MIRI WAITS FOR HIM AT LILY’S. IT’S ALL SHE can do.
She gives up sex with strangers. She gives up sex with friends. She tries, but fails, to give up masturbation, though she has given up the elaborate scenarios. She uses masturbation now as comfort rather than sex.
She gives up fighting it. She has tried everything, and nothing works. It’s a waste of her time and energy, and it’s unfair to use others—though she knows they enjoy it—for her drive to release.
She still has the dream most nights, but now she savors it, knowing it is all she has of him, of that perfect night. She stops worrying about the release and enjoys the anticipation, as he’d planned for her to do. As he’d so carefully arranged for her to do.
She spends most nights at Lily’s. She drinks a single glass of wine—white or rosé on the warmer days, a deep rich Italian red when it’s cold or rainy.
It has been six months and she is almost ready to give up Lily’s, as well. It is a hot summer night, four years almost to the day since…
She no longer stares at the door, trying to conjure him up. She’s sure he’s gone. Gone home to somewhere else, gone home to a wife and children, gone in an accident or a mugging. Because there is no way that he wouldn’t have come back, no way he didn’t experience what she did.
No experience could be so perfect if it was one-sided. Knowing that, finally figuring that out, has allowed Miri to contemplate giving up her vigil. She’s not quite ready, but she will be.
Soon, she thinks.
She hears the door open behind her. She smells sex. She smiles and turns toward him.