Archive of Our Own

The night is hot and buzzing. It’s still Spring, but it’s also California. 

The neon lights of bar signs and amber glow of lampposts illuminate the street in a wide array of colors. Crowds of clubgoers hopping from club to club and couples heading to their reservations walk about, filling the air with laughter and chatter and liveliness. 

Sitting curbside outside of a bar in Downtown, Ryland Grace. He's smoking a cigarette and coughing slightly in between each drag — it's a habit he's only recently picked up. 

Ryland Grace is twenty-four. Blond haired, blue eyed. Stubborn. Plays it safe. Lucky, or unlucky, it’s tough to say.

He wanted to be an astrobiologist, back when he was younger, but the circumstances just aligned for him to land into a pretty good, pretty easy job in business instead, and when people ask, he tells them he “works for a family that owns a hotel.” Y’know, sort of like a housekeeper. 

Really, what he does is manage the estate of a family that owns a big hotel chain. The word for this is “private estate manager,” and the pay for this is more than enough to allow Grace to have a flashy gold Amex, a big, red Toyota Tacoma, and an apartment in the north (read: “wealthy”) end of the city he’d only really moved into last week. 

He likes to pretend it’s a pretty complicated job, something he can be proud of, and sometimes it is, but most of the time, if he’s not stuck looking at excel sheets all day, his job consists of picking up his client's grandmother from the airport, or hiring contractors to do the actual labor, or flying out to transport some piece of art or furniture from one oceanfront mansion to another, or, on instances like tonight, dropping his client's rich, asshole, CEO-in-training nephew off at the bar. 

It’s a lot of running around doing what your client (read: boss) wants you to do. Like a glorified assistant. Much less honorable or intriguing than, say, working on rocket ships, or looking for life in other planets — the career track Grace always intended on following before this fell into his lap by the kindness or ruthlessness of God. 

Anyway. 

The night is hot and buzzing. Three girls stumble out of the bar behind Grace, bidding each other goodbye before two of the girls walk off in one direction and one Eva Stratt stays behind.

Eva Stratt is twenty-two. She’s got long, copper hair falling in loose ringlets down her back and deeply hooded eyes which match her disposition — icy blue and severe. Short, slender, and wearing knee-high leather boots and a tight black dress with a confidence that turns heads, Stratt is clever, quick witted, and prideful for good reason, relentless in achieving her goals while holding very little interest in anything else.

Eva Stratt likes a hot coffee on a hot day, likes that saying about pressure and diamonds. She likes to be desired which is different from being depended on. She likes things that fall perfectly into place but can appreciate the artistry in a bit of necessary mess. In her first year of law school, she is smart, dedicated, and incredibly talented, and soon enough, she is going to be great. 

The night is hot and buzzing. A tendril of cigarette smoke connects the two, glowing red under the neon light of the bar's signage, twirling around Grace’s fingers, twirling around Stratt’s head. Almost like a laser or a ribbon or a floating red string. 

Stratt walks up to Grace. Leans down. Taps his shoulder. He turns around. She does not smile in greeting. In fact, she slightly frowns.

"Can I have a smoke?" She asks. Her voice is rich, accented, silky smooth. Vaguely European. Dutch or German or something else. 

And he is a sucker for women who look like they could not be any less interested. And she thinks the most attractive thing anybody can do is be competent. She thinks the second most attractive thing anybody can do is be attracted to her. 

“Yeah,” Grace breathes in awe, looking around slightly as if expecting there to be crowd of girls behind Stratt, giggling like it’s high school and he’s become prey to some prank— I dare you to ask him out! But it is just her, and she is still staring at him expectantly. “Yes, of course.” 

Grace fumbles to pull the pack out of his pocket, then fumbles again pulling a cigarette out to give to her. He stands up to meet her, hands her the cylinder, and he pulls a lighter out from his pocket as well.

And she holds the butt of the cigarette between her lips tenderly. They both lean towards each other. Grace cups around the cigarette with his left hand to block it from the warm night breeze, and he lights it with his right. 

Once lit, Stratt nods at him appreciatively. 

“Thank you,” she says. And she starts to walk away from him, because what’s the use of prolonging this interaction, what’s the use when she’s gotten what she came here for, gotten what she wanted?

But he rushes out after her, “Wait!”

So she pauses with mild interest. Turns slightly. Waits, like he asked. 

Grace swallows at her attention. He sways where he stands.

“I, uh. I like your shoes.”

Stratt turns fully back around and arches a small, amused brow, appraising him. And he is handsome, well-kempt, and well dressed. She’s gotten what she wanted, but, well... she could always want more.

"Thank you," she smirks. "Is that it?” 

Grace swallows again. He shakes his head. "I like your dress, too."

Stratt tries not to laugh. She crosses her arms.

"Nice. Are you going up the list? My hair next? Or my earrings?"

Grace flushes deeply. "Um. Maybe your necklace?” 

And this time, Stratt does laugh.

“Do you want my number?” She asks over the noise of the street, the booming laughter of a middle aged man as he arrogantly attempts to flirt with a group of women two bars over, the distant yells of a homeless man arguing with a cop, the not-so-distant retching of a girl in the alley and her equally-drunk friends cooing comfort in her ear.

Grace blinks at her dumbly.

“What?”

She flashes him an impatient look, like, I’m starting to change my mind, and he gets it, ever the quick learner.

“Yes,” Grace rushes, amends. “Yes, sorry. I do. I’m Grace, by the way. Or Ryland, whichever you prefer.”

”Okay, Grace,” she acknowledges, not looking all that engaged. “I’m Eva. Call me Stratt.”

Stratt gives him her number, before saying sternly, “Don’t text me tonight, okay? I’m busy.”

Grace still has stars in his eyes. 

He asks, “When can I text you?” 

She hums contemplatively, and she decides, “In the morning. We can work out the details for brunch.”

Grace repeats, “Brunch?” 

She gives him that impatient look again.

Grace nods quickly, and he says, “Right, yes, brunch. I’m free for brunch. I’ll text you about it. Um, in the morning, of course.”

For a second, she almost looks endeared. But before Grace can see if a smile forms on her lips, she’s already turned back around and walking away, already disappearing into a crowd of people. 

And the next day, they go out for brunch.

She is better in the morning than she is in the night.

The sunlight does her justice as it streams in through the big, open windows of the seaside café only about a five minute drive from Grace’s house. White rays of the early day illuminate her, gives Grace a good view of her.

Her slightly wavy auburn hair glows more bronze than it did last night’s copper. She’s styled it into a full ponytail this morning. Her skin is smooth and glowing and perfect. It reminds Grace of the slowly forming pimple on his own face, right in the middle of his left cheek.

She’s wearing a tight-fitting gray sweater vest and dark jeans. Her jewelry glows gold but pales in comparison to the glow of the pink of her cheeks, the glow of the gloss on her lips, the glow of the dazzling pale of her blue eyes. 

She’s easy to look at, easy to admire. Anybody with eyes would agree. 

And she’s looking at Grace with this indecipherable stare, no indication of whether or not she likes what she’s looking at, but she’s here, sipping an iced matcha latte and lightly nibbling on a cheese danish, both of which Grace paid for, and she’s at the very least showing no signs of discomfort, so Grace guesses that’s a win. 

”So,” Grace starts awkwardly, because he hasn’t been on very many dates lately (or ever), “how was your night?”

Stratt stares at him for a moment before she answers, entirely out of nowhere, right out the bat, “I’m not looking for anything very serious,” and Grace startles.

He blinks at her rapidly before asking, “What?”

And Stratt takes another slow, indulgent sip of her drink, still expressionless. 

“I’m very busy,” she explains, matter-of-factly, ignoring the confusion on Grace’s face. “I plan to be busy for a very long time. So I don’t have time for anything serious, and that won’t be changing any time soon.”

Grace frowns slightly. His brows furrow with understanding. 

Grace tilts his head at her. She seems to be waiting for his response. 

So Grace replies, “You’re very presumptuous."

And she laughs. A small one, but genuine. Makes Grace smile. Makes Grace feel slightly accomplished. She has that air about her, he supposes. One that makes people want to lean in and entertain her.

"How so?" She smiles.

“Doesn’t seem like it ever occurred to you that I might not want anything serious with you,” Grace returns.

She shoots back, “Don’t you?” 

And Grace shrugs. If she's playing by the rules of the game of disinterest, he can play along.

”I’m new to the city,” he says. “Just moved here for work. I’m busy a lot of the time, too. There have been far too many major changes in my life as of late for me to even consider making any more. And I consider a serious relationship to be a very major change.” 

Stratt crosses her arms and leans back with an easy grin. Her confidence sweeps through Grace in waves. 

"Well, why are we on a date then?" She asks.

And Grace arches a brow and teases, "This is a date?"

Stratt chuckles. The sound is soft and melodic. 

"Kidding," Grace grins. And this is his thing, he thinks. This is what endears him to people — he's charming when he wants to be, and smart enough to be funny, too. Beneath his awkward demeanor, his clumsiness, his meekness, there is a fire inside of him, something attractive. Perhaps that’s why someone like her — self-assured and secure — would show an interest in him.

"I don't know,” Grace says. “I just wanted to see what you were about."

"You wanted to see what I was about," Stratt repeats slowly, enunciating it as if it is a poem, and she tilts her head at him, her smile tilting with it. "What does that even mean?"

Grace shrugs sheepishly.

"You're pretty," he says, "and intriguing and confident. Can you blame me for wanting to get to know you?"

She takes a moment to think before answering honestly, "No, I guess not.“

And a flicker of light flashes in her eyes, maybe mischief, maybe amusement, maybe something else. Her smile fades softly into a sort of teasing seriousness. She leans forward, drops her voice to a purr. 

“And that's all you want to do, right, Grace? Get to know me?"

"R-Right. That’s all. No expectations. Nothing serious."

Stratt blinks at him slowly. 

"So, sex," she says.

And Grace chokes. "What?"

"That's what that means, right? 'Get to know'. Sex."

"Christ," the blond says. "If you want to get biblical with it. I was thinking just— I don't know. What we're doing now. Brunch. Dinner, occasionally. Take you to the movies, or something."

Stratt shrugs. She leans back again, reaches for her drink, and she swirls the ice around with an unimpressed expression. 

Grace’s eyes lock in on the plastic cup, the ice and liquid spinning around, his mind locks in on the sound of her voice, slow and sweet like molasses or codeine, and he feels a little bit dizzy with it. 

"Sounds to me like you want a girlfriend, Grace."

Grace frowns. His thoughts get all jumbled together. She confuses him. Moves too quick for him. Before he can even discern if one thing she’s saying is a joke, she’s already saying something else. He shakes his head and huffs. 

"I want a friend,” he decides.

"Normal friend?" Stratt questions. "Talk-about-each-other's-days, wow-the-weather’s-nice-today-huh, not-have-sex friend?"

Grace’s frown deepens. "Yes?"

Stratt shakes her head.

"I have enough friends," she says. “It won’t do.”

And Grace groans. 

"So what is this, then? You're trying to negotiate a friends-with-benefits thing with me? That's what you want? Sex, just sex, plain-and-simple, nothing-else-to-it, that’s-all-there-is, sex?"

Stratt grins at his impatience and shakes her head, chewing at the straw of her latte. 

Her lips are pink and wet. Her eyes are sharp, intimidating, inviting. Strands of her copper hair fall artfully around her face, framing the dangerous beauty of her. This must be what hypnosis feels like. The disorientation, getting lulled into something that takes away your agency. 

Slyly, she answers, "I just want to see what you’re about, s’all."

Grace feels like she's mind-fucking him, or something. 

He blinks at her. 

"D'you wanna come back to my place?" He asks.

She laughs, a victorious sort of sound, like bell chimes. "Sure."

So they move things over to Grace’s apartment.

It’s clean and updated with a good view of the coast from the living room through the full length window wall facing west. The furnishing of the place is mostly bare, because the movers are still moving things from There, New York to Here, California. All Grace really has are the things he had just bought or sent over in advance — a gray sofa, a coffee table, a desk — so it does honestly look like a really sad bachelor pad. It's not really something he thought about when he invited Stratt over, but then again, he didn't really think thirty minutes in a café would lead to this — whatever this is — so soon. 

Stratt walks in with a blank look on her face.

”Charming,” she comments. “Very… minimalist of you.”

Grace rolls his eyes. “I’m new to town, okay?” 

“No, no, I like it,” Stratt snorts in a way that sounds like she doesn’t really like it at all. “It’s, um. Ascetic.”

”So judgmental,” he huffs. “Go sit on the couch. Do you want a drink? Water or anything?”

Stratt walks over to the couch and sits, but she shakes her head at Grace when he starts to make his way to the open kitchen, refusing, ”I’m not here for drinks.”

And Grace rolls his eyes again. 

“This is the weirdest hookup I’ve ever fucking had,” he sighs. 

“I haven’t decided if I even want to hook up with you yet,” Stratt points out.

To that, Grace replies, “God, yeah, well, you’re gorgeous, but neither have I.”

“So sit down next to me and let’s do what we both came here to do,” she returns. Her expression schools itself into something serious, seductive. Cool and controlled. "Let's get to know each other.”

And something about the tone of her voice makes it sound like a command. Sit. Grace swallows, and he walks to the couch beside her, and he does sit, and he feels a little bit awkward about it, but when he turns to look at her, she looks completely at ease, entirely unbothered. Stratt smirks.

She's teasing him, or mocking him, or something else, or both. Grace is weirdly into it. She slips off her shoes, sits on Grace’s couch like it is hers, turning her entire body to face him, and she is smiling and relaxed, but rather than calming Grace with this demeanor, something about her keeps Grace on edge instead. She sort of smiles like something is about to happen, or she’s about to make it happen. 

She leans slightly forwards, and she does not touch him, but it feels like she’s holding him in place regardless.

“So,” she drawls, “are you a student?”

Sitting ramrod straight on his own couch, Grace shakes his head. “I graduated about two years ago.”

Stratt hums. “How old are you?”

”Twenty-four.”

She looks him up and down. “You seem younger.”

”Thank you?” Grace replies. “Or sorry. How old are you?”

”Twenty-two.”

”And you’re a student?”

“Yes. First year law. I got my bachelors in history and political science last year.” Stratt turns to the floor-to-ceiling window facing West. “I think the view from your apartment is nice.”

Grace tilts his head. “Yeah?” 

”Yes. You can see the beach. Sunsets must be nice here.”

“Thank you. They are. Back in New York, my big window faced East. The sunrises were unreal over the city.”

”I’ve never been to New York,” Stratt hums.

“You’d like it”

She arches a brow. Her lips tilt up into a small smile. “How would you know?”

And he shrugs. 

”You seem like a city girl. Maybe it’s just ‘cause I met you in Downtown. I feel like you would like New York.”

Stratt huffs a laugh. Her gaze locks in on Grace. Her voice drops into something low.

“And what do you like?”

Grace swallows thickly. The sharp focus of her blue eyes is intense, almost paralyzing. She makes him nervous. He thinks to himself, Christ, who are you? And he blinks at her with a slight confusion. 

“What?”

She repeats, “What do you like?”

And Grace furrows his brows. 

“I don’t know. Um. Foxes. The color yellow? But not, like, raincoat yellow. More like sunset yellow. Um…. Biology. Space. Science.”

“What?” Stratt squints at him like he’s speaking an entirely different language. “No.”

Grace blinks. He laughs a little, confused. 

“What do you mean ‘no’? It’s what I like.”

She closes her eyes and rubs her temples. She’s really quite expressive for somebody Grace has only known for forty minutes. Makes Grace feel like he’s known her for years— or, rather, makes Grace feel like he’s been disappointing her for years. It’s funny. Charming. A little bit unnerving.

She says, “I mean—“ and she lets a hand rest on his inner thigh, and Grace nearly jumps, his heart rate certainly does, “—what do you like?”

”Oh,” Grace squeaks, understanding. “Oh, okay.”

And what does Grace like?

Other than foxes and sunsets and science. He likes early morning bike rides. He likes the Winter season and foggy days. He likes faraway views of larger-than-life things, like mountains, or city skylines, or women. He likes smoothies. He likes the smell of a sanitized laboratory, the hum of the fume hoods, air vents, the clinking of glassware. He likes telescopes.

But that isn’t what Stratt’s asking about.

Grace likes kissing and hickeys and kink. Grace likes to be on the giving end of wholly devotion. He likes submission, degradation, humiliation. Grace likes being belittled, Grace likes being owned, Grace likes being ordered around, put in his place. 

He likes to be made to wear embarrassing things, likes to be made to do embarrassing things, likes to be embarrassed. He likes a firm hand, likes it especially when that firm hand crashes against his face, open palmed, leaving a pink flush in its wake. He likes praise, always. He likes service. Likes being useful. Likes feeling so wanted by someone that their affection crosses into ownership. 

To put it simply, Grace likes being dominated. 

He shifts in his seat, eyes glued to her hand on his thigh, heart starting to race. His face burns. The situation is hers, she took control of it the second they met, and while Grace has been making a good show of resistance with his joking responses, his quick wit, his charm, he falters now. 

She reads him. Easily. As if she’s known him for years. The hand travels further up his thigh. Grace is helpless to stop it, suddenly very, very overcome with need. 

