physically, but emotionally.

“You want me to suck you off and say ‘thank you, daddy’?”

I moan, but try not to let it rattle me. “That could be hot.”

“Well I’m not going to.” She stops grinding on me and drops her hands to her sides. The lack of friction is so abrupt I whimper, but judging by the icy look on Collin’s face, that’s exactly the effect she was going for. “If you want a tax write-off, go buy a telescope for a public school.”

“What if I do both?” I ask, smirking up at her. “Would that make you happy?”

She rolls her eyes so hard it’s audible and climbs off me. “Fuck you, Harry.”

Collin storms out, and the room is instantly haunted by her absence. I listen as her bare feet strike the hardwood, and then the door to the guest room slams so hard the frames on the walls actually vibrate.

I am momentarily stunned, but then I snap to the realisation that if there’s a singular event in the world that can instantly turn me into my worst self, it’s a slammed door. It’s pathological; possibly inherited, possibly designed by my father, who would deploy the tactic as the nuclear option in any argument, up to and including Mother’s Day.

Breathing through the urge to throw something, I sit up and throw on a pair of boxes from my dresser. There’s a part of me that wants to give it ten seconds, maybe thirty, to let the heat die down. But I also know that if I wait that long, she will conjure up a story about why she didn’t mean to do it. Or worse, that she wasn’t even angry.

So I stalk down the hallway to the guest room. I don’t knock. I just twist the handle and swing the door open with what I hope is the right blend of authority and restraint.

“Excuse me?”

Collin is standing in front of the dresser with her back turned, yanking a black skirt around her hips. She jumps and turns around, glaring at me with a look that, on the periodic table of expressions, would be classified as an expletive.

“I give you a pretty long leash when it comes to respect, but slamming doors is where I draw the line.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, not looking sorry at all. “Didn’t mean to.”

She doesn’t even look at me, just keeps fussing with the waistband. I step into the room and close the door behind me, making a point to do it gently. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“What’s yours?” she counters, like I’m the one who’s just committed an act of violence. “I already said I was sorry. Do you want me to apologise again, or will that just make you angry too?”

I close the space between us. “I don’t want an apology, I want you to not do it to begin with.”

She picks up a jumper, considers putting it on, then tosses it back onto the bed, as if the effort of dressing is suddenly beneath her. I think maybe she’s going to say something conciliatory, but the fantasy is ruined the moment she fires back, “Then don’t piss me off.”

I want to throw her out the window, or out of my life, or maybe just out of her own head for a second. “Collin, I swear to god—”

She kneels right in front of me, and I shut up. Just like that.

My brain lags a second behind the action, but my body is already responding. I’m still hard from before, and the sight of her with her head tipped back and lips parted is so bluntly salacious it scrambles my higher faculties.

She runs her hands up the backs of my thighs, tugs down my boxers, and licks a stripe from the base of my cock to the tip. I don’t know if this is another apology or a new front in the ongoing war, but it’s working either way.

“You can’t just—” I start, but she cuts me off by sucking the head into her mouth until I see stars.

I grab for the dresser. She looks up at me with that same defiant, glazed-over gaze, and I realise she’s watching our reflection in the mirror above the chest of drawers. I follow her eyes, and, fuck, the sight is pornographic: her on her knees, bare shoulders, my cock glistening with saliva, and my own expression—a rictus of pleasure and confusion, unable to discern if this is punishment or reward.

She takes me deeper until I’m hitting the back of her throat. Each time I start to get used to it, she starts running her hand up and down the base in a rhythm that threatens to end me before I can even process what’s happening.

“You don’t have to be so polite,” she says, spitting on the shaft. “I know you want to fuck my mouth. Use it.”

I am so hard now it actually hurts. “Are you sure?”

She nods eagerly and slips me back into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head. I’m not usually a thruster, but the invitation is so explicit I’d be a fool to turn it down. I tangle my fingers in her hair and gently rock forward, picking up the pace as she relaxes her throat.

Her eyes don’t leave mine, except to flick up at the mirror, tracking the movement. Tears start to bead at the corners of her eyes from the pressure and the intensity of it. I think about wiping them away, but she looks so beautiful I can’t bring myself to do it.

I set a pace, careful not to choke her, but losing a bit of control with each pass. The room is filled with wet, filthy sounds—the suction, the soft gasps as she gulps for air, the slap of skin. I want this moment to last forever, but I can feel the pressure building, the inevitability of it. I slow down, try to hold back, but she’s moaning just enough to let me know she’s enjoying this. Or at least, enjoying what it’s doing to me.

Right as I lose it, she pulls off at the last second and holds the head of my cock against her tongue. I spill hot and sticky ribbons right into her mouth; some of it spills onto her lips, but she just holds eye contact, milking every last drop with her hand, then swallowing it with a hum of satisfaction.

“You said you didn’t need me on my knees to feel powerful,” she says, licking me one last affectionate stroke, “but I think you feel pretty powerful right now.”

The cold clarity hits me instantly, and not just in the dick. I am actually, physically offended. I can’t believe she actually thinks this is about disproportion, about subservience, about me wanting to own her.

