Free Loner by Teddy Wayne

get a chance.” She left for ablutions in the bathroom.
    What I wanted was impossible; even this starter relationship was in danger of collapse. How foolishly optimistic to think it might somehow lead to you. When Sara came back I’d tell her that we’d made a mistake and should go back to being friends before anyone got hurt.
    As if you’d heard my doubts and were telling me not to surrender, that nothing worthwhile was ever acquired without a struggle, the door was unlocked from the hallway. You looked at me with the vague recognition one has for a stranger on the same daily bus commute and walked toward your room.
    â€œAren’t you in Prufrock?” I asked, hoping to salvage the moment.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œMe, too. I’m David.”
    â€œNice to meet you,” you said as you opened your door, acknowledging there was no need to add your name—I’d have seen it on the sign outside, but I’d have known it anyway, much as I imagine celebrities don’t have to introduce themselves. And we’d met before, of course, but your error comforted me: our doorway encounterhad been so undistinguished that I preferred it be stricken from the ­record.
    Sara returned. “Your roommate’s back,” I said softly while fake reading her book about the unjustness of the world.
    She lowered her voice. “Aren’t we lucky.”
    I grinned in bogus conspiracy. She had some e-mails to respond to and asked if I minded if she took care of them before bed. “Happy to wait,” I said.
    I didn’t have to wait long. You emerged from your room in a white silk bathrobe and flip-flops, a towel over your shoulder and a toiletries basket by your side. My eyes flew a brief reconnaissance mission over the terrain of your calves: still bronzed, the elevated plateaus of muscle sloping down defined cliffs to the lower planes of your Achilles tendons. Elegant, lean feet, callused heels; it looked like you’d spent a lot of time barefoot in the summer. Other guys, the philistines who chugged domestic light beer, might have salivated over the body parts your robe concealed, but I was a connoisseur of your peripheral qualities, an oenophile who sussed out your fruity bouquets and spicy notes.
    â€œHey,” you said to Sara on your way out.
    â€œHey,” Sara said, eyes on her laptop screen.
    The next twenty minutes felt like days, my imagination rioting with you in the shower. You came back enrobed and glistening, your hair wrapped in the towel. The robe was monogrammed with a stitched, proud wound of VMW over your heart. As you opened the door to your room, an air current caught the tip of the lightweight belt, which fluttered up as if of its own accord.
    A hair dryer rumbled in your room. Going out to parts unknown. Worse, you knew precisely what Iwas doing: tragically staring at a Marxist tome with your bookish roommate. I’d given myself more opportunity for surveillance of you, but it meant you were now privy to my own humdrum existence.
    â€œNight,” you said as you left.
    Sara nodded in your direction. “See ya,” I called to your back.
    Sara asked if I was ready for bed. I put down the book, waited for her to turn off the lights, and stripped to my boxers and T-shirt.
    Once again we lay side by side until, eventually, I kissed and mounted her. It looked like it was going to be the same restrained tussle as before, but tonight I was more driven. I thought of you—in your robe, in the shower—as I rammed against Sara’s dreary gray shorts. This time I succeeded in lifting the RAISE OHIO’S MINIMUM WAGE NOW ! shirt. Her breasts were, to my untrained cupping, perfectly adequate. I pulled off my shirt, hoping my own nudity would induce her to shed additional layers. It didn’t.
    â€œHold on,” Sara said. She fumbled over her bedside table and her hand came back with a plastic pump dispenser she pressed into mine. “You