And it should be impossible, to let a stranger affect him this much. But from the moment he first laid eyes on her, he was faced with the overwhelming realization that she is his exact type. And it’s a bit dangerous, that— The power dynamic’s been shifted in her favor from the beginning.

”Is this it?” Stratt asks. Her voice has quieted into a low whisper. It’s exhilarating how quickly she takes action, how forward she is with her wants, as if she is not hindered by uncertainty, insecurity. Exhilarating the way she can switch into the perfect frequency to get Grace to respond in exactly the way she wants, like mind control. “You want me to lead?”

Grace gulps. He looks at her in the eyes and hopes his gaze conveys what he wants to say: Yes, yes, yes, please more, please, please. Do anything you want to me. Please.

Stratt seems to understand. She leans forward, impossibly close. Her lips lightly brush against Grace’s ear. Her grip on his thigh tightens. 

“Good boys use their words,” she coaxes. Grace is sure he’s watched pornos like this before, a million times probably, humiliated hand in his pants, thinking, Oh fuck, I really shouldn’t be into this. It’s a lot different now that it’s happening to him. Better. Makes him feel less embarrassed and more insane.

Her voice cuts into the accumulating fog in his mind. “Do you want more of this, Grace?" 

God, the way she says his name. 

Grace nods helplessly. 

“Yes. Yes, please.” And experimentally, he tries, “Yes, m-mommy.” 

Stratt’s brows raise with a gentle sort of surprise. She licks her lips. And then all at once, the hand disappears. She leans back with a satisfied sort of nod. 

And she resumes, back in her usual voice, as if none of that happened at all, “I didn’t expect that from you.”

Grace stares at her and blinks, still dazed. The absence of her hand feels heavier than it's presence.

“What?” He whines.

She is unaffected. 

”I mean. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect in the first place,” Stratt shrugs, “but it’s surprising seeing how receptive you are to submission.” She smiles slightly. “You’re so big and tall. Guys like you don’t usually like this type of thing.”

She talks about it all so… analytically. Like he’s some sort of experiment. Or like she’s playing with him, trying out all these different things to see what amusing thing he’ll do in response. That really shouldn’t be turning him on as much as it does.

”Sorry,” Grace hears himself say, despite all that. 

Stratt shakes her head.

“No, no, don’t be sorry.” She smiles. And she decides, “I think I’ll sleep with you after all.”

And Grace exhales. He doesn’t know what to say to that. He wants to thank her. But that’s too pathetic. 

So he asks, “What do you like?” 

She smiles at him sharply. 

“Dogs,” she shrugs. “The color blue that comes during sunrise. Law.”

Funny. She’s being funny. Misinterpreting the question in the same way Grace did. She’s being funny. In this teasing, sardonic way that Grace is slowly getting used to. She does things to amuse herself. 

Grace stares at her blankly. She laughs.

“I like control,” she answers simply, honestly, grinning. “In every aspect of my life, but especially during sex. I like being dominant. I like when things are about me. I like when boys make themselves useful.”

”Oh,” Grace breathes. She’s perfect.

”That’s right,” Stratt says. “Oh.” 

So they fuck. 

Early afternoon with the sun still out, right there on Grace’s couch.

It’s hot and sloppy and clumsy, and it’s not even really sex, because the “fucking” is really just Grace laying Stratt down on his couch and eating her pussy like his life depends on it, but it’s better than sex, really.

She is firm with him, tells him where to lick — “Go lower for me, doggy, come on, don’t be afraid to get messy. Don’t you want to make me feel good?” — and how fast — “Slow. Slow. I want you to taste me. Want you addicted to this.” — and she tells him when to slip a finger inside of her and when to add another.

She gives him direction with her back arched and legs over his shoulder, calls him a good boy when he follows, tugs sharply at his hair when he takes too long, and she tastes good, like fruit, and when she moans, high and breathy, it’s one of the most beautiful sounds Grace has ever heard, makes him groan with pleasure as he pumps two fingers into her and licks up the sweet nectar she leaks out.

She calls him puppy, which is new, something Grace had never really considered before but works. Makes him leak all over his brand new couch. 

She pulls him off her in the middle of this. Says, “Bark for me, puppy,” and he does, embarrassingly, “Arf’s” and “Woofs” until he’s all the way pink with embarrassment and she’s satisfied with it, and she pushes him right back down against her until he can barely even breathe, but he couldn't care less about air, about anything aside from her moans, the high and staccato gasps he is able to pull from her when he traces just-right shapes at the just-right speed against her clit, then her entrance, then all the way up her slit. 

She locks Grace’s head against her with her thighs when she cums, trapping him betwixt the soft, pale expanse of skin, encouraging him to lick more, lick faster, and he feels like a toy she’s only using for pleasure, and it excites him, excites him more than it really should, to feel as if this interaction is only for her, as if the only goal is to make her cum, as if nothing else matters, not even him, as if all that’s important is her and what he can do to please her and he’s doing such a great job at it.

Grace twists his fingers inside her pussy and focuses his mouth against her clit. She moans, a broken thing, and she cums on his fingers, panting out sweet praises, “Mmf— Good boy, good boy, did so good for me, doggy, made me feel so good.”

He slips onto the floor. He asks her if he can touch himself. 

She returns, “Are you into denial?”

Grace purses his lips and nods. “Yeah.”

”Then, denied,” she laughs. “You can cum when I leave.”

Grace protests, “I wanna look at you when I do. And I was good.”

”And I let you eat me out,” she counters. She taps the side of his cock lightly with her foot, and he groans. “Clearly, you’ve got entitlement issues we need to train out of you, huh?“

Grace sighs.

And it’s not often that Grace, as a big, tall man, finds a woman who wants to use him in this way, dominate him rather than make him dominate her, much less be willing to play into the mind fuck in the same way that Stratt is, so it is still easily a good contender for the best not-sex Grace has ever had.

And afterwards, when they’re both sat on the couch again, both only wearing underwear, Stratt asks him, “Have you thought more about what you want from all this?”

"When, in between eating you out and fingering you?" Grace laughs. “Can’t say I’ve really been pondering it. More focused on trying to breathe.”

And Stratt smiles and shrugs, like, Decide on something, and Grace sighs and shrugs too. 

“What does anybody want?” He returns. “Anything I can get.”

And Stratt nods, seemingly satisfied with that answer.

She replies, “How much are you willing to give?”

Grace laughs. He could give quite a lot, he thinks. He does not answer.

And she leaves for class, glowing even more than when she first arrived to the café. And Grace cums into his fist in full and broken spurts, thinking of the taste of her, and it might be the best orgasm he’s had in a very long while.

Stratt's a big texter.

Grace could not have easily inferred this about her — she seems to him like much more the type to go for weeks ghosting before texting one random Thursday, U up? — but it's a pleasant surprise. 

She texts him the same night, after her classes, after her readings. It’s a long link from a website called "psych classics". Grace, lying down on his bed in the dark, stares at it with suspicion before replying.

So Grace opens it.

And it's Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.

Two days later, at an art museum. Morning time again. 

Stratt is wearing a white tank top, a black skirt, and brown leather oxfords. Her hair is clipped back in loose waves, falling midway down her back. Grace is wearing his glasses (in front of her for the very first time and trying not to be insecure about it), a green henley with the sleeves pulled up to his elbows, and worn blue jeans. 

They're standing closely side by side, shoulders lightly brushing against each other, staring at a painting of a woman's naked figure. Grace has a vaguely contemplative, vaguely weirded out look on his face.

Apparently, the current artist the museum is highlighting specializes in nudity, which Grace did not know until about five minutes ago, when he and Stratt walked inside and were greeted immediately by naked bodies.

He, trying to act very casual about it now, turns to her and asks, "Anybody ever taken you out to an art museum before?”

“No, this is a new one,” Stratt hums. She’s looking at the painting with much more curiosity than Grace has, like she’s really, truly considering it. Grace can’t really tell if she likes this or not, wouldn’t be able to guess if she’s thinking, Wow, the use of nudity as a symbol for protection rather than vulnerability is really striking, or if she’s thinking, Why are the areolae bright green? “We usually skip all this… sexually-charged-paintings foreplay. Bit weird, y’know.” 

"You think so?" He points his chin at the painting's breasts. "She's got some pretty good... well. Sex appeal. Green areolae aside."

Stratt frowns. "I'm not even a little bit turned on."

"I kinda am," jokes Grace.

Stratt rolls her eyes.

"Let's move on." She turns on her heels and starts to walk away.

They make it to a painting of a man's figure. Stratt snorts. She whistles under her breath. “Now this one….”

Grace frowns at the painting. The depicted dick and balls are so huge, if the subject were a real person and not a cubic abstraction, they would drag across the ground like a third leg. He almost feels sorry for it.

”He’s um,” Grace clears his throat, “very well endowed.”

Stratt smirks. “Looks a bit small to me.” 

Grace huffs a laugh. He turns to examine the rest of the paintings and sculptures around the echoey room, and says, “I really thought the exhibitions would be more like… I don’t know. Landscapes. Portraits. Jokes on me for not researching the artist beforehand, I guess.”

Stratt shrugs slightly. She points at the ceramic teapot that has a vagina instead of a spout. 

“Seems like a self portrait to me,” she argues. “A very good piece about the artist’s views of sexuality as sustenance. What’s the difference between a good cup of tea and a vagina, anyway?”

Grace gives her a deadpan expression. 

“I’m fucking with you,” Stratt chuckles. "This is all really weird."

He rolls his eyes. 

“Let’s go back to mine,” he says. “I’ll show you some real art.”

And this time, he actually gets to fuck her, gets to feel how warm she is, how tight, gets to hear the way she gasps to adjust around him when he first pushes all the way in, those pretty noises telling him he’s doing a good job for her. 

She tells him, “Close your eyes,” as he’s fucking into her, her legs bent at the knees and spread wide to accommodate him between her, and Grace groans with pleasure and obeys, and she slaps him, light, experimental, and Grace is so overcome with desire that he almost collapses on top of her, and it takes a great deal of effort not to fill the condom right then and there.

He moans out, “Yes, yes, yes, please, more, make me yours, do anything you want to me, please—“

And she laughs at him and spits, “Pathetic bitch.”

And the need overcomes him until he’s bucking into her, fast as his hips can go, and his abs hurt, but it feels so good, she feels so good, and he needs to cum, he needs to, he needs to, he needs to, and he’s begging, “Please, mommy, please I’m close.”

And she shudders and spasms, and she says, “Cum for me,” and he does, burying himself deep inside of the warmth of her, waves of pleasure wracking through him, and he collapses atop her, and they become a mess of sweat and skin.

Afterwards, they drive to the 7-Eleven in Grace’s red Tacoma for slurpees. To cool down. 

Grace mixes the cola flavor with the blue flavor. Stratt gets only cola. They park in front of the store and talk.

“D’you wanna go for another round?” Grace asks Stratt casually. “When we get back to my place.”

Stratt shrugs. Her straw is slightly bitten. A poorly concealed oral fixation, just one of her many quirks.

“Depends how quick, really,” she answers. “I have class in about two hours, and I have to get back to my apartment to shower.”

Grace hums. “Just shower in mine.”

Stratt laughs.

“No offense, Grace, but you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to use the 3-in-1 that is undoubtedly in your shower.”

”I don’t use a 3-in-1!” Grace squawks.

She arches brow. And he sags. 

“Fine,” he allows. “It’s a 2-in-1. Who cares?” 

She snorts.

“So, we’re passing on the round two today,” she decides. 

And Grace sips his slurpee with a sigh, allowing a comfortable silence to pass through them.

It lasts for about a minute or two before Stratt says, “I read somewhere once that humans have refractory periods so they don’t fuck themselves to death. Is that true?”

”How should I know?” Grace returns.

Stratt frowns. “Isn’t that one of the things you liked? Foxes, annoying me, Biology?”

And Grace rolls his eyes in return. “Yeah, whatever. I guess it’s true. Sounds right, probably.” 

”Some Biology lover you are,” Stratt grumbles. 

“I haven’t been in a Biology class in two years.”

”I’m surprised you even took any.”

Grace chuckles. ”I majored in it, sweetheart.”

And Stratt makes a noise of surprise. 

“Really?” She asks, and when Grace nods, she squints at him with interest.

”Well,” he says, “technically Astrobiology.”

She appraises him with a look. “Huh. How did you get a job in estate management as an Astrobiology major?”

Grace shrugs. 

In college, to make a couple dollars in between classes and research volunteering, he worked a side job at NYC Bonfires, which paid two dollars above minimum wage at the state of New York: seventeen dollars an hour. 

Around sunset, he’d set up bonfire pits, tents, tables, chairs, snacks, and all the likes for clients at the Hamptons in Long Island, and after his clients had left with their party, Grace cleaned after them, flashlight in hand, combing the sand for discarded plastic cups or half-eaten s’mores, and he hated it— his rich and snooty clients, setting up for them then cleaning up after them, being cold and alone by the waterfront long after everybody had left.

Perhaps he would have been able to stand it more if that was all his job entailed, but since NYC Bonfires was a small company, Grace was also put in charge of bookkeeping and financials, a role entrusted to him by his boss who, for some reason, treated Grace as more of his child than his own son. Essentially, he practically ran this entire business working seventeen dollars an hour. 

Anyway, to make more money outside of NYC Bonfires, Grace also worked as a handyman, working on people’s homes and painting their rooms or going to business establishments and doing demo’s on improperly installed brick walls.  

He worked all around New York before working for a nice, old Asian man who lived on the upper East side— Mr. Yáo Li-Jie. Mr. Yáo had heard of Grace from one another rich old lady whose beach party he’d helped set up for, and every day for about two weeks, Grace came by to Mr. Yáo‘s mansion to help out with renovations, during which they had very pleasant conversations about life and Grace’s schooling and Mr. Yáo‘s success.

Mr. Yáo found his youth and tenacity charming, and one morning, while Grace was painting the en suite bathroom walls white, he offered, “D’you want another job?”

To which Grace responded, “Yeah.”

And Mr. Yáo asked, “Do you have experience in business?”

And Grace scoffed and replied, “I think I’m the only person keeping my other job afloat. I handle the staffing, the scheduling, the salaries, the maintenance, the record keeping— God. At this point, I feel like I have more experience in business than I do in Astrobiology.”

And Mr. Yáo had laughed. And he’d said, “Well, how about you quit that job and work for me instead?”

And Grace frowned. 

“You want me to quit my job so I can paint your bathrooms?”

”No. Something a bit more involved than that. My estate manager is retiring soon. Been looking for somebody else. You seem competent enough.”

Grace stared at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

“We’d start you off light, don’t worry. Maybe just one property for now. Teach you the ropes. Think you’re up for it?”

Grace nodded rapidly, dazed. “Yeah,” he answered. “Yes. I do.”

Mr. Yáo, by the way, owns Yao Inn, which is a big international hotel chain which is also a part of the big-hospitality-and-tourism-conglomerate that other names like Hilton are also a part of. Very, very high profile family and very, very rich.

Grace would know— he handles the financials. 

Stratt stares at Grace expectantly, slurping her slurpee.

Grace shrugs again.

“I kind of just fell into it,” he says. “Knew someone who knew someone who needed an estate manager.”

Stratt takes a long sip of her slurpee before replying. “Do you like it?”

Grace shrugs again. “It pays. I’m lucky to have it.”

”But do you like it?” Stratt presses.

It’s a standard question, but strange. Something you’d ask a college student in regards to their major, or a hobby, something you ask someone when they can pivot away easily if they don’t. Not something to ask someone about their career. It’s hard to pivot away from a career. 

“Sure, I do,” Grace mumbles half-heartedly. 

Stratt gives him a look. She shakes her head. 

“Convincing,” she says, and Grace frowns.

”Do you like being a paralegal?” He returns. 

And Stratt considers this question before answering, “Mmm, no, not really.”

Grace huffs out a surprised laugh. “What?”

”It’s a lot of work,” Stratt shrugs. “I work for lawyers. Lawyers are assholes— I would know, I’m going to be one. But I like that it’ll get me where I want to go.” 

Her eyes twinkle with ambition, the sort that Grace doesn’t think he ever had himself. 

“In two years, I’ll take the bar, and then I’ll become a lawyer, and I’ll work for an office before I start my own practice, and by the end of it all, it will have been worth it.” She shrugs, then jokes, “Maybe I’ll consider Presidency, even.”

Grace chuckles. “You lay it out like it’s all so simple.”

”It’s not,” says Stratt. “I spend over thirty hours a week studying outside of classes. When I’m not over my desk at home, I’m over my desk at school, or work. I’m lucky to have four hours of sleep before I have to get up in the morning. I really only have one day I can set aside for myself every week. Everything else has to happen before my school day begins, or after my work day has ended.”

”Rough,” Grace exhales. He’s stressed out just hearing about it.

“Yeah, well.” Stratt finishes up her slurpee. She leans back onto the passenger seat, satisfied. “You have to have something worth roughing it out for.”

And she reaches over Grace’s center console and turns the key in the ignition. The truck hums to life. 

“Start driving back to yours,” she says. “I think if we go quick you can probably make me cum in twenty minutes.”

Grace laughs. “Just in time for class?”

Stratt smiles. “Just in time.” 

He texts her a link to a song on Spotify. Do Your Thing by Moondog.

She replies back almost immediately. 