My grip tightens around her hair. “I’m not turned on by humiliating you, Collin. I’m turned on by your fucking…audacity.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. It’s all the same to you.”

I push her away, because I don’t know what else to do, and she starts pretending like I don’t exist. Without a word, she stands and tosses the jumper over her head.

“We’re leaving in ten minutes,” I say, trying to reclaim a shred of dignity. “Don’t make me wait.”

Then I leave, back to my own room, because the only alternative is to start slamming doors myself.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The last apartment of the day is just north of campus, an antebellum walk-up with a view of Riverside Park. The realtor seems determined to sell Collin on one or all of them, but Collin’s wearing an affect that reads as “highly sedated.” She floats behind me and, only when prompted, mutters, “Yeah, I like it,” or, “It’s nice,” and nothing else. 

If you told me this woman had a degree in architecture, I’d call you a liar.

I watch her path as we tour the unit. She’s tracing a hexagon of Portuguese tiles like it’s quadratics homework. The realtor says something about galley ergonomics, but the syllables dissolve into clouds of my own irritation. After a desultory inspection of the closets, laundry, and what the agent refers to as “spa bathroom,” we’re ushered back to the main room. She says, “I’ll give you two a few minutes,” then oozes out into the corridor.

The second we’re alone, Collin stands against the kitchen counter and starts staring out the window, zoning out.

“Well?” I prompt, after a minute of silence. “You going to say the line, or should I just guess?”

She shrugs, but the gesture is so weightless it’s as if she’s been huffing nitrous. “It’s nice.”

“You said that about the last four,” I press, hoping for literally any further engagement. “Don’t you have opinions about, I don’t know, natural light? Kitchen layout? Can the needle move, please?”

“I said it’s fine, Harry. I like it.” Her expression is so blank it’s almost menacing. “What else do you want me to say?”

Something about this answer makes me want to drag her by the hair into the nearest therapy group and leave her there. “I want you to have a preference. Any preference at all. It doesn’t matter if you hate it, just pretend you care.”

“I don’t really have a preference,” she explains. “They’re all the same—”

“They’re not the same, Collin. One had a view of a brick wall and this one has fucking sunlight. You’re hardly even looking.”

“Okay, okay,” she concedes. “I hear you.”

“Do you?” I echo. “You’ve been checked out all day! Are you hoping I’ll just pick for you? Because for the tenth time, I’m not the one living in it.”

She glances at the exit and lowers her voice, as if the realtor is eavesdropping. “Why are you acting like this right now? I said I would pay attention, I said I was sorry—”

I cut her off. “No you didn’t, Collin.”

“Okay, well,” she sighs, but she’s shaking her head like she finds this ridiculous. “I am sorry.”

“No you’re not,” I counter. “You never mean it when you say that.”

She laughs, actually fucking laughs at me. I move into the kitchen doorway purely so the wall can absorb some of the disbelief I’m leaking. “You’re still upset that I slammed a door, like, five hours ago? You realise there are bigger injustices in the world than an insincere apology for something to futile, right?”

“That was one clause in a much longer constitution of piss-taking.” My voice is climbing, ladder rung by ladder rung. “You sucked me off just to prove a point, and now you’re acting like nothing extraordinary happened.”

She crosses her arms. “If that’s what’s bothering you, you could have just said that.”

“No, I couldn’t, because—” the next sentence forms without committee— ”you are, without contest, the smartest person I know. But when it comes to feelings you’re the most catastrophically stupid person alive.”

The words carve up the room. Collin blanches and then turns as if facing the wall is a self-defence class. I wait for the retort, the sass, the geometry of her tongue, but nothing comes. Which turns my fury into a different texture altogether—cold.

I count to ten and exhale slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m frustrated, and—” I stop myself before I can dig a deeper grave. “Do you want to keep looking, or are we looping back to one of the others?”

She’s silent for so long I start to think she’s ignoring me, but then her voice floats back, hollow as a blown fuse. “Whatever, Harry.”

I feel the rabbit-punch restart. “And now you’re sulking. Real mature.”

“I’m not sulking. I’m just done arguing.”

“You won’t even look at me.”

“Because I don’t want to look at you.”

I spin her by the shoulder—gentle enough not to bruise, but physical nonetheless. She refuses to meet me halfway. Then I register the bead moving down her left cheek; it’s moving too fast for denial but she wipes it away the instant she recognises its trajectory.

Everything arrests.

The sight is so unfamiliar I don’t know what to do. I reach for her, but she pulls away. “Collin, baby, please don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” she says, wiping another stray tear. “Can we be done?”

It cracks my chest open, an indictment of my inability to stay kind or even reasonable. I could have been gentler. I could have been more patient. I could have not, at any point, reduced her to a blatant insult. I’ve said worse, to be fair, but never about her. Ever.

“Yeah.” I nod. “We can be done.”

We meet the realtor outside. I manage some spurious politeness about discussions to conclude over the weekend while giving a smile that is essentially drywall. Collin papercuts another “thank you” and heads toward the car.

