Four

The afternoons got a shape.

Some reality show was going — contestants I half-recognized arguing about something that had already resolved two episodes ago — when I heard the truck. The house was empty until five. I knew when he got home. I’d come downstairs in a tee and underwear when I could have been in actual clothes and I hadn’t changed.

He came through the side door. Set the cooler down. Took in the room — the TV, me on the couch, the fact of it.

He crossed the room and I was already shifting back against the cushions and then he was over me, his weight, the smell of the afternoon on him, and he pulled my underwear down and off — quick, no ceremony — dropped somewhere on the floor. The TV kept going. Somebody on screen was crying. I wrapped my legs around him and he pushed into me, the stretch of him opening me up, and I exhaled against his shoulder and the afternoon came through the windows the same as always and none of it looked different from outside.

I came. That was part of the pattern now — my body knowing where this went, going there without being surprised. He finished in me — his hand pressing flat against my lower belly in the last seconds, the same way he always did — and he got up.

I lay there a moment, face hot, breath still not quite back. Somebody was still crying on the TV. The room was the same as it had been an hour ago except for what was on the inside of my thighs.

He said it once, after. I hadn’t moved. I could feel what was leaking out of me and I knew that was what he was looking at.

We should be more careful.

I said yeah.

He looked at me for a half-second — like he was going to say what careful looked like — and didn’t. He went and got a glass of water from the kitchen and came back and sat at the other end of the couch.

“I’m leaving in August,” he said. At the TV.

I found my underwear on the floor and pulled it back on.

“I know,” I said.

He turned the TV on. We watched it until my mom’s car came up the drive.

I’d gotten my period nine days ago. I knew where I was in the month the way you know how long since it rained — not a count, just a sense. I was probably fine. I told myself that and kept going and didn’t look at what probably was doing in that sentence.

Nate had texted twice since the pool. I’d answered once.

Friday evening, the week after that. Movie night — dinner cleared, my dad already in his armchair with his socks off, my mom had picked something with some actress she liked. I came to the doorway and Cole was already on the couch.

The blanket from the hall closet was over his lap.

I came in and sat down beside him. He lifted the edge without looking up and I got under it and the TV was going and that was the whole thing. My mom on the other couch. My dad in his chair. Cole’s arm along the back of the cushion behind me, not quite around me, the way it might be for anyone.

I watched the screen.

I was aware of every place we were close — his knee against mine under the blanket, the warmth along my side where our shoulders almost touched, the slight slope of the couch that kept angling me toward him. I watched the actress my mom liked. I didn’t follow the plot. I was aware of his breathing. I was aware of when he shifted his weight. I kept my eyes on the screen and I watched him the whole time from the part of me that watches without looking.

His hand moved under the blanket.

Slow. Low on my hip, below my waistband — no hesitation, like the room was empty, like there was all the time in the world. My throat closed around itself and I held still. My mom said something about the actress. I said I thought I’d seen her in something else. My voice came out fine.