They’re in IKEA, which Grace fully believes might be one of man’s greatest inventions by far, and they’re standing in the middle of a millennial gray boho living room mockup, and, as always, Stratt is stunning and Grace is there.

Stratt points at a vase bust of a woman's body.

"If you want your apartment to look like a museum," she suggests.

“Yeah, maybe,” Grace snorts. "Could really make my bathroom elevated and chic.”

”Bathroom?" Stratt questions, raising her brow. "I was thinking right on your entryway cabinet. Set the tone for the rest of the place as soon as people walk in.”

Ridiculous. 

“What’s the tone? Sexually charged and gauche?”

Stratt shrugs with a smile. “Feminist.”

Grace laughs, bumping her away with his shoulder. 

They move on to the kitchen mockups. He takes pictures of a couple item tags for bowls, dishes, and cups that he likes, takes pictures of cute hand towels, some rugs, and a dish rack. Meanwhile, Stratt walks around, not wandering far, pointing things out, making funny comments and stupid suggestions every now and then, walking through rooms with her hands clasped behind her back, aloofly smiling. 

She walks to a different kitchen mockup while Grace is still perusing paper towel holders, and when he walks to meet her he finds her turning a mug over in her hands — ceramic, blue, with gold stars speckled all throughout. 

Grace walks beside her and places a palm on her lower back. He resists the urge to kiss the top of her head. She sets the mug down and then points at a mirror hung up on the wall.

“Could look good on the wall in front of your kitchen,” she says.

Grace frowns, considering. 

He comments, “Odd placement.”

Stratt shrugs.

“Well, when I end up having you fuck me on your kitchen counter, I could look at it and watch the muscles on your back flex. Good view for me.”

Grace stares at her helplessly.

“Don’t try to get me hard in IKEA.”

She laughs and walks away. Grace takes a picture of the mirror’s item tag. Then, he takes a picture of the mug. (She sees the photo later, when he's showing her all the things he's planning to buy, and she shakes her head softly and says, "No, Grace. Don't." So he doesn't with a frown.)

Downstairs, in the warehouse, after Grace has paid for all his items — including one mirror (sue him) — he buys Stratt soft serve to eat while he loads the things in his truck. When he kisses Stratt at the cart return, he can taste the soft serve on her cold tongue.

They get lunch on the way back to Grace’s — cheeseburgers from a place called Biggie’s — and they eat it on Grace’s couch while watching Happy Feet on the TV recently delivered by the movers. 

Grace’s got the shelves and appliances and everything else here from New York, finally, so the place looks much more like a home and less like Baby's First Apartment. Filled up, decorated, a little nerdy, proudly Grace's.

“I love this song,” Stratt says during Somebody to Love. 

She’s got her feet propped up on Grace’s lap, and she’s watching the movie quite intently, which is a little funny, because she's such a serious person and this is a movie about tap-dancing penguins. 

Grace arches a fond brow at her while he massages her heels through her socks. 

“You do?”

”Yeah, I love Queen.” Stratt smiles slightly. She half-sings, half-speaks, “‘Fear me, you lords and lady preachers. I descend upon your earth from the skies’.”

Grace laughs warmly. She has a good voice, even when she's not trying. 

“Deep cut.”

“What can I say?” Stratt shrugs. “I’m a real fan.”

After Happy Feet 2, they get hungry all over again, so Grace walks over to the kitchen to make food. The domesticity of the moment doesn’t escape him, and he does not resist it. 

He cooks stir fried chicken with fried rice and from the counter, cutting vegetables, he watches as Stratt walks around the apartment, poking and prodding about all the new additions to the apartment, starting with the walls. 

An original poster of the movie Nosferatu. A framed photo of Buzz Aldrin on the wall beside it, autographed, and under that, an autographed photo of Sally Ride. Grace's college diploma. Magna Cum Laude, graduated just short of two years ago, Bachelor of Sciences, Astrobiology. A photograph of a group of people in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace among them, younger and blonder.

Stratt stares at all of these closely, like at the museum, and Grace thinks, proudly, She's more interested in my pictures than she ever was those paintings, before she moves on to inspect the bookshelf. 

On a bookshelf, the top shelf is occupied entirely by nonfiction books on physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy. A couple philosophy books, but all of those deal with metaphysics rather than philosophies of the mind. Sticky notes peek up from the tops of them. The spine of Cosmos by Carl Sagan is so worn, the title is almost unreadable. There’s an odd addition of Anthony Bourdain’s posthumous travel guide. And at the very end, squeezed in, is Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.

Stratt lets out a surprised laugh. 

She turns back to Grace, smiling wide, and Grace says, “I bought it in college. Don’t say a single word,” and Stratt makes a gesture like zipping her lips, turning the lock, and throwing it far, far away.

Grace nods at her like, Good job, and he turns back to preparing the chicken cutlets.

Stratt suggests, ”You should bulk up your philosophy section.” 

Grace hums. “Maybe we could go to a bookstore sometime, and you can help me pick some out.”

She nods noncommittally. Goes back to prying around. 

The shelf under the nonfictions is filled only by adventure novels. Classics. On these, Stratt has no notes. Her eyes scan the titles with interest. The Odyssey, all three books of The Divine Comedy, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Candide. The Remains of the Day. Gulliver’s Travels. Micromegas. All marked with dog ear creases and unannotated, as if the reader had been too preoccupied with the journey, the quest to even think about pausing to lay a sticky note down.

“You have a pattern in your fiction books,” Stratt comments, endeared, and he knows what she means.

“I love the adventure genre,” Grace shrugs. “Always kind of meant to go on a grand adventure myself. Never worked out in the end, but you can’t unread the books you love.”

And Stratt smiles faintly. 

The rest of the shelf is just decorative. Some knickknacks. Some collectibles. A Newton’s cradle, a figure of He-Man, a millennium falcon toy, a small piece of brick on a card that declares it as a piece of the original Strawberry Fields manor from the Beatles album. 

Stratt moves on from the shelf. She pokes around at an old ‘70s jukebox beside the couch with interest. 

“Does this work?”

Grace nods at her then turns his gaze fondly to the jukebox.

“Yeah, I fixed it up myself last year.” In between all the business of flying in and out of California finding an apartment and tying up all his loose ends in New York, he worked on the jukebox, and he’s really quite proud of it. He’s glad for her notice. “Took some work and some learning how to wire shit, but it’s smart, too.”

”Smart?” Stratt wonders, and Grace nods again.

”His name is ‘Major Tom.’ Ask him to play a song.”

And Stratt turns back at him to smile giddily. “Really?”

Grace smiles back, like, Go on.

And Stratt turns to the jukebox, and she says, “Major Tom, play Riders on the Storm.”

Electric piano flows from the jukebox. Stratt laughs. 

“That’s amazing. How’d you do that?”

”Open him up and see for yourself,” Grace shrugs. “Carefully.”

And Stratt does, and she’s met with a mess of wires and circuitry, all connected to the jukebox speakers and lights. 

“Jesus Christ,” she breathes. “This is the most impressive you’ve ever been to me.”

“Thanks,” Grace responds dryly, rolling his eyes. Really, it’s just a glorified Amazon Echo, but the compliment, however oddly phrased, does warm his chest. These are the things he can allow himself to be proud of, Grace thinks. 

Stratt walks over to him, gives him a small kiss on the lips before hopping on the counter in one languid movement. 

She asks him, earnestly, “D’you wanna eat me out again?”

“God,” Grace laughs, “let me finish cooking first.”

”Wash your hands and eat me out. Dinner can wait.”

”Do you have some sort of competency kink or something?”

”Would it be worse than your mommy kink?”

”Fair point.” 

So they fuck to The Doors, and they eat dinner to Tyler Childers, and it’s great, it’s beautiful, it’s the most satisfied Grace has felt in a very long time. 

Late in the night, after the sex, Stratt stands and stretches, and she says, “I should probably leave.”

“Stay for the night,” Grace tells her, because he doesn’t have the nerve to say, Stay forever.

She shakes her head softly. “I have class in the morning.”

“I’ll wake you up before I go to work,” Grace shrugs. “I have spare toothbrushes in my bathroom. And I bought fancy shampoo for you. The lady at Sephora said you’re guaranteed to love it.”

And Stratt stares at him, long and hard. And her expression softens into something strange, something pained, like she’s about to deliver a killing blow to an injured animal she’s accidentally allowed to imprint onto her. 

Grace feels the tone shift, feels the temperature drop substantially. He blinks at her with a lamb-like sort of confusion. 

“Grace,” Stratt says, slowly, like she might spook him if she spoke any faster, “can we do a head check, really quickly?”

Grace blinks at her. Frowns. He furrows his brows at her steeled gaze.

Today was great, he thinks. Today was great, so why does it suddenly like it isn’t and it never was? 

He returns, even slower, “What do you mean?”

”Head check,” Stratt repeats, tone quite serious, quite daunting in its lack of lilt, its evenness. A calm sea before a storm, or perhaps the eye of it. Today was great. “To see where your head is at.”

Grace’s frown deepens. He sits up, nods, replies, “Sure.”

And she sits down beside him, expression tight. Makes Grace nervous. Makes Grace hold his breath. Makes Grace feel like he’s about to be exploded, or sent off to space, or something equally devastating, equally final.

Stratt inhales sharply. 

When she exhales, she questions, “We’re still in mutual understanding that this isn’t a relationship, correct?”

Oh. Grace’s heart drops. Oh.

Today was a good day.

He swallows. Blinks rapidly. 

“Right, yeah, of course.”

”I don’t have time,” Stratt continues, and Grace can see where this is headed, can already hear the long half-lecture, all-rejection in his mind, It’s not you, it’s me, let me list out all the things that are keeping us from each other, let me list out all the reasons why you are insane for thinking this could ever work out. “You are nice, but I—“

”I didn’t expect you to,” Grace cuts in. He can’t hear it.

And he looks at her, mustering as much nerve as he can to look so totally, entirely cool about all this despite the feeling of his organs doing backflips in his stomach, and she looks back with relief. 

“I know this isn’t a relationship,” Grace assures. “Don’t worry.”

Stratt exhales, relaxing. And she clears her throat. 

“Well,” she nods. “Good, then.”

”Good,” Grace agrees. “Good check-in.” 

”Yes. Great.” Stratt clears her throat again. “Right. So I’m going to go now. Class in the morning. Busy bee. You know how it is.”

Grace hears himself say, “Okay.”

And she leaves. And Grace is left all alone. 

New York is nice. He'd forgotten how much he missed it. 

It’s cooler, because of the cold Northern air or because of the ample shade from the skyscrapers and scaffolding or because of the attitude of the general population, so Grace can stand to take afternoon walks around Central Park, getting lost in his thoughts, his solitude. 

Before Mr. Yáo moved his primary permanent residence to California, Grace lived in Long Island, where he enjoyed early morning runs and bike rides, lonesome walks around the Met and MoMA, and every month, he'd drive up to the Andirondacks to stay in the cabin his late parents left him for a weekend, fishing by the lakes in the day and standing outside with a telescope pointed to the planets in the night. 

There is no time to visit the cabin during this trip, but Grace thinks about it for the entirety of his stay. There is a lot of time to think when you are alone. 

He runs around Central Park when the sun rises, gets bagels when he's done. Returns to Mr. Yáo’s daughter’s apartment in the afternoon, carefully wraps the canvas he's being paid to transport in bubblewrap and masking tape, wonders how such a little thing can be worth sixty-thousand dollars. 

He sighs about the expense report he'll have to fill out for his employer later, texts Stratt about how ridiculous his life is. She doesn't text back, probably because she's in class, or at work, or busy doing some other thing.

He gets coffee with some of his friends from his days in NYU on the weekend, but they all have to leave by midday to return to their spouses, or children, or they have to catch their trains back up to MIT to tend to their laboratories which Grace is so inexplicably envious of.

“Come back in the Summer," they say, "we'll have more time to catch up, then." He promises he will with a shallow sort of laugh. 

He misses Stratt, quite a lot. Much more than he thought he would. He sees her in the blue of the sunrise over Long Island, sees her in the steam rising from the grates of Manhattan which reminds him of the night they first met when she leaned down and asked him for a cigarette, and it felt as if an angel was extending a hand to him from the heavens. He buys a pack of menthol Camels from a bodega and smokes it in the perch of his home to ease the longing. Embarrassingly, thinking of her as he does has the unintended effect of making him inexplicably horny, so he doesn’t even really make it halfway down the cigarette before he’s extinguishing it against the steps and walking back inside to jerk off. 

He goes to see Gatsby. It's not that good. Or, it is, but Grace thinks the whole situation is kind of really fucking exhausting. The whole time, he's just thinking, God, this fucking guy. But he applauds in the end, and he wonders if Stratt would like it.

He walks around the Met, finds it more lonely than he used to. He sends Stratt a picture of Edvard Munch's The Sin. 

She replies, simply, Ew. 

And then, This time difference is killing me, Grace. Come back already. 

He sends back, dw mommy. i know where home is.

She replies again, Ew. 

"How was Gatsby?" Stratt asks.

Grace is inside of her, cock twitching, sweaty face buried into her hair, undoubtedly ruining the pretty ringlets. They've gotten right into it this time, no pleasantries, no date, just Stratt arriving at Grace's apartment and Grace pulling her into a hug, then a kiss, then into the bedroom, then all the way around him. 

She feels softer than he remembers, smells sweeter, too, and when he pushes in and pulls out slowly with an animalistic desperation, he feels her pulse around him, tight and warm and wet. 

Panting, Grace answers, "Gats— God, fuck, you feel so good— Gatsby was... mmph... a generational fumbler."

And Stratt laughs in between her moans. “How was the art?”

Grace pauses his thrusting. 

”Stratt, baby,” he says into her neck, “I really love our witty little conversations, and I’d love to talk to you more about art, but I also really love cumming inside of you, so please, if we could focus on—“

“Shut up and fuck me then,” she interrupts. Grace can hear her smile in her voice.

Afterwards, they lay in a tangle on the bed, Grace with his eyes still glazed over, body still jelly, and Stratt on his chest, tracing nothing shapes on the freckled skin of his stomach.

“God, I missed you,” Grace finds himself saying, the lazy babbling of a fucked-out man. “Needed you so bad.”

And Stratt smirks, “No girls in New York to ease your needs?” 

Grace frowns, stiffening as her words register then process in his brain. He blinks slowly. And all at once, his body turns cold and frigid. 

“No,” he says. And then, “What?”

Stratt shrugs. 

She is still smirking, as if everything is still good, still okay, as if Grace’s world is not crumbling to pieces. “Just wondering.”

”Ease my needs?” Grace repeats. 

“Sex, you virgin,” Stratt laughs. “I’m talking about sex.”

Grace stares at her. And then—

“Stratt, get off of me for a second.”

And the seriousness of his tone must finally catch up to her, because her smile drops, and her lips part slightly in a sort of nervous confusion, and she pushes herself off him and watches as he sits up, shifts away.

They stare at each other in silence for a long minute, Grace vaguely discomforted and Stratt entirely confused. 

“Are we sexually exclusive, Stratt?” Grace asks.

And realization seems to dawn on Stratt right then. What the realization is, Grace is not entirely sure. Her lips tighten into a line.

”Grace,” she says. “Grace.”

Grace just stares, suddenly reminded of the head check two weeks ago. This feels like that again, only this time, he’s feeling much more affronted and slightly betrayed. He imagines her with somebody else, somebody not him, and it fills him with a rush of unwanted humiliation— how stupid could he be to not realize they’ve never talked about this until now? 

She looks back, chewing at her lip. She tries again, “Grace… I….”

Grace, what?! He wants to demand. Grace, yes? Grace, of course? Grace, how could you assume that? Grace, what do you think this is? Grace, you stupid boy? Grace, it’s just you, it’s only ever you, Grace? Grace, I’m yours? 

Grace waits for more.

But she says nothing else.

He keeps waiting. 

And then, eventually, she says, “I haven’t been with anybody else.”

And Grace is not proud of the way he relaxes halfway just hearing that. The jealousy and rage escapes him, and all that’s left is… well, dread. 

“But you’re, what, keeping your options open?” Grace shakes his head, exhales, confused. She does not answer. Grace exhales softly. “What is this, Stratt? What are we doing here?”

“It’s for you,” Stratt answers simply. “The non-exclusive thing.”

And he stares at her like she’s stupid. Because how could she think that? How could she, in all her cleverness, think that?

”You’re confusing me,” he huffs.

And Stratt shrugs, ever cool, ever calm, ever rational. Irritating.

“I’m not going to fuck anybody else, Grace.” She lets out a small laugh. “I don’t have the time to be juggling people like that—“ Grace gives her a pointed glare “— and you are more than enough for me. I just— I’d like to give you the option to… y’know.”

Grace rolls his eyes so hard, he thinks they might fall out of his skull. “Why would I—“

”Because I’ll get too busy for you,” she interrupts. “Because I don’t expect you to wait around for me not to be.”

Stratt exhales, closes her eyes, tired. 

“The way I go about my life is unique— this is not lost on me. I love my work. I love my education. I cannot love anything else. You ask what this is, what we’re doing here? Sex, Grace. Sex. That’s all this is, only ever that, always. And that’s enough for me.

”I don’t expect it to be enough for you. So, should you ever be out and about, watching Gatsby on broadway, and shouldyou lay your eyes on a woman more available than I am from across the theater, willing and eager to build something more with you, I implore you, Grace, don’t think about me — I will be fine — go after her.”