I am, ostensibly, a professional at dealing with silence. After all, boardrooms are built on it—long stretches of nothing but the occasional sound of a throat being cleared, or a pen clicking, or the shifting of portfolios across a table. But in this respect, her silence has a density that feels apocalyptic. 

I try to put on the radio but Collin flicks it off without looking at me. She keeps wiping her cheek one-handed, and I see in the reflection of the glass she’s still crying. It would almost be less painful if it were just a flash flood of tears, but this isn’t nearly as dramatic or conspicuous. It’s a long-term climate of sadness, and she wipes each drop away like it hurts to exist.

We hit a red light when Collin’s phone buzzes, face-up in the cupholder. I glance down, expecting another spam call, but it’s Sari.

She stares at it for a second, then hands it to me. “Why is your assistant calling me?”

“Probably desperate. My phone’s been off all day." I pause the track of my self-loathing and put the phone to my ear. “Sari, if this is about the Rotterdam shipment, just have them email me.”

“Harry! Thank god.” She actually sounds frazzled, which means the world must be ending. “I’ve been calling you all afternoon. It’s not Rotterdam, it’s the Halpern buyer.”

I sigh, then check the time out of habit. “What’s going on?”

“He’s contesting the provenance on the Livadioti drawing and wants you to walk him through the archives section by section.”

I glance at Collin, then back at the road. “He’ll have to wait until Monday.”

“He’s here. Right now. With his solicitor.”

“Has Legal tried?”

“Twice. He’s not budging, and if you don’t show, he’s yanking the offer today.”

A moment passes where I hate everything on Earth, and then I concede, because this is a seven figure deal and the contract is three signatures away from closed. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”

I hang up and hand Collin her phone, which she receives with another bland “thank you."

“I have to go to the gallery,” I explain. “Do you want me to drop you somewhere? Or just take you home?”

“Yours is fine.”

We stay silent for the rest of the car ride. I pull into a spot at my building, but Collin is already halfway out of her seatbelt before I even put the car in park. She opens the door, and just when I think she might slam it to round off the day’s performance, she closes it quietly.

I get out, lock the doors, and ask, “Do you need my key?” just to stall for time. She’s had one for weeks now.

She shakes her head, already walking towards the door, but I catch her wrist and dig my card out of my wallet and hand it to her. “I don’t know how long this is going to take, so go out, or go find something—” I’m babbling now. “Just…do whatever you want. I’ll see you tonight.”

The look on her face tells me I’m more fucked than I thought, but she takes the card anyway and mutters, “I’m going to tank your credit score.”

I smile. “That would be a historical achievement.”

She ignores me and walks to the lobby. The doorman—who knows Collin by now, and usually waves—gives a nervous nod and presses the lift button for her. She doesn’t look back at me.

I should have said something more. Maybe “I’m sorry, darling,” or “I’m a prick,” or even “I didn’t mean the word stupid.” But she would have replied with, “you already said that,” or, "I don't care," and it would be true. That’s her whole MO: need nothing, accept nothing, lose nothing.

I hate the way I’m feeling, which is not quite guilt and not quite anger, but some fucked hybrid of the two that will require either a therapist or a bottle of something to unravel. I briefly consider following her upstairs, but Sari will start texting Collin death threats if I’m late.

It’s a ten minute walk to the gallery, and then a ten minute song and dance of acquainting myself with the buyer and his solicitor before we actually get started. I walk them through it, in the most patient, granular, soul-killing detail I can muster. Every date, every owner, every transfer. The solicitor asks a few questions that reveal he knows less than nothing, but it’s clear the buying is using the flaw as leverage for a price cut. I’ve been at this dance a hundred times, and I’m not in the mood to lose.

After about an hour and a half, the buyer relents and leaves with a handshake so limp it’s an insult. The solicitor collects the paperwork and slinks out after him. I take a few laps through the gallery just to walk off my own embarrassment, then finally, with a feeble sense of homecoming, I pack up and start the trek back home.

When I unlock my door, I'm expecting to find Collin reading a book or watching a movie in the living room, but she’s nowhere in sight. I think maybe she’s out blowing off steam, but I peek down the hall and check the guest suite just to be sure. Then I find myself checking the other guest suite, and my office, and the balcony. It’s only when I pass my own bedroom that notice Collin fast asleep, or possibly dead, in my bed.

She is properly, irreversibly out. As quietly and carefully as I can, I kiss her forehead, change my clothes, and lower the shades so the glare from the city lights doesn’t blind her at dusk. She’s wearing one of my t-shirts; it’s migrated up around her waist, exposing that she’s also wearing a pair of my boxers, which is both adorable and erotic. There’s a minute, maybe two, where I contemplate lying down next to her, but the part of me that wants to hold her is exactly the part that shouldn’t be trusted with her right now.

I have never cared this deeply about someone, in any context. Well, maybe my second ex-wife, though I think that was more about the air miles than about her. It’s an ugly, raw feeling, and I want to push it away but there’s no buffer; Collin’s taken all the oxygen out of the room and left me to breathe the residue.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·