Grace glares at Stratt stubbornly. He shakes his head in disbelief. 

He grumbles, “You are so fucking presumptuous.”

Stratt barks out a surprised laugh. “What?”

“So fucking insistent that I’ll fall in love with you. You think you are so charming. Stratt, I like you, but you have an ego problem.”

”Yet another one of my many flaws,” Stratt snorts. “And you are charmed by me. Got so jealous at the thought of me fucking other men.”

“I was not jealous,” Grace scoffs. “This is the issue with you—“

”Oh, God, another one. Spare me.”

Grace lets out a guttural noise of exasperation. He leans over to the nightstand, roughly opens a drawer, and he starts to dig around. Insufferable. Irritating. Absolutely fucking annoying. 

“What are you doing?” Stratt chuckles.

”Finding the lube,” Grace grumbles. “For a relationship that’s only sex, we sure are doing a whole fucking lot of talking.”

Stratt laughs again. She falls back on the bed with a satisfied sigh. 

“Beg me for more,” she says. “Beg for more or I’ll leave.”

Grace rolls his eyes. He palms himself to get hard, and says, “Fuck off.”

Stratt’s smile sharpens into something sick, seductive. She looks up at him with half-lidded eyes, like God to a dog, twirling a finger while holding a treat saying, Roll over, roll over, play dead. 

“Come on, Grace. Be a good boy for mommy.”

Grace huffs. But he gives in. Always does. 

“Please.” 

The problem begins, Grace thinks, when he starts waiting for her texts. 

In the mornings, Stratt is an eager texter. She sends pictures of her breakfast or funny things on her laptop or articles about oedipal complexes unprompted. She is less available late in the afternoons and evenings, unreachable.

But after her work days, when free and needy, when awake and bored, Stratt tends to text around midnight. Are you awake, or, Can I come over, or, Hey, just, Hey. 

Before, when this was new, Grace’s nights didn’t revolve around receiving these texts. He could kick back on his bed with his laptop, scheduling appointments or filling out expense reports for Mr. Yáo, or watching documentaries in the background, and he wouldn’t notice her texts until he turned his phone on to set his alarm for the morning. Of course, even before, he’d always find himself replying, Yes, come over, but that isn’t the point — the point is, she was not the sun which Grace’s attention orbited.

But now? Well.

It’s a late night tonight, and Grace has better things to be doing than sitting around his living room waiting for his phone to buzz alive, and yet. He wonders how it got to be this way, wonders if she was right about his propensity for attachment, wonders how to stop before it gets to be too much, tries to convince himself that this means nothing, that is is normal to miss someone you’re in a non-exclusive sexual arrangement with, and in the middle of convincing himself, she texts him. 

Grace considers not replying. It feels like a surrender, to reply in the middle of this strange internal battle with himself. 

The rational thing to do, no doubt, would be to wait, to ponder it more, to decide whether or not Stratt's assessment of his character was correct, if he is growing too attached, if this will hurt him. 

But Grace is not a rational man, and he has always, always been prone to homesickness. 

Grace stares at the message. Feels sorry for himself. Feels guilty. Feels confused. 

He starts to type goodnight, but he's been waiting hours for her to talk to him, been waiting hours for even a shred of her attention, and the thought of losing it in such a short time, such a pathetic way makes him want to die. 

So he deletes the message and writes another one in it's place. 

Glaringly honest. Maybe too honest. 

Grace watches with a bated breath as her text bubbles appear. Disappear. Return. And then—

Grace frowns at his screen. He types. He deletes. He types again. 

And then there are no texts for a while. Just Stratt's bubble, continuously jumping. Dot, dot, dot. Dot, dot, dot. 

Grace sets his phone down to rest his eyes. And a minute later, when he picks it back up, there it remains: dot, dot, dot. 

He expects a paragraph. He braces himself for it. Perhaps a fresh outlining of the boundaries of their arrangement. Another fucking head check. Perhaps a break up. I can't do this with you anymore, you are too much for me.

But then the dots stop, and a text replaces it. 

Grace sighs. He pulls pulls the front of his sweats down and palms himself through his boxers.

Grace takes her to dinner on their day off. 

A nice and fancy seafood place by the water, all amber lighting and draped white tablecloths, the type of place where appetizers cost what a regular entree would cost in any other restaurant, which tracks, because it’s the place Mr. Yáo recommended when they spoke briefly about how Grace is doing with the move and the conversation drifted off to places Grace wants to take “the girl he’s seeing.”

Stratt shows up to his apartment in a black dress with sheer black stockings, 20 denier, and Grace whistles and gasps, "Jesus Christ, I'm already hard." 

She takes his breath away, but that’s nothing new.

Stratt laughs, elbows him, and smirks, "Take me to dinner first, you dog."

Puppy, Grace resists the urge to correct her.

They pile into Grace's truck, both smiling, and Grace drives them off to the restaurant.

On the way there, Grace’s shuffled playlist starts to play Chappell Roan’s Casual through the car stereo. He fumbles to skip it, almost swerving, and when he jams his finger on the skip button the stereo, it does not cooperate.

”Nope,” Grace says. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope,” and he just turns the stereo off entirely. 

When Stratt raises an amused brow, Grace clears his throat and says, “I actually don’t like that song.”

”No?” Stratt smirks. “It looks like it’s in your liked playlist.”

”Must’ve been a misclick.” 

Stratt’s mouth twitches up into a little smile. Then she laughs softly and says, “Can I get on the aux?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Grace disconnects his phone at a stoplight and hands control over to her.

She scrolls through her music with surprising seriousness. Grace catches flashes of old jazz albums, British invasion classics, and aggressively pretentious folk music titles before she finally presses shuffle on her liked songs.

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass begins playing This Guy’s In Love With You.

Stratt freezes for just a second. 

Grace glances sideways just in time to watch her scramble discreetly for the skip button.

It’s too late. He recognizes the song instantly.

Slowly, he turns his head to her with raised brows.

Stratt huffs out a laugh already tinged pink with embarrassment. “Don’t know how that song got in mine either.”

Grace grins helplessly.

“Y’know what,” she says quickly, fumbling for dignity, “I’ve been wanting to listen to the radio more.”

“Right,” Grace snorts. 

She gives him a warning look. Grace keeps grinning, but he turns on the radio, and for one kind second, it seems safe, but then the next, it’s playing Arctic Monkeys, Do I Wanna Know? 

They both inhale sharply. Grace turns the stereo off once more. They drive the rest of the way in radio silence. 

And it is so absurd, so ridiculous, that Stratt starts laughing. And Grace laughs along. 

What a weird thing, he thinks. What a weird thing this is. 

At the restaurant, during the apps, Grace asks her casually, “How come I never come to your place?"

On the table between them, shells of steamed Pacific oysters sit open on a bed of crushed ice, silver-gray and gleaming under the low restaurant light, steam still curling faintly from their briny flesh.

Stratt takes one between her fingers elegantly, and she tips one shell to her lips, pale throat moving as she swallows, and once she finishes, looking satisfied, she shrugs. 

"Nobody's ever been to my place...," she wiggles her brows, puts on a dramatic Hungarian accent, and she finishes, "...and made it out alive."

Grace snorts into his water. Ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous. Charming and funny and beautiful and ridiculous. 

He replies, "Okay, Count Orlok."

"I was going more for Dracula,” she replies with a smile, raising her wine glass to her mouth and taking a small sip. 

"My mistake for overestimating your ability to gauge which is the better vampire."

"Boo. Nerd." 

Grace smiles despite himself. Stratt smiles back. And she nudges one of the oyster shells toward him with the tips of her fingers, and he plucks it from the ice with an exhaled laugh.

When they finish with the oysters, their waiter comes by to clear the empty shells and inform them that their meal will be on the way shortly, and Stratt thanks him softly before absentmindedly straightening the silverware he leaves behind.

Grace watches her do it, watches the elegant little motions of her hands, watches her appraising the utensils with a satisfied nod, watches her tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s easy to sit across her like this. 

Outside the restaurant windows, the dark ocean waves crash, and Grace is not very fond of deep water all that much — finds it to be rather scary, actually — but if the restaurant fell into the waters now and everybody died, Grace thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to die with his last memory being of Stratt’s relaxed smile, the beauty of her. God. He’d almost welcome it, if he weren’t so cripplingly terrified of death.

Stratt says, “My apartment is smaller than yours,” an easy continuation to a conversation that ended minutes ago, and Grace smiles. 

“Yeah?” He prompts.

She nods. 

“Yes. It’s little. Not in a very good neighborhood, either. Deeper into the city, close to the university. And it’s a mess. Cluttered. Dirty. I work there too much. Don’t have the mind or the time to clean. Whatever organized version you have of me in your head? Destroy it. There is nothing organized about the way I live. There are papers everywhere. Textbooks. Dust. Take away containers. Trash.”

Grace can’t help but grin at the thought. “That’s kind of cute, actually.”

“Course you’d think so,” Stratt laughs. ”No, it’s a little gross. I find mugs in places I forgot I left them. I’m embarrassed to say there’s sometimes mold. I buy paper plates because I don’t want to wash my dishes. I almost bought red solo cups last week for the same reason, but I stopped myself.”

Grace laughs. He shakes his head, imagining it. Her gleeful grin as she settles on the couch with a warm cup of coffee, her dismayed expression when she finds the mug two weeks later. Her terrible cleaning habits. Her in the party aisle of the store, buying paper plates and plastic cups for herself. At her core, she really is just another law student. It’s endearing. Charming. 

“It’s still cute,” Grace maintains, and Stratt scrunches her nose in disagreement. He insists, “No, really. It humanizes you. Up til now, I’d been imagining you as a goddess and your apartment as a temple of polished marble and cleanliness.”

Stratt snorts. “Christ, you like me too much.”

Another wave crashes outside against the dark rocks below the restaurant. The whole building seems to hum softly with it. Warm light. Low voices. Grace feels pleasantly loose around the edges, like every muscle in his body has decided, for once, to stop bracing for impact.

”Do you think you’ll ever invite me in?” Grace wonders out loud.

Stratt arches a brow. 

“Are you the vampire now? Did we switch roles?”

“If this weird vamp roleplay is what gets me into your apartment,” Grace shrugs, “then sure.”

Stratt laughs. And she shakes her head softly. “I think I like you too much to let you see that side of me.”

Grace melts. She doesn’t know what she does to him.

”What if I’d asked to go back to yours the first time we met?” He questions. “Would you have let me in then?”

She thinks about it for a moment, and then she shrugs.

“Maybe,” she decides. “I didn’t know what you were about then. Maybe I would have driven us back to mine, and I would have kissed you against my paint-chipped door in the mildew-smelling entrance hallway of my apartment, and I would have said, ‘Don’t mind the moldy cups and the notebooks that have somehow found their home on my bathroom floor. Just look at me.’”

“Yeah,” Grace grins. “And I would have said, ‘Okay, Eva—‘ because in this scenario, you let me call you by your first name ‘—whatever you say,’ and when I ask, the same night, ‘Can we be exclusive,’ you would say, ‘Yes, Ryland, of course we can.’”

Stratt chuckles softly.

“Maybe,” she agrees. “I guess we’ll never know.” 

Her eyes twinkle sweetly, blue and vibrant and the brightest thing by miles, brighter even than the lighthouse beacon in the distance. 

“I like you too much to let that all happen now.“ 

“God,” Grace sighs. “If only I was a little less charming.”

”If only I was a little less weak.”

”Am I the first thing you’ve ever been weak for?”

”No. I felt weakness one other time in 2004.”

Grace laughs. She laughs with him, loose and teasing and happy. 

I want you this way forever, Grace thinks. I’d take you in any way, in any form, but especially this one.

Their entrees arrive a minute later, interrupting whatever dangerously sincere direction the conversation had been drifting toward. The waiter sets down Stratt’s pasta and Grace’s fish, steam curling up from both plates, and Stratt thanks him again. 

“This is nice,” Stratt sighs, and when Grace arches a brow, she smiles, and then she turns to face the waves. “Dinner with you.”

And maybe it’s pathetic, the way his chest tightens at such a simple sentence. Dinner with you.

Not this restaurant. Not the oysters or the view or the wine. Not the soft murmurs of couples on the other tables, the satisfying clinking of glass and silverware. 

You. Him. 

Grace swallows. And because he cannot find it in himself to say anything without his voice cracking with emotion, he just nods. Then without really thinking about it, Grace reaches across the table and brushes his thumb lightly against her wrist.

Stratt stills.

Then her fingers turn beneath his touch, slow and deliberate, until their hands fit together naturally against the tablecloth.

Neither of them says anything about it.

They just keep eating dinner like that, hands linked between the plates. 

He fucks her at the end of the night, because it’s something that has to happen, and in the morning, when he walks her to her car, she says, “Have a lovely rest of your day.”

Grace smiles at her. And the word sticks in his head.

Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely. Love, love, love, love, love. 

He almost says it. He doesn’t. He nods and walks back into his home.

Another morning, the same coffee shop from their very first… date? Hookup? Foreplay?

Stratt sits opposite from Grace, hair in one long braid that falls down her right shoulder, sipping on a hot latte and reading a book. She is gorgeous, as ever, put-together and elegant, entirely self-contained, and Grace sits across her, drinking an iced macchiato, trying to read her, failing, then deciding just to admire the view of the beach through the wide open windows.

The sun is out today. Not a cloud in the bright blue sky. The sand outside looks soft and warm. The water is clear and glittering. Grace watches surfers paddle out into deeper waters. Watches a golden doodle bounding like mad into the waves before running back to its owner. Watches three girls taking a group picture. 

Watches Stratt’s pale wrist flex as she turns the page of her novel. Watches her tongue flick out to wet her lips. Watches the sunlight catch in the loose strands escaping her braid. Watches her blue eyes drag across the page. Left to right to left to right for two or three or an eternity of minutes before her fingers lift and turn the page once more.

God. He craves her attention.

”Did you invite me here to ignore me?” He finds himself asking, impatient in his tone. 

”I invited you here to pay for my coffee,” Stratt returns without glancing up. “It’s the least you could do, considering that I’ll be letting you take me back to yours after I finish this chapter.”

Grace rolls his eyes. 

“I’d be charging a lot more than a six dollar coffee if I looked as pretty as you,” he says. 

That gets her attention. Stratt glances up at Grace with a slight frown. Her gaze is sharp, is focused, is infuriatingly earnest. 

“I was joking, Grace,” she says. “I like your presence. You make me feel comfortable.” She tilts her head. “I’m not selling myself for six dollars. This arrangement isn’t a monetary transaction.”

Grace crosses his arms. He returns, “Just a physical one, then.”

Stratt closes her book. She lays it down flat on the table, and underneath it, she taps the side of her shoe against Grace’s. She looks at him softly. She sees him. 

She blinks at Grace, brow arched gently, radiating openness and warmth.

She turns her head, looks out the windows, and she comments, “The weather’s nice outside.”

Fuck’s sake, Grace thinks. He can’t do this with her. Can’t be normal with her, can’t talk about the weather, not about sex with her. It’s not what she came here for, and it’s not what he wants. He’s not sure what he wants.

“You ever feel confused?” Grace asks suddenly. 

Stratt blinks, just as shocked as he is. But she composes her easily, and before he can take it back with a rushed, “Never mind, forget I asked that,”  she’s replying, “Weird. What a weird question.”

Grace snorts. She smiles back.

Then, “Sometimes,” she says simply.

Grace blinks. “Do you ever feel confused about me?”

Stratt’s brows furrow. She shakes her head softly. “No.”

And Grace has to laugh, and Stratt watches him without joining along. He should’ve seen that one coming. 

Watching him closely, Stratt explains, “Things are very simple to me when I’m around you, Grace. You don’t complicate things. I know what to expect from you.”

Grace stares at her.

The word lands strangely in his chest, because nothing about this feels simple to him anymore. Not the way his entire body reacts every time she looks directly at him, not the way he thinks about her at odd hours of the night as if recalling the smell of her hair brings about more respite than sleep, not the humiliating, aching relief he feels whenever she reaches out asking him to join her for a cup of coffee in the café where they first formally met, not the disappointment that swallows him when she neglects him to read.

Outside, the golden doodle shakes seawater violently onto its owner while the girls by the shoreline dissolve into laughter. The three girls gather around the camera to check the photos they’ve already taken.

Grace envies them suddenly. The uncomplicatedness of them, different from his own. They are at ease— he is easy.

Simple. Stratt wants him simple. Stratt wants him early mornings before class, late nights after work. Stratt wants him on the couch, or on his bed, or on the cold granite of the kitchen counter. Stratt wants him pink and moaning, wants him uncomplicated, predictable, stress-relief that she can pen into her ever-busy schedule, someone who will reply when she texts during her lunch break, someone who won’t ask for her to stay.

And he wants all that too. But it's not enough. It's all that he can get and it's not enough. This... wanting in him is a hole. Hungry— No, something more pathetic than that. Starving. And he feels so much of it that it can't be described, can't be expressed accurately. Some things don't feel like other things. 

“Let’s go back to mine,” Grace sighs, feeling suddenly very tired. 

Stratt shakes her head.

She makes a show of checking her watch, says, “I should leave. Go to class.”

”Right,” Grace says. “Okay, then.” 

Then comes Summer. Then comes preparation for Stratt’s finals, the numerous moot courts and mock trials, the studying. The distance.

Stratt’s lips around his cock, her tongue pressed on the underside of his cock, the back of her throat warm and perfect against the tip of his cock. Her drool pools around the creases of Grace’s thighs as she takes him all in— a rare occasion of Grace receiving rather than giving. Perhaps she feels guilty for the lack of correspondence, lack of attention.

“A week,” Grace can’t help but complain. 

She swallows around him, and she glances up, and she rolls her eyes like, Shut up.

Grace doesn’t. “I waited for you a week. I missed you so much. Missed you playing with me. I wish you talked to me more.” 

Stratt pulls off, just long enough for her to say, “I was busy,” before she’s going down on him again, and he groans, and writhes, and his head hits the back of his pillow as she pulls him into a suction in her mouth. Warm. Wet. Tight. He can feel her swallowing, her tongue relaxing.

It feels good. He says it — “Fuck, Stratt, that feels so fucking good,” — and she hums and her throat vibrates with it.

But she has been gone from him for a week, and he’s still got a lot to say, blowjob aside. So pushes past the ecstasy, sharpens his mind to continue speaking.

“St— Oh, fuck—! Still. The arrangement goes both ways.”

Stratt flicks his balls with an impatient finger. Grace groans at the pain, then twitches in her mouth because, wow, pain, hot, then remembers he is still annoyed. He powers through.

“You call me to have sex with you in the middle of stressful work days all the time. I drop everything for twenty minutes with you when you do.”

Stratt pulls off him again. Her annoyed glare washes over him in waves. 

“Clearly, Grace, I care more about my work than you do about yours, then, don’t I?”

Grace’s brows knit together, because what did that mean? Was that a dig at him? At his job? Was that a dig at all? 

“What?”

“Shut up and let me blow you, holy shit.”

And Grace frowns. But he shuts up, because he tells her to, and he closes his eyes and lets her suck him trying his hardest to let the feeling of her throat around his cock distract him from the annoyance he felt and continues to feel over her inattentiveness, her easy discarding of him. Even now, as she sucks him off, it still feels like this is not about him. 

His silence lasts for maybe three minutes.

“Do you respect me?” He finds himself abruptly asking.

Stratt pulls off him once more with a deeply bemused frown.

“I’m sorry,” she drawls, wiping spit from her chin with the back of her hand, “am I boring you?”

And her tone is so sincerely weirded out that Grace finally realizes that yeah, this conversation might not be the best to have mid-blowjob, and perhaps he is being a little bit of a weirdo.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I’m being stupid.”

“Yes, you are,” Stratt confirms. 

But she stops sucking his cock with an eye roll, rising to her feet with annoyance. Grace watches her, cock softening, as she pulls her gray, cotton panties on before picking up his discarded t-shirt and pulling that on, too.

Once clothed, she hops back on the bed, still visibly peeved by the interruption — Grace can’t really blame her, this was a booty call and there is no bootying being done — and she lays beside Grace with her arms crossed, like a disappointed teacher or therapist.

“Tell me about it, then,” she says.

Grace shakes his head, suddenly quite shy. 

“It’s nothing,” he brushes. 

“It’s not nothing,” Stratt frowns. Her dismay is palpable. “It’s not nothing, because if it was nothing, I’d be giving you head, and you’d be moaning instead of bitching and moaning.”

“I’m not bitching,” Grace sniffs. “And that’s an anti-feminist word to use.”

Stratt rolls her eyes, stormy blue. She sighs and reaches up to Grace’s nape, scratching softly. It’s embarrassing how easily he leans into the touch, how easily he relaxes into the soft rhythm of her long, manicured nails against his skin.

“Just be quiet and talk.”

“Can’t quite do both,” Grace sighs. 

“Grace. You’re killing me.”

“I’m scared you have no respect for me.”

The admission comes out of him in a rush, and the resounding silence afterwards is thick. Grace picks at his nails nervously. Stratt looks at him with an unimpressed stare. She brings her hand back. 

And the silence blankets them. And it rolls away.

“What?” Her eyes are squinted, sharp and narrow like kitchen knives. 

Grace shrugs weakly. 

“I don’t know,” he replies, and he really doesn’t. Doesn’t know how he feels, what he means… anything, really. “It… sort of… feels like you think there’s nothing going for me.”

And she does not answer for a minute, which is never a good sign, and Grace finds himself growing irritated by this, because wow, really? She’s not even going to deny it? He gives Stratt an offended look, and she groans like she’d really rather not be having this conversation right now, but Grace won’t let go of it, refuses to let go of it, because her opinion matters to him, and apparently it’s not a very high one, so yes, there must be a conversation. 

He sits up and glares at her in earnest now.

“Seriously?” He hears himself say.

Stratt pushes herself to a sit and gives him a look. Half apologetic, half annoyed.

“Listen,” she starts, sounding a bit strained, like she’s navigating a minefield instead of choosing her words, “it just… seems like you settled into everything.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? Settling down?” 

Isn’t that the goal for everybody? To find a job, to find a place, to live comfortably, to settle down? Isn’t it a good thing that Grace found his role in the world, that Grace found it earlier than everybody else?

Stratt looks contemplative for a moment. 

And then, she sighs and says, “You’re right. Let me correct myself— I meant to say, it seems like you settled, which is different from settling down.” 

Grace stares at her dryly. 

“Settled,” he repeats.

“Settled,” she confirms. And she looks entirely earnest. 

“I have a job— a real good one. I have my own place! Seems like a very nice thing to settle for.” 

Stratt shrugs. 

“Didn’t say you were a bum,” she grumbles.

“Sure implied it,” Grace shoots back.

And she raises her hands up in surrender. 

“Grace, I don’t know what to tell you. I respect you, I do, but let’s be serious. You lack ambition. You lack purpose. This life you’ve made for yourself sounds like something you’ve found yourself stuck in rather than something you’re proud of. I have no doubt that you're fine living below your station—”

"Below my station! It's a respectable job!"

"Oh, come on, it's not rocket science. You would know! You abandoned your passion and potential for actual rocket science for this. The point is, you're intelligent enough for more, you're wasting yourself, and you're hiding behind comfort and luck."

Grace squints at her. “What?”

“You hate your job,” Stratt says. “And I also hate my job, but I want more for myself than to settle for a life I don’t want.”

She sighs. “So I’m busy, Grace. Even when I don’t want to be, even when all I’d rather do is to fuck around and go out to dinner with you and hold your hand and say stupid things like, ‘I like you’. I’m busy at the worst of times.

”I respect you, Grace. I respect your choices. But my life doesn’t revolve around you like yours revolves around me. And you can’t accept that because you’ve stopped wanting more for your life— you’re comfortable waking up every day to do something you’re neither passionate nor proud of doing. And I’m not, Grace. I don’t want to settle like that.“

“Holy fuck,” Grace laughs, because seriously, holy fuck. “Holy fuck, you’ve got an ego.”

Stratt gives him a very deadpan look. “I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid. I said you have an ego.”

“Tell me you don’t spend your days waiting for me to come around,” Stratt dares.

Grace lies, “I don’t. I have a life outside of you. You just happen to be very involved in my life in general.”

She laughs right in his face.

“Yeah, right.” 

“So you hate me!” Grace accuses. “You don’t think I’m interesting, and you don’t respect me.”

And Stratt rolls her eyes. “You’re being dramatic. I was gone for a week and you’re freaking out on me like I’m your girlfriend or something.” 

“You’re not denying it!” 

“You are interesting,” Stratt groans. “I’m interested in you, aren’t I? You’re very clever and very handsome and I have respect for you. Like I’ve been saying all along.” 

Grace scoffs. “Y’know what, after this conversation, I doubt that.”

“I just think you’ve… got a lot of unrealized potential in you,” Stratt sighs. 

When Grace doesn’t answer, she pushes herself off the bed with a long dragged exhale.

“Let’s just continue this some other time,” she says. 

She pulls Grace’s shirt off, pulls her own clothes on. Her white blouse. Her pencil skirt. She must look so powerful in court. She must destroy her opponents in this same way— with a cold calculation, with an unimpressed, impassive stare. 

“Clearly, we’re both too high-strung to enjoy any of this right now, and I’ve got too early of a day tomorrow to fill my night with…,” Stratt gestures vaguely between them, “… whatever this is.”

Her voice is so… clinical. Impersonal. Like he doesn’t matter, like this fight isn’t even registering as a fight to her, like it’s a mild inconvenience at best.

Grace hates it. He closes his eyes. He inhales deeply. Exhales slowly. Attempts to calm himself down. Fails. When his eyes open again, he is glaring harder.

“I’ll come by again after work, tomorrow,” Stratt says. “Bye.”

The next day, she returns, just like she promised, and the sex is okay.

Grace can't get into it. 

She tries to talk dirty. It falls flat. He doesn't reply. It's weird, and quickly into the act, it almost starts feeling like they’re forcing each other into it. There is no intimacy, no closeness. 

She calls him “doggy.” It doesn’t do anything for him. The syllables sound too… weird. Just weird. It’s a weird word. Doggy. Dog-gy. Weird. She must think so too. She switches back to his name, but then that sounds strange, too. Grace. Doesn’t belong in the bedroom. Gr-ace.

When Grace looks up at her trying to ride him, she looks too focused, too aware, like this is just an action to her, and Grace feels the same way, hips rolling up to meet hers in a steady, heartless rhythm. 

“What are you thinking about, Grace?” Stratt questions.

You held my hand a week and a night ago. Amber light caught in the coils of your copper hair, and you looked at me, and it felt like your gaze was all I was made for, and everything was right with the world. You held my hand a week and a night ago, and I saw everything so clearly, like my world was getting smaller in the way zooming into something makes the rest turn into blur. You held my hand a week and a night ago. It felt like we were two halves of a whole person. And now I’m inside you, and I’ve never felt more separated.  

Grace shakes his head.

“I don’t know. What are you thinking about?”

She swallows thickly. Rises up. Pushes down. 

“Nothing.” And she asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Grace nods. He holds her waist, pulls her up, pushes her down. He’s missed her so much. “Please keep going. Go faster.” 

Grace closes his eyes and kisses her. Her lips taste like fruit. And she kisses back. That feels a little good, but it’s not enough. Neither moan. Neither make noise. It’s silent except for the creaking of the bed, the rustling of the sheets. A silence so deafeningly loud. A silence so all-encompassing. Absolute silence.

Until a shaky breath. Choked, uneven, like half-gasp, half-inhale. And then a sniffle. A whimper. And Grace’s chest hurts, and he realizes it’s coming from him.

Stratt notices. All at once, she stops moving, and then her hands are holding his face, holding him steady, and she’s saying, “Oh, my God, are you okay? Hey, it’s okay, it’s fine, it’s okay,” and she rolls off him, and she keeps saying, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s okay,” and Grace is unsure if she’s trying to reassure him or convince himself.

Grace shuts his eyes tight, trying hard not to spiral, but Christ, this is the worst sex they’ve ever had, and he couldn’t make her feel good, couldn’t perform, and God.

Her hands feel warm against his face, and for once, she is not perfectly composed, for once, she does not know how to deal with him. And she keeps reassuring him, keeps cupping his face, but "It's okay" is not what Grace wants. He wants to stop being so confused about all this. He wants, for once in his entire God damn life, to feel control. 

His breath catches sharply, and then his eyes squeeze shut but tears force their way out anyway. He drags a hand over his mouth like he’s trying to contain the sound, but a broken inhale escapes him regardless. His shoulders tense hard enough to shake. Another tear slips down his cheek, then another, and suddenly he’s crying in earnest, lost control of it, and Stratt watches, trying helplessly to wipe the tears away, asking, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong? What can I do?” But Grace is too embarrassed to reply which only makes him feel worse. 

Stratt’s expression shifts into a panicked concern, and then fear, real and visceral, and she’s grown so pale with worry that the pink flush of sex has disappeared entirely. 

Her eyes dart frantically over his face, then down his naked body, as if searching for some type of wound, some visible enemy that would have caused this, and she finds nothing, and her face crumbles further into distress. 

“Grace,” she says again, softer this time. “Please.”

And that does it somehow. That word. Please. From Stratt of all people. It twists something inside his chest until he can barely breathe around it.

“I’m fine,” he chokes out finally, and this is pathetic, this whole thing is pathetic. “I don’t know why I—”

“It’s okay.” Her hands tighten against his face immediately. “It’s okay. You’re fine, this is fine.” 

But it’s not okay, and it’s not fine, and try as he fucking might, he can’t stop. The humiliation burns through him, hot and vicious, like hot lava. 

He turns his head away from her instinctively, covering his eyes with the heel of his palm, but she follows him anyway, insistent on helping, fixing, holding.

“Talk to me,” she whispers. And again, “Please.” 

He can’t. His breathing keeps hitching violently out of his chest, every inhale turning jagged halfway through. He feels wrecked by it, stripped open by it, Christ. 

“I want to be good for you,” he manages.

Stratt rushes, ”You are! You’re so good. You did good for me, Grace, you did.”

But he didn’t and he knows he didn’t. Her words mean nothing to him. He is simultaneously too tight in his own body and too far away from this room. He breathes away the hiccuping, wills away the tears, and it takes minutes, ages, eternities, and when he’s the most composed he can be (which is not very composed at all, because he’s one poke away from breaking at the seams all over again), he blinks at her, eyes rimmed red, lashes clumped together in little peaks, face flushed.

She looks at him. It’s the same question in her eyes— Are you okay?

Grace declines to answer. Shakes his head. He pulls away from her. Stands. Clothes himself hurriedly. 

“I need to get some water,” he says, not looking at her. “D’you want any?”

Her eyes follow him anxiously.

“No, I don’t,” she replies. And then she stands as well, lips tight in a line, and she says, “Please sit back down. I’ll go get it for you.”

Grace shakes his head again. “It’s fine. I’ve got working legs.”

Stratt pulls a shirt on— one of his on the ground, so big it goes down to her thighs. “I’ll come out with you, then.”

Again, Grace shakes his head. 

“Honestly, I think I need a bit of space from you to pull myself together right now,” he laughs humorlessly.

She stares at him. Sags. And then she nods.

“Okay. Yeah. That’s fine.”

So he pads away, leaves her alone in the bedroom, and tries very hard not to fall apart in the kitchen, gripping the edge of the counter so hard his fingers ache.

The apartment is dim except for the light above the stove. Everything else is shadowed blue-black, blurry around the edges, and he focuses on little things to keep himself together. The ticking sound of the refrigerator. Water running from the faucet. A ring of coffee stained onto the counter from an overfilled mug. 

Anything except the fact that he just cried in front of her, humiliated himself so terribly he thinks he might never be able to face her again.

His throat tightens again at the memory of her face hovering over him, frightened and confused and trying so desperately to help that it made him feel worse. He recalls his words, choked out, sobbed out, ripping through his throat— I want to be good for you.

Jesus fucking Christ. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. The sink keeps running. The refrigerator keeps buzzing.

Behind him, down the hallway, the bedroom stays quiet, snd Grace can picture the scene behind that door so perfectly— Stratt pulling her clothes on with that weirded out face she gets when she tastes a weird piece of chicken in her salad, or when baristas get her coffee order wrong, or when Grace says dumb shit like “Are we sexually exclusive?” He can see it in his mind’s eye — Her, preparing to leave — and he can’t even blame her.

Grace drags a shaky breath into his lungs.

Maybe this was inevitable.

He opens a cabinet. Closes it. Opens it again because he forgot what he was reaching for.

Water. Right. He grabs a glass, and his hands shake when he fills it.

He hates that she saw him like that. Hates it so viscerally it burns. He thinks about what to say to her. How to explain himself. Nothing sounds even remotely sane.

Sorry, I think you were right about me. Sorry, I think somewhere along the way this stopped being just sex to me. Sorry, I can’t help myself. Sorry.

Grace laughs once under his breath, sharp and miserable, and he’s being pathetic, too needy, too much. Exactly the sort of person Stratt had warned him not to be from the very beginning. 

He told himself he could handle this… this thing between them— this arrangement. And worse, he assured her of that, too. And now here he was, gulping down a glass of water like he’d just walked the desert for forty days and forty nights, evidently not handling it. Failing her. 

Grace glares at the sink. 

Maybe she’ll end things tonight.

Oddly, that thought hurts less than the possibility that she won’t, because if she stays, then what? They keep doing this? Keep orbiting each other pretending neither of them notices the shift happening underneath everything? A mercy killing should be dealt.

Soft footsteps sound behind him.

Grace closes his eyes briefly before turning around.

She’s standing at the edge of the kitchen in his shirt and her shorts. She’s made an obvious effort to comb her hair neat with her fingers. Her face is scrubbed raw of composure in a way he rarely sees.

And God, even now, despite all his shame, he wants to go to her. He wants her to make it all feel better.

“I know you asked for space,” she says quietly. “But I was starting to worry.”

Grace swallows. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Only been ten minutes.”

“I think it was more like three.”

Stratt shrugs frankly. “I counted to four hundred Mississippi.”

Something twists painfully beneath his ribs.

He looks down at the glass in his hands because looking at her directly feels impossible. If he looks too long, he thinks he might say something irreversible, stupid, horrifyingly honest and telling and vulnerable. Like, Stay. Or, Don’t leave tonight. Or, Does this mean as much to you as it does to me? Or, The phone. This arrangement. Does it go both ways? I waited for you. A week. A long week, and you rejected me, but you came back, and you spoke so harshly you might as well have rejected me again, and it felt worse than abandonment, and now we’re here—

And he says nothing.

Stratt shifts her weight slightly, hesitating. She bites her bottom lip, eyebrows knotted together. 

And she asks, “Do you want me to go home?”

Grace’s chest tightens immediately. 

Stay, he wants to say. Don’t leave tonight, tell me it means as much to you as it does to me, tell me I can have you when I want to, too, tell me what we have doesn’t only exist when it’s convenient for you, tell me I’m enough for you. 

Grace swallows it all down. 

Returns, “Do you want to?”

Stratt frowns. Her hands at her sides do a weird sort of shrug, arms spread slightly away from her body, palms open. She’s still nibbling at her lip.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

A silence falls between them. Suffocatingly large. And she breaks it, because she’s braver than he is by miles.

“Is everything okay?” 

Grace runs a hand through his hair. He shakes his head. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You cried, Grace.”

Right. Heat floods violently up his neck. Shame, instant and overwhelming. Another silence. Grace is determined not to break it.

The apartment hums quietly around them.

Finally, Stratt nods once.

“Okay,” she says.

Grace looks up automatically. “Okay?”

“Yeah. I should probably go home.”

Grace stares at her for a second too long before looking away with a heavy exhale. “Right. Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeats. She closes her eyes, as if composing herself, and when she opens them again, she’s got this strange expression of resolve on her face. She towards the entryway, grabs her keys from the key rack beside the door, and slips her shoes on. “I, uh. I’ll bring your shirt back next time.”

Next time. Grace’s mind catches on it. That must mean something, right? She’ll return? That, or she’s saying it just to say it, the way people say, I had an amazing date, we should do it again sometime, minutes before blocking you.

“You can just get your clothes now,” Grace suggests. “They’re only in the bedroom.”

Stratt gives him a small, shaky smile. “I don’t really want to go back in there right now.”

“Right.” Christ.

She opens the front door. Grace walks over to see her out. It’s weird. Too weird.

Do they kiss goodbye? Do they hug? Can you hug someone after whatever the fuck that was?

“Well,” she says softly.

Grace nods once.

“Yeah.”

Stratt exhales. She leans up and kisses him on the cheek. 

“I’m sorry for how this turned out,” she says. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Grace blinks rapidly. “No. No, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Sorry for crying.”

Stratt nods. 

“Text me when you feel better?” she asks carefully.

Grace swallows hard. “Sure.”

Another silence.

Then, quieter:

“Goodnight, Grace.”

Something in the way she says his name nearly undoes him again.

He keeps his expression neutral through sheer force.

“Night.”

She hesitates for half a second longer like she might say something else. Grace wants her to. But maybe she’s waiting for him to say something. He doesn’t.

Then she leaves.

The click of the door shutting behind her echoes through the apartment.

She texts him, three hours after the incident. Text me if you need anything. 

Then an hour after that. Text me even if you don’t need anything— I’m here for you and want to talk.

Grace doesn’t reply. Doesn’t know what to say. And then he keeps not knowing. And suddenly, it’s three days of silence.

Grace keeps meaning to break it. Keeps glancing at his phone in the middle of his work day, thinking of what to say, but before he can form a good thought, the memory of her voice, smooth, unimpressed, mysterious breaks through his mind — “Tell me you don’t spend your days waiting for me to come around.” — so he doesn’t, and instead, he falls into a pit of despair and regret, berating himself in the middle of his work and days off over letting her see him so vulnerable, so needy, so opposite of who he promised her he was, so not the man he agreed to be in this arrangement with.

Three days of silence. 

Seventy-two hours of a deep and growing despondency.

And he thinks he should call it quits. Sometimes with a sense of defeat, sometimes with resentment in his heart. How could she do this to me, how could I do this to her, how could this be happening, how did I allow it to happen? This needs to end, this must end, I have to end it— Horrible. He tortures himself with it.

Three days of silence. Then he sees her outside of a bar.

He’s dropping off one of Mr. Yáo’s guests in front of a hotel when he spots her, and she’s smoking a cigarette, wearing a coat over jeans and a black tank top, and from across the plaza, she’s already looking at him, expression blank but blue eyes sharpened into something akin to scorn or resentment or… hurt?

Grace stares back, feeling a very insistent urge to drive away and swallowing it. He parks. Jaywalks across the street. Does not break away from her gaze once.

“Hey,” he says.

Stratt frowns. She takes a drag of her cigarette, and she holds it in long enough that it disappears inside of her so when she returns, “Hey,” just the word comes out, no smoke.

Her eyes, cold and guarded, size Grace up, which isn’t really all that hard, considering Grace frequently feels very small. Uncertainty flows through him, and he sways where he stands, feeling unsteady in more ways than one, staring at Stratt in front of him, remembering how she looks in a café by the sea, in his apartment, in his arms. Remembering the sound of her laughter, the smell of her perfume on his sheets. Remembering the shape of her lips when she said, “I’m not looking for anything very serious.” Remembering the coldness of her just as soon as they started getting somewhere. 

How did I get here? He thinks.

”How are you?” Stratt asks, and beneath her stony gaze, Grace is perceptive enough to catch a glimpse of concern.

Grace shrugs. “Y’know. Working.”

Stratt sniffs. 

“I thought you were avoiding me,” she says.

And Grace considers denying it, considers saying, Oh, I was just busy. Oh, time got away from me. Oh, it’s really been three days? Gosh. How’d that happen? 

But it feels almost insulting to her intelligence to even consider lying to her like that. 

So he shrugs, sheepishly, and he admits, “I was.” 

Stratt’s blinks at him rapidly before shaking her head and turning her gaze away. She takes another drag, and again, the cloud of smoke dissipates inside of her.

Quieter, Grace explains, “I was embarrassed.”

That gets her eyes back on him. Blue and expectant. Blue and beckoning. Blue and a reckoning. 

She nods at him slightly. Go on, let it be known.

“I was embarrassed,” Grace repeats. “About the other night. About needing too much. About making it weird.”

Stratt’s lips thin into a line, and she stares for a moment, like she doesn’t know what to say, which is rare. She scans Grace’s face, then the ground, then the sky, as if the answer might be there, and she looks so helpless and uncertain then that a sense of guilt creeps into Grace and festers. 

Simple. This whole thing was supposed to be simple. How did I get here?

“You didn’t make it weird,” Stratt says, finally.

Grace shrugs. 

“I kind of did.” And he leans against the wall of the bar, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I think you were right.”

“I tend to be,” Stratt nods, “but about what?”

Grace exhales heavily. “I like you too much. A big chunk of my life revolves around you. You’re… important to me. And whatever we have is more to me than just an arrangement. Or at least, I wish it was.”

I want you soft and smiling, I want you relaxed and ridiculous, I want you wearing my clothes. I want you on the passenger side of my truck with your feet up on the dash. I want strands of your copper hair caught in the drain of my shower. I want you patient and forgiving, passionate and headstrong, sat on my couch hunched over your textbooks, practicing arguments and defenses. I want your morning breath kisses, your yawned goodnights. I want more than this. I want you wholly. 

It frustrates him, how easily the words appear in his mind and how hard it is to speak them. He hopes all he's said so far is good enough. 

Stratt stares at him. 

“Oh,” she says.

Grace breathes out a laugh. ”Yeah.”

”Well, um…. I don’t really… know what to say.” 

Yeah. Grace figured. His heart is breaking, but he figured. He has to chuckle a bit under his breath. How did I get here?

He sighs.

“You don’t have to say anything. I guess I just—“ memories of her in a restaurant flashes through the forefront of his mind; her smile, her jokes, her hand holding his, “—I don’t know. The line got too blurred for me to keep up with. And against my better judgment, found myself wanting more than just sex and… whatever this is. I’m needy, maybe, or selfish. I’m sorry.”

Stratt nods carefully. Her cigarette burns unsmoked between her fingers, entirely forgotten.

Grace continues, “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you wanted. I just… figured I should be honest.” He combs a hand through his hair. “We can keep going with it, if you want. If you can look past me wanting you. Or we can just stop with this whole thing. It’s up to you.”

For a very long while, Stratt does not reply. Just looks at him, eyes narrowed in some indecipherable expression, and Grace prepares himself for it— Okay, goodbye, see you never, but it doesn’t come.

Stratt chews on her lips in front of him, and after a moment, she says, “I like you too. A lot. A lot more than I thought I would.”

”Oh,” Grace manages, blinking, processing. “Okay.”

“It is... a scary thought,” Stratt continues, "because I did not plan on it. I know I was starting to become important to you. That was scary to me. And then you started becoming important to me. And that was... terrifying. But we're... something to each other now. I just." 

She struggles with the words, and she shakes her head like that might shake out the confusion. "I don't know where to go on from here."

Grace exhales heavily. He understands. 

"I can't give you what you want, Grace," Stratt sighs. "I can't give you what you deserve."

"What do I deserve?"

"More. It’s difficult, being with me. I’m… not the most attentive partner. It’s not what you deserve, certainly.”

Grace can't help but laugh. When Stratt stares at him confused, he just shrugs, still chuckling. 

"Eva, I just want you. Coffee. Brunch. Exclusivity. Seeing you without using sex as an excuse. Knowing you." He smiles at her nervously. "Do you think I deserve that?"

Stratt's gaze softens. She swallows, visibly. Nods. Then looks back down at the ground.

"I will not prioritize you over my work. You'll resent me for it."

Grace shrugs. "Maybe."

"You will prioritize me over everything. I'll resent you for it."

He shrugs again. "Maybe."

Stratt shakes her head.

"Impossible," she mumbles. "You are impossible."

And then she raises her head, meets his gaze once more.

"Do you want to come back to mine?" She asks.

Grace smiles. "Yes."

The hallway light leading up to her apartment flickers like an aneurysm, and when Stratt kisses him against the door, his collar in her fist pulling him down to her height, Grace can feel the chipped paint under his palms when they brace against it. Inside is no better.

She doesn’t stop kissing him as they stumble inside, but Grace keeps his eyes open, suspecting that the kisses might just be her distraction from the promised mess of her apartment, and as he glances around, attempting to ignore her wandering hands on his torso, he confirms that Stratt’s apartment is  just as she described— messy, disorganized, cluttered

Papers litter every available surface. Three textbooks on the kitchen counter, opened notebooks with loose papers on the dining table, and so many printouts on the coffee table that the wood is hardly even visible. Atop or beside them, used coffee mugs. 

Clothes are also shed in various places. Not just coats and jackets, either. A pair of jeans on the couch. One button-up on the dining table, another hung on a chair. A single sock on the floor right in front of the door. 

She notices him glancing around and pulls away from the kiss, laughing a little bit. 

“Yeah, all right, take a look around,” she says, and she walks away from him, taking off her coat and throwing it on the counter, and she starts to brew herself some coffee.

Grace grins. 

She truly wasn’t lying about the mess. But there is a beauty about her apartment regardless. A homeliness in the exposed brick, the deep copper stains of her wooden furniture, the art hung up on the walls, the large bookshelf, filled only with creased-spine books and free of dust, the hallmark of a voracious reader.

There is a charm in the warm light of the various lamps scattered about the corners of the apartment, the distinct lack of turned-on overhead lighting, and there is something really quite special about the presence of sticky-notes and writing everywhere, on the key rack beside the door, on the fridge, on the tables, even on the TV frame.

Reminders for upcoming deadlines, events, mock trials and moot courts. Shopping lists. Eggs, bacon, paper plates, milk, coffee creamer, Parmesan cheese. Some law-related definitions or phrases to know. Comity: The principle of legal respect and deference, wherein courts of one jurisdiction voluntarily recognize and enforce the laws or judicial decisions of another. Miscellaneous things to remember. 

Call dentist. Leave change of clothes in car for tomorrow. Grace matcha order iced latte two pumps French vanilla oat milk. DO NOT TEXT GRACE! Remember complementary principle for class. Wash Grace shirt. LEFT YOUR KEYS IN DESK AT OFFICE.  Bring Grace shirt back. Ask for day off in two weeks. TEXT GRACE! Talk to landlord about dishwasher. FOLD LAUNDRY! Schedule hair appt. DO NOT SHOW UP TO GRACE APARTMENT UNANNOUNCED!!!!!!

Grace pulls the last one off the fridge. He arches a brow at Stratt, who now sips her coffee. She rushes to pull the note from his hands and sticks it back on the fridge, hissing, “You don’t just enter somebody’s home and start pulling their notes off their fridges. I have a system.” 

Grace laughs. He makes a show of surveying the mess of her home, and returns, “Some system you have.”

Stratt shakes her head, smiling. She sets her mug down on the counter where it will undoubtedly be forgotten once more, and she steps forwards toward Grace until she’s standing right in front of him, hands snaking up his chest to either side of his face. 

“Ignore the mess, Grace,” she says. “Just look at me.”

And God, what a sight.

Grace surges to kiss her. Her lips are warm. She tastes like coffee. He finds himself breathless immediately, pulling away just an inch to ask, “Please, can I eat you out?”

Stratt grins at him. “Address me correctly first.”

Grace bites his lip. “Please, mommy, can I eat you out?” 

“Good boy, Grace.”

Her smile is soft, beatific. Her gentle thumb caresses Grace’s face. She makes Grace warm. Need wells up in him like a chorus begging to be sung. He needs his mouth on her, needs his tongue inside of her, needs to make her feel good, needs to earn as much praise from her as possible. He buzzes with it.

“I guess you can.” 

Grace wastes no time. 

He scoops her up into his arms easily and sets her on the dining table. She laughs, giddy and cute, and watches with amusement in her eyes as his hands unbotton her jeans and he pulls them down, down, down before finally, they’re off, and he throws the jeans to join the other discarded clothes on her couch. Her giggles ring like bells in Grace’s head, and then her sharp gasp replaces the noise when he drops to his knees betwixt her thighs and rubs, slowly with one finger, her slit through her cotton panties.

”Oh, fuck,” Stratt curses breathily, laying down on the table almost automatically, hands settling on Grace’s blond hair, fingers tangling between the locks. “Oh, Christ, Grace.”

He toys his fingers against the fabric for moments more before she grows impatient and starts tugging at his hair for more, at which point he pulls her panties to the side and licks up her slit, between the pink of her lips slowly, eliciting a high groan which encourages him to do it again, and then again, and then again, faster each time, tongue flat and relaxed, and she writhes gently on the dining table.

“I missed you so much, puppy,” her voice breathes above him. “Missed your touch, your tongue. You on your knees for me like this. So helpless and pathetic for me.”

Grace moans. He licks inside of her, eyelids dimming, and he looks up at her through his lashes, letting her words control him. She tastes sweet on his tongue, and how could she not with a voice like that, like honey?

“Did you miss me, too, pretty boy?” 

Grace nods as best as he can with his mouth still on her pussy. She smiles at him.

“Did you miss being good for me?”

Yes, yes, yes, God, more than anything.

”Miss being my little toy?”

Grace licks up to her clit and sucks lightly. Nods. She moans.

“Miss being used for my pleasure?”

He wants her. Can’t just survive off the taste of her anymore. He’s so fucking hard it hurts. He needs her, needs more. He pulls off her pussy with a drawn out whimper. 

Her hands disappear from his hair. She props herself up on her elbows and stares at him. Her voice cuts through the silence, suddenly very stern. 

“Why’d you stop?”

”I—“ The sweet taste of her is still on his tongue, on his lips, dripping down his chin. “I need more.”

She arches a perfect brow. “Hm?”

”More,” Grace repeats. “Please. I need…. Please, mommy.”

“Poor horny pup,” Stratt sighs. “Can’t even tell me what he wants.”

Grace whines. “Mommy. Stratt. Please.” 

She tilts her head. ”Don’t you want to be good for me, Grace?”

God. Grace wants nothing more. 

“Yes. I do. I wanna be good for you.” He nuzzles up against her thigh, presses a kiss against her flushed skin, whimpers when she runs a hand through his hair then tugs. “I wanna be your good boy. I wanna make you feel good, feel proud of me. I wan—“

”Good boys say what they want or else they don’t get it.”

Grace breathes hotly on her skin. That does something to him. He needs to please her, needs to be a good boy for her. It’s not even about what he wants anymore. His eyes, half-lidded, flash with the enormity of his desire.

“I wanna be inside of you. Want to fuck you. Please. Please let me. I need it. I’ll do anything. Do anything you want. I’ll bark for you. Please. Please, I need you.”

“There you go,” Stratt sighs. “Good boy. Telling mommy what you want. Very good boy!”

She makes him feel so warm. So fuzzy. His cock twitches against his jeans. The friction makes him bite his lips to keep from groaning.

“I can?” He asks. “I can?”

”Aw,” she sighs, “no, puppy. Not yet.” Yet, yet, yet, yet, yet. “You have to earn it first.”

”How?” Grace is quick to reply, and he feels a bit embarrassed by his obvious eagerness, but he’s the most desperate he’s ever been, and none of that matters anymore— not shame, not humiliation. “How do I earn it? Please. I’ll do anything, anything at all—“

Stratt shushes him gently. Slowly, she sits up until she’s towering over Grace, and her hand, still in his hair, tugs again, sharper. Grace groans, and under her gaze, he leans forward and presses a kiss on her pussy. Soft. Chaste. Stratt huffs a laugh. She lets go of his hair with an affectionate shake of her head. 

“Sit down,” she commands, and Grace, on his knees, lowers himself. “All the way. That’s right. Good doggy. Get on the floor for me. Get on the floor for me and bark.”

Grace sits, kneeling, legs folded beneath him, back straight, hands on his lap, and he, like a good doggy, does it without question. 

“Woof,” Grace barks, flushing deeply. “Woof, woof, woof.”

She tells him to bark louder. He does. She laughs at him and he groans as his erection strains in his jeans.

She says, “Chase your tail.” 

Grace’s face turns entirely red. “Stratt….”

Her expression turns stern. “Do it.”

So he does. Gets on all fours and spins. Humiliating. Degrading. Dehumanizing. It shouldn’t get him as worked up as it does, but it does. This is him, surrendering control, surrendering thought, surrendering ego. This is him stripped down to the bare, animalistic desires of being owned, being wanted so much that his personhood becomes nothing more than a thing that needs to be trained out of him, being turned into Stratt’s perfect, obedient pet.

She hops off the table. Starts walking down a hallway.

”Follow me, doggy,” she calls back. “Stay on the floor.”

She does not turn back to confirm he’s following. She knows he is.

He follows her to her bedroom, his knees and palms undoubtedly pink, and when he gets there, he finds that she has stripped, and she’s now laying on her sheets, spreading lube over her already-slick opening. Grace whimpers, and she stares at him, nodding in encouragement for him to join her on the bed. He does.

”Strip for me,” she commands. 

Again, he does, and when his cock springs free from the confines of clothes, she teases him about the puddle in his boxers and the precum dripping freely from his tip. Grace whines in return.

“Tell me what you want,” Stratt says. 

It takes a second for words to return to Grace — it’s difficult for dogs to think — but he lets her know what he wants as soon as it comes to him.

”I wanna kiss you.”

The smile she graces him with is so fond, so affectionate, that Grace nearly melts with it. She gestures at him to come on top of her, and when he does, she wraps an arm around his neck, leans upwards, and captures his lips into a deep and passionate kiss, lips soft against each other, tongues entwined. She tastes herself through this kiss and smiles.

”What else do you want, puppy?”

Grace’s mind is hazy through the fog of desire and submission. He shakes his head, eyes pleading. “I want you to tell me what to do. I don’t want to think.”

“God,” Stratt sighs. “You’re perfect.”

Grace breathes shakily with want. He lets his head fall against her shoulder, and she laughs, fingernails scratching soothingly at his nape, cooing, “My perfect boy. Just wants to be a good, dumb doggy. Hardly even a man.”

His cock leaks against her stomach. Her warm hand wraps around it. And slowly, she guides him to the core of her, and the lubed head of his cock settles just against her opening. He groans.

”Please. Please. Can I— Can I…?”

Stratt laughs again. “Let me see your face, puppy. Head up. Good boy. Good boy. You can.”

He pushes in, eyes screwing shut with pleasure as he immerses himself into the warmth of her, and he can feel her attentive look, can feel her eyes on him. He must be a sight.

“Oh, God,” Stratt moans. “Oh, God.” 

Afterwards, they lie together naked. Stratt settles on Grace’s chest, tracing nothing-shapes on his skin with the tip of her finger. A circle. A triangle. A star. A heart. A heart. A heart. Grace says nothing about it. He thinks she might stop if he brings it up.

The quiet intimacy of the moment is nice, and even nicer is the fact that neither has to feel like this intimacy is unwelcome, that it is an overstepping of the boundaries of their arrangement, because there is no arrangement anymore, just existence and the allowance of… this. Whatever this is. Softer than sex, harder than a friendly conversation. L… Like. Allowance of… liking.

Anyway.

Stratt on his chest is nice. The way her copper hair spreads against his chest is nice. Her high-thread-count sheets and silk pillowcases feel nice. The way the room smells like her, rich and gourmandy, is really nice. The moment is…

”Nice,” Grace says. “This is nice. Being here with you.”

”Yeah?” She hums.

”Yeah,” Grace confirms.

“That’s good,” She sighs, satisfaction overflowing out of her, and she relaxes even deeper against his chest.

Grace presses a kiss on her forehead. She lets out another satisfied sigh, and then dissolves into soft laughter. 

Grace chuckles along just at the sound and asks, “What? What’s funny.”

”Nothing,” she answers. “Just… I don’t remember the last time anybody’s ever been in my apartment. This must ruin so much of my image with you.”

Grace laughs, jostling her with the rise and fall of his chest. “It’s really not that bad. Just a lot of clutter is all.”

“Grace, I’m literally staring at three empty Red Bull cans on my dusty windowsill right now.”

”I didn’t notice until you pointed it out,” he shrugs in response. 

She snorts.

“Point is,” she stresses, “I think you’re the only person who’s ever seen me like this.”

“Unguarded?” Grace questions. “Unfiltered? Candid?”

”I was thinking more… messy.” Stratt traces a swirl around his bellybutton then drags her finger down his happy trail. “But all those work, too.”

Grace closes his eyes, admits, ”It’s nice to see this side of you. Makes this feel more real. Like it’s not just in my head. Like there’s an ‘Eva’ to the ‘Stratt’, y’know?” 

“It’s always been real,” shrugs Stratt. “But I get what you mean.” A brief pause. And then, “Does ‘Eva’ impress you?”

Grace smiles sweetly. “You always do.”

”Hm.” Another silence. This one stretches longer before being disturbed again. “And who is the ‘Ryland’ behind the ‘Grace’?”

Grace makes a noncommittal noise. “You’re looking at him.”

“Can’t be,” says Stratt. “There must be more.”

Grace rolls his eyes. “Here you go again about my potential.”

”I don’t even mean that.”

”What do you mean?”

”I mean, who were you before you met me?”

And that gets him thinking.

Who was he before her? A humble New York businessman walking down midtown Manhattan, wired earbuds in listening to Pale Blue Eyes by The Velvet Underground on his way to meet with Mr. Yáo’s real estate agent to work out buying the California oceanfront mansion. A humble New York businessman with severe imposter syndrome because this could not be further from the life he envisioned for himself. 

And before that, who was he? 

“My mom was an elementary school teacher,” Grace starts. “My dad was an EMT. We lived in Long Island. Have you ever been?”

”I’ve never even been to New York.”

”Well, Long Island is an island, but long.”

Stratt laughs. ”Okay.”

”Anyway,” Grace grins, “my parents were really big into nature and all that stuff. They’d take me on walks by the beach, see the tide pools, flip upside down horseshoe crabs to be right side up. That kind of thing.”

”Little Grace got his shoes muddy?” Teases Stratt.

”And his waders,” adds Grace. “We had a cabin up at the Adirondacks.”

”Can’t say I even know what it is.”

”It’s a mountain range in New York. Little baby one.”

”Ah.”

”Anyway. Our cabin was next to this little lake. My dad would take me out there fishing during the day, and during the night, we’d all sit together with this telescope I got on my twelfth birthday and stargaze.” 

Grace smiles at the memory fondly.

Stratt asks, “So you’ve always had a soft spot for the stars?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Grace shrugs. “But if you’re asking me where little Ryland’s love for astrobiology came from, I’d have to tell you about David Bowie.”

“Go on, then.”

”Winter of 2008, Long Island. The stock market had just crashed and we had just bought the cabin. Parents were arguing a lot about finances. I was six, oblivious to any of this, and discovering David Bowie. I liked Moonage Daydream. Really dug his space motif. When Life on Mars graced my ears… God. Is there life on Mars? I really wanted to know. I’ve always had an appreciation for life on Earth, y’know? Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was more out there?“

Stratt looks at him fondly. “That’s very sweet.”

“My parents thought so, too. Dressed me up as Bowie for Halloween one year. They’d put on space documentaries for me. Got me into Star Wars and Star Trek, bought all the astrobiology books a boy could ask for.”

“They sound kind,” Stratt says.

”Yeah, they were,” Grace sighs. “They died almost six years ago now. Careened off the road driving back home from a date. I was freshly eighteen. Left me with everything and nothing all at once.  We had just celebrated my admittance into NYU.”

Stratt pats him soothingly. Grace looks up at the ceiling. Closes his eyes. A small, respectful silence blankets them. Then it passes.

”Sometimes I wonder if they’d be proud of me,” he confesses.

Stratt stares at him, long and hard. 

“You’re their son,” she says. “Of course they’d be proud of you. As long as you’re happy they’d be proud of you.”

Grace gives her a thankful smile. Laughs a bit, emotional. Shakes his head. 

“And you?” He asks, switching the subject. “Tell me about you.”

Stratt blinks.

She stays silent for a while, thinking, before she begins, words slow and deliberate “My mother is a professor in the Netherlands. She teaches religious studies. I guess you could call her a theologian, or a philosopher. My father is a litigator. He lives in Germany.”

Dutch and German, Grace notes. Explains her accent.

”I did my schooling in Amsterdam with my mother, and spent my Summers with my father. Holidays, like Christmas, I preferred to spend in Amsterdam, unless there was something expensive I wanted that year that my mother thought was insensible to buy, like a new phone or, once, a smart board. Then, I would take the train to Hamburg and ask my father for it instead.”

”You little opportunist,” teases Grace. 

”My mother didn’t mind,” smiles Stratt. “She liked to spend Winter breaks catching up on university work or writing about God. And my father had money to spare for a daughter eager to follow in his footsteps.”

Grace questions, ”So the lawyer thing is because of your dad?”

“Well. It’s because of the both of them, I suppose.” Her eyes twinkle like remnants from childhood mischief. “They both brought me up arguing.”

Grace laughs. Stratt smiles and continues.

“My mother raised me on philosophy books. We started, of course, with the pre-socratics, and then we moved on from there, George Russell style. What is ethics, what is morality, what is justice, what is any of it?”

”Ah, so you’ve always been too smart for me,” Grace laughs.

Stratt smiles. “How could I grow up to be anything but smart, with a professor for a mother?”

Grace rolls his eyes with endearment. “Fair enough.”

”Anyway. She tried very hard to get me into theology as well — I remember when I was six, my bedtime stories about tortoises and hares were suddenly replaced with Theologica — but I was always more interested in Locke and Rousseau and the like. Law and politics. My father saw this and took me under his wing. Started bringing me to his office, slowly feeding me law terms, then he’d take me to the courthouse. ‘Eva, here is where the judge sits. Over there, the jury. The defendant would sit right there, and next to him, the lawyer. Me.’ He was very proud about it all. I understand why.”

”Makes sense why you’re so serious all the time,” comments Grace. “A theologian and a lawyer for parents. What a combination.”

Stratt huffs a laugh. 

“Yes, well. Neither were too fond of the idea of me moving out of Europe when I entered college. You should’ve seen it when my college acceptance letters arrived in the mail, how chaotic my mother’s house became. Father flew in harrumphing about my acceptance to Oxford. ‘Eva! The UK is too far!’ Imagine the next week when I told them I’d be going to the States instead.”

Grace lets out a nervous chuckle. “And what would they think about you going out with a dumb American boy?”

Stratt gives him a knowing look. She presses a kiss onto his lips. 

“You’re not dumb,” she says. “And it wouldn’t matter what they thought. Doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. You like me, yes?”

Grace looks at her like, Come on. “I haven’t made it apparent enough?”

Stratt rolls her eyes. “That’s my point. People love to question whether or not they should do something, whether or not they should have something. ‘Is it practical, will it take work, do I deserve it?’ Doesn’t matter. None of that matters. Do you want it? That’s what matters.”

This means something. Grace pockets it for later.

He yawns for now. Stratt tells him to stay the night. He nods. And she shifts in the sheets, shifts against skin, and then reaches over to the nightstand to turn off the lamp.

“Goodnight, Ryland,” she says.

In the darkness of the room, Grace grins. 

He sighs, closes his eyes with a sleepy satisfaction, and returns, “Goodnight, Eva.” 

Stratt is busy with school and work the week after the night at her apartment, so Grace spends the following week mostly in lonesome contemplation, considering the shift in his relationship with Stratt as well as pondering their conversation on her bed.

As long as you’re happy…. Do you want it….

Is he happy? What does he want?

Of course, he’s happy with her. Happy to be with her, happy knowing that they are important to each other. But beyond her, Grace confuses happiness with monotony. 

He spends his mornings in Mr. Yáo’s home, talking with the cleaners, the gardeners, the pool men. Schedules when the hedges need to be trimmed with careful thought— it’s, like, a whole operation when the hedges get trimmed, costs easily fifteen thousand dollars, considering the hedges are like twenty feet tall and line the entire property. Midday, he spends processing payroll for house staff and Mr. Yáo’s personal assistants, then he touches base with house staff in Mr. Yáo’s Manhattan property, then the Milan property, then the London property, so on and so forth.

His bi-weekly paycheck hits his bank account during his break for lunch. Nearly ten thousand dollars. So much money he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He finishes up his work for the day then spends the evening continuing to think himself into a mild headache. 

Is he happy? What does he want?

Stratt makes it all look so easy, knowing what to want, being confident in it. She works, probably harder than he does, with a goal in mind. And he does his duties like a good boy and collects bills just to put them in savings. 

He could get a new car, a luxury one, but he was never really one for cars like that. He could start looking for bigger apartments, maybe a house, but the thought of having a large living space all to himself makes him feel queasy. Plus, his lease isn’t up for another six months. He could buy Stratt a gift, but they haven’t quite established a boundary for what is an acceptable gift and what’s too much yet, and Grace is not keen on crossing the line before it’s even been drawn. He could buy a watch, or a suit, or shoes. But he’s got all those things already— curse his parents for raising him to be so unmaterialistic.

So again, is he happy? And what does he want?

He could buy a book on stars. A telescope. A one hundred and fifty dollar online application. 

Grace buys takeout then drives over to Stratt’s apartment where he eats on her cleared coffee table while she practices courtroom arguments on the couch. He watches her with chow mein in his mouth as she rehearses arguments and defenses, and he wonders about the last time he was ever that passionate about anything. 

It was probably when he was still in university, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, reading Planetary Sciences by Imke de Pater for his class, writing essays about Jupiter’s moons, proudly getting a C in Organic Chemistry I, getting excited about the Biology classes he enrolled in for the next semester, getting excited for his plan to go into academia, study stars and life among them forever. 

Is he happy? What does he want? 

Grace suppresses a groan. Sighs instead. He taps Stratt’s thigh. She stops her rehearsing and arches a brow.

”Can I borrow your laptop?” He asks her. 

“Why?”

”I left mine at home.”

”No, why do you need it? Idiot.”

Grace shrugs nonchalantly. “Need to research master’s programs I might apply for in the Fall.” 

Stratt’s eyes widen with shock. 

“Oh,” she says. And then, slowly, as if speaking to an animal that could be easily spooked, “That’s great, Grace.”

Grace stares at her expectantly. 

She clears her throat.

“Yeah, uh, yes. It’s in my work bag.”

When Stratt’s school and work quiets down, she invites him to come with her to an arcade bar and grill in Downtown, one of those nostalgic little places with arcade games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders or pinball machines which all only take quarters. It’s packed because it’s “Free Play Friday,” but Stratt’s apparently some sort of a regular here because one of the waitresses walking around makes sure to sit the both of them at a booth before they even talk to the hostess.

They both order burgers. Stratt asks if he's put any more thought about where he might apply, and Grace gives a noncommittal shrug and tells her some of the universities he's considering. None of them are too local, and a lot of them are out of state. Stratt says nothing about this. Neither does Grace. 

He asks her how school is going. She copies his noncommittal shrug and drawls, “Oh, you know. It’s going,” and she grins around her straw and says, “God, I can’t wait for this year to be done,” and Grace snorts because, for all her show of being stressed and tired of law school, she really clearly loves it.

They walk around the games when they finish eating, letting the quarter machine eat up Grace’s small bills so he can suck shit at pinball and Stratt can whoop him in Pop-A-Shot, and when a basketball bounces particular high after hitting the backboard and bonks Grace right on the head, Stratt laughs until no sound comes out, and it’s so stupid, but what’s even more stupid is how light and airy and happy Grace feels.

Stratt calms herself after three minutes of laughter, not looking even the least bit sorry or concerned, and Grace shakes his head fondly, takes her by the waist, and kisses her deep. 

The days pass. They continue going out. Continue seeing each other. Continue this routine of easy affection, walking up and down the beach boardwalk together, kissing in public, doing more in private. It’s bliss, domestic bliss.

One morning, Stratt wakes Grace up with sleepy kisses from his clavicles to his cheek. She is warm against him, wrapped up in white sheets, and the morning is early coos of pigeons sounding outside Stratt’s windows, accompanied by the occasional honk of morning traffic.

”Grace,” she whispers softly. “Grace.”

Grace can only manage sleepy grumbles in return.

”Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace—“

”Yes, Eva?” He groans.

”Hi.”

”Hi, Eva.”

She laughs. He smiles with his eyes closed. She presses another kiss onto his cheek.

”In two weeks, I have my finals, Grace.”

”I hope you do very good in them,” Grace mumbles.

”I won’t be able to be with you as much. Go out on dates with you, text you, call. If you ask me to stay at the night at yours, I’ll say no. It’s important to me that you’ll be okay with that.”

”’Course I will be.”

”Do you promise?”

Grace peeks one eye open. She’s staring at him with a very serious, very cute expression. 

“Give me one ‘Good morning’ when you wake up and one ‘Goodnight’ in the when you sleep,” he says. “Can you do that?”

She nods. “I’ll try.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about,” Grace yawns. And he stretches. And he heaves himself up, and he tries not to preen too much when he notices Stratt’s eyes running over his physique. “I’ll go make you coffee.”

And so the days pass by in received “Good morning’s” and “Goodnight’s” with sparing conversations in between. “How are you’s” met with “Busy’s”, “I miss you’s” liked and replied to with “I miss you too’s.” Occasional pictures of Grace’s day, sitting in front of his laptop or office or in their café, and Stratt responding with pictures of her living room, looking like a hurricane of paper and coffee mugs, laptop or iPad opened to full pages of notes.

It’s not so bad at first. 

It is boring to live life without Stratt. In his free time, Grace imagines what his life would be if he never met her at all, and he can’t even fathom it. This is pretty funny considering she’d only recently come into his life in the first place.

In such a small amount of time, she’s cemented herself as one of the most important people he’s ever known, and now to imagine of a life without her is impossible. It’s as if a piece of him has been missing his entire life and he only figured it out when she came around to fill it, and an absence which meant nothing to him before is so apparent and uncomfortable now.

He doesn’t express any of these musings to her, because 1) she’s too busy to deal with any of that right now, and 2) it’s a little bit of a lot. He just waits for the morning and the night, just sends pictures in between. 

On rare occasions, she allows him to come by her apartment with pastries and drinks from the café in hand, and they don’t fuck — she’s too tired to, or just isn’t in the mood — but she lies on top of him, not talking, and sleeps.

It makes Grace feel good, feel useful.

And then the days pass, her exams grow nearer, and she grows busier. 

The morning and night texts are dependable but brief. The conversations in between grow to near nonexistent.

And it is misery but it is manageable. 

She texts him good morning. She texts him goodnight. She says I miss you. She leaves hearts on his pictures of a cute dog he saw on his morning run today, the sandwich he’s having for lunch, him flexing in front of the mirror at his gym. She replies, “You look cute, I’m sorry I’m so busy,” and he likes the text and sends back, “no worries.”

It’s all right. Grace comes over after she’s finished studying one night with a bag of takeout in hand. She looks tired when she opens the door, but there is endearment in her eyes. 

“Hey,” she says. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

”I know. Sorry. I figured you might want food. I know you’ve been too busy to cook, and I can’t in good conscience let you survive on Kraft mac and cheese.” 

She huffs a laugh. Lets him in. They eat on her dining room table. Grace tries not to get hard thinking about the other things he’s eaten on this table. And just before they both finish their meals, Stratt seems to steel herself, and she says, “I would offer to let you stay the night tonight, Grace, but… I have a really strict schedule to follow, and I just need some time away from you to get all the stuff I need to do done.”

Grace blinks. 

“Oh,” he startles. “I don’t mean to, err… distract you… if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Stratt softens. She cups Grace’s face with one hand, thumb running over the stubble on his jaw.

”In the most complimentary way, Grace, your presence is distracting enough, and I don’t trust myself to hold back.”

That sounds nice. The way she rejects him sounds nice. But at the end of the day, it is still a rejection. No, you cannot stay. No, you must leave. Grace tries to hold back his disappointment. Fails. And she notices, she must. She chews on her lip but says nothing. Perhaps she sees no point in it. They both know he needs to go home tonight. 

He nods and says, “Yeah, okay.”

And then a week passes. And then she stops texting. Stops responding. Leaves him on delivered, or worse, leaves him with reacts. A like, a smiley face, a thumbs up. 

The first time she forgets to say her good mornings and goodnights, he gives her grace, doesn’t bring it up. He knows she’s exhausted, he knows she stays studying until she’s near passing out. He tries to distract him with his own work, tries not to bother her with his neediness, but the next day rolls around with no reply, and Grace knows she’s busy, knows she’s spent, but he can’t help but feel slightly betrayed, slightly discarded, can’t help but type, “helloooo am i an ancient relic lost to the sands of time or something?????” 

He doesn’t send it, of course, but he really wants to.

The next day, he sends instead, “Hey, good morning, remember?”

She replies late in the afternoon, “Shoot sorry. Swamped.”

And it keeps going on.

He brings coffee over to her apartment. She opens the door with a tired annoyance. “Grace, I can’t right now.”

”I’ll sit in the kitchen. Won’t even bother you. Just wanted to bring you coffee.”

”Grace, please.” 

”… Okay. All right. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

”Thank you,” she sighs. She kisses him chastely on the lips, and takes both of the coffees in his hands. “And thanks for the drinks.”

The door shuts.

And it’s misery, unmanageable.

The next week brings a Stratt who's not only back to normal but a Stratt who is happy and at peace. Her exams are done, the school year is done, and anxious as she is to receive her grades, she glows with satisfaction and self assurance, which is to say, Grace should feel normal, too. But he doesn't. 

Two weeks of absence. It shouldn’t seem like a lot. He shouldn’t be so affected. But he is, and while she’s laughing and smiling in a Barnes and Noble, pointing out stupid book covers, he’s standing silently beside her stewing. 

Two weeks of absence. What is it compared to months of joy in her presence? A pale blue dot against a yellow backdrop, so small it’s nearly inconsequential? Or a nickel-sized black hole? Two weeks of resentment. What’s two weeks of resentment capable of to a young and budding relationship? A lot, apparently.

Stratt bumps his shoulder with hers. She fixes him with a knowing look, but for all her noticing, she doesn’t seem to understand.

”What’s wrong?”

Grace shakes his head. “Nothing.”

But it weighs on him over the Summer, during their coffee dates and movie nights in, when she’s snuggled up against the crook of his armpit or when her shoes are tapping against his under the table. It weighs on him, how easily she can give affection then take it away, how she is soft one moment, cooing “Good boy” in his ears as she gives gentle instruction on how he should touch himself, how she is cold in the next, rushing to work early in the morning, forgetting to give him even a chaste kiss goodbye. It weighs on him, like a heavy stone strapped onto his chest as he wades into a lake, or a promised conversation that was never had.

And Grace briefly suspects that she’s doing it on purpose— feeding him seed after seed before yanking the whole, ripened pomegranate away, or scratching him right behind the ear before she kicks him to the side.

But upon further reflection, Grace decides that this pattern of giving and taking, attention then neglect, can’t be purposeful, can’t be deliberate, because he knows, above all else, that she does like him, does care for him, at the very least enough so as to not construct these elaborate ways to hurt him. 

This is not her, consciously torturing him. This is her, sincerely forgetting his existence sometimes. 

Grace does not know which he would rather it have been. 

He tries to take his mind off it. Tries to enjoy their moments together.

He buys her ice cream on the boardwalk, rents bikes so they can bike down the beach promenade. He takes her to the amusement park, takes pictures with her in every photo booth they see, makes sure to kiss when the camera flashes then act surprised when he sees the strip. He fucks her, fast, slow, whichever way she wants it, whimpering into her neck as she coaxes him to orgasm, and he lets her take care of him after. He takes her to dinners, fancy and casual, and he kisses up her thighs when they get home afterwards as if he is still starving for more— and he is. 

But in the middle of all of these golden moments with her, the anxiety over when she will next abandon him looms over Grace, like vultures flying overhead, slowly swooping lower and lower until they finally close in on him on Stratt’s bed, unmoving, weary, still.

“Do you like me?” Grace asks her.

Stratt laughs. “Of course I do.”

“No,” Grace shakes his head seriously. “Do you like-like me?”

Beside him, Stratt stiffens. The world goes silent, but his heart is drumming so hard against his chest that it doesn’t matter. She turns to face him, face unreadable. Her lips part slightly. No words come out. Again, silence.

And then— 

“Yes,” Stratt decides. 

And Grace lets it fill him as much as it can. He finds himself still half-empty. 

“Do you always?” He continues. “Or just when you remember to?”

He watches her face fall from confusion to hurt and feels guilty almost immediately. He runs a hand over his face and says, “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

The hurt on Stratt’s face doesn’t go away. Her brows knit together tightly.

And he expects her to get angry — almost wants her to, if he’s being honest — but when she eventually speaks, she does not explode or accuse or admonish. She just exhales sadly, “I’m trying my best.”

So then it’s Grace’s turn to be without words.

”I… I…,” Stratt struggles. “I like you always. I swear. But I can’t express it always. My mind is in ten different places at once, even though my heart is with you. And it’s unfair to you— I know it is. But that’s just how it is.”

“I need more from you,” Grace says. “It weighs on me.”

Stratt looks away. “I can’t promise more.” And then, “Does it hurt you?”

Grace blinks at the ceiling. “Yes.”

She nods. “It hurts me, too.”

A silence. Then, “Where do we go on from here? What are we going to do now?”

Grace sighs. 

“What we always do?” He suggests with a bitter laugh. “Save it for a later that never comes?”

Stratt smiles sadly. “I think this is it arriving, Grace.”

Huh. It’s calmer than he expected.

They move to the living room and sit cross-legged on opposite sides of the couch, facing each other. Stratt has a cup of coffee warming her hands and Grace fidgets with a small toy. The vibe they are trying to cultivate is rational and levelheaded, practical and sensible.

“I have two more years of law school,” Stratt says. “I will be busy for far longer than that.”

”We’ve only been dating for a couple months,” Grace adds tiredly. 

Stratt nods. “Realistically, you will move away next year, and then you’ll be gone for two years, and all these fissures in our relationship will, undoubtedly, turn into… what’s the word?”

”Chasms?” Grace suggests. “Rifts?”

”Yes, those.”

They stare at each other long and hard.

So it’s impractical. So it’s not feasible. So the rational, levelheaded thing to do is to break away from each other before it hurts too much to leave. So the thought of that already hurts quite terribly. So…. Well, so what?

“I want this to work,” Grace admits. And did he really need to admit it? Was it not already known?

Stratt nods again. “So do I.” 

She takes a long sip of her coffee then looks to the ground.

“It’s not working,” she points out.

”I know,” Grace breathes.

And then they’re back where they began— So what?

“We can try again,” Grace suggests. “Hello, my name is Grace, you’re very beautiful, can I get your number?”

Stratt laughs, but it doesn’t quite sound right. “And end back up where we started? Hey, I’m Stratt, you seem like you need a relationship with an emotionally available partner. I don’t have the capacity to give you the attention you deserve, and my number is eight-five-eight—“

”Fine,” Grace rolls his eyes. “Fine, not that. Don’t see you coming up with suggestions.”

A small pause.

A moment of uncertainty on top of all the uncertainty already present. 

”We could ride this thing out,” Stratt shrugs, abandoning rationality with a flip of her hair, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t go against her very nature, like she’s not basically suggesting continuing along this path of destruction. “Who cares if it’s not working? Maybe if we just keep going, it’ll end up working itself out.”

That might be the stupidest idea Grace has ever heard. And stranger, it is so unlike her to suggest. 

Arguments like this don’t just work themselves out. Either both parties compromise — and seeing how this has played out already, it’s impossible for Grace to believe either of them are willing or able to do this — or one acquiesces and abandons themselves to fit the other’s desire — equally unsatisfactory. 

But it is appealing.

It is appealing because to say “Yes, let’s do that, let’s invest more time and effort into this doomed-to-fail relationship hoping it simply won’t fail” is to say “I don’t care, I don’t care, fuck all the consequences, damn to it all, I want this, I want you, I do.”

Grace swallows around the lump in his throat. He wants to say yes. 

They’ve done all this before. I will not prioritize you over my work. You'll resent me for it. Maybe. You will prioritize me over everything. I'll resent you for it. Maybe. What? Will they just keep doing this? Keep fighting on and on about the same thing without changing, accumulating more resentment each time until they crumble under all this weight? 

He wants to say yes. 

He says, “No.” 

Stratt understands. She looks disappointed but nods resolutely.

And again— So what?

“I love you,” Grace manages.

Stratt blinks at him, and then, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, she replies, “I love you, too.”

It’s the first time they’ve ever said it.

So what?

They know each other best. They love each other most. But compromise doesn’t seem like something they are capable of. Unstoppable force meets immovable object.

(If this was a movie, they’d be in the rain, and she’d be crying, yelling over the gusts of wind, It will hurt!

And he would reply, How do you know that?! And it would sound angry to untrained ears, but she would see it for what it is— a plead.Tell me, please, how you are so certain. Tell me, please, how you know. How could you possibly know that?

Look at us, Grace. She would spread her arms at her sides, as if presenting herself. It already has.

Grace would falter. Wouldn’t be able to look at her, couldn’t bear it, would look away. He’d be cold and wet and tired. He wouldn’t want to fight anymore, wouldn’t want to lose anymore. 

We're heading in opposite directions, Grace, she would sigh. She’d step towards him, clearing the ocean of separation between them, and she’d take him by the hand, cold palms in cold palms. The rain would pelt hard against her face, and she’d bravely blink through it. That's okay.

And there she’d be, the love of his life, pale and redheaded, perfect and beautiful, standing in front of him soaked by the rain, saying, You can change, you can change. You can go away from me, smiling bravely even as the rims of her eyes redden, even as her chin starts to dimple. 

And Grace would kiss her. And he’d say, Nothing is okay without you. 

And the movie would end there and everything would be fixed. 

But this is not a movie. This is reality. So what?)

So Stratt sighs deeply. 

“Let’s break up.”

The next couple days are spent in a dreamlike haze. 

Wake up. Work. Go to sleep. Wake up. Feel gutted at work. Go to sleep. Wake up. Stare at her contact in his phone. Work. Go to sleep. Wake up. Research graduate programs. Pick his top six and two he’s confident he’ll be admitted into. Go to sleep. Wake up thinking of red hair, of freckles. Work. He picks Mr. Yáo’s niece up from the airport. She’s wearing herperfume— gourmand and cashmeran, rich and sweet. Go home. Try to jerk off. Be too devastated to cum. Spend three hours at the gym thinking of her the entire time. Short, slender, soft, saying “Get on the floor and bark”. Get hard at the gym. Go home again. Successfully cum. Go to sleep. Get up groggy. Work. Almost call her. Smoke a cigarette, smoke a cigarette, smoke a cigarette. He doesn’t even like cigarettes. Try to sleep. Fail. Run five miles in the dark. It’s not enough.

It takes a while for him to process that this is his reality now— he loved and he lost and now this is his life. After months of her presence, he now has to live with her absence, which is a presence of its own. It takes a while for him to process. Takes longer for him to accept.

At any point during his days, Grace starts trying to think of excuses to see her again. 

She still has one of his college shirts. He could text her and ask for it back. But that would be unfair to her. He’s sure she’s also going through the same thing, trying to get over him. Who is he to erase the progress she’s made? 

By week two, it is unbearable. By week two, he wishes they’d simply never met, wishes he could’ve avoided this heartache altogether. He shuts in. Doesn’t leave his apartment unless it’s for work or to work out. Postmates his groceries, watches reruns of The Big Bang Theory. He listens to Eliot Smith at the gym — which, yikes — and at home he stares out his big windows to the uncaring, glimmering sea. He pines. He finally processes enough to be able to cry. He cries. 

Week three, Grace spends building his brag sheet and emailing his old professors for letters of recommendation, the ones whose labs he worked in, the ones he knows would remember him. He asks Mr. Yáo for one too. Two years absence from academia is two years too long, but his resumé is, at the very least, impressive enough to be considered, thank the tenacity and drive of his younger self for being involved in so many research opportunities and maintaining a strong 3.8 GPA (fuck you, Organic Chemistry).He’s credited in two publications related to Astrobiology and three in Biology and Biochemistry for that odd Summer after freshman year he spent taking care of lizards for Brock Lab and doing enzyme research at Liu Lab. 

He’s still devastated about Stratt. He does it all devastated.

So a month goes by. It’s not enough. How could a month erase all those memories? Erase the attachment? He thinks about her all the time. It doesn’t get better. 

And then it’s midnight, and it’s raining hard outside, making the big glass windows look like one vertical, rippling puddle. High beams cut across the window for a moment before turning off. 

And Grace’s doorbell rings. He is already awake, already ten paces away from the door in the kitchen, making himself a late night peanut butter and jelly sandwich, trying to power through excel sheets with Latitude365 split-screened on his laptop. 

The doorbell rings and he opens it in three seconds.

And it’s her. Wearing his t-shirt, soaked to the bone, leaving a puddle on his doorstep, short and shaking from cold or adrenaline. 

“I want it,” she says, before he can even say anything, and maybe it’s for the best, because he doesn’t know what he would have even said. Probably something stupid. “I don’t care if it’s impractical. I don’t care if it will take work. I don’t even care if I deserve it. I want it. I want you.” 

Grace stares. She forges on, gesturing wildly with her hands

“I don’t know what’ll happen in the next year. I don’t even know what will happen in the next minute. I don’t care. We’ll get there when we get there, and I’m promising you now, I’ll do whatever it takes to get there with you. I… I…. God, do I really have to say it?”

Grace nods, teary eyed. Stratt smiles at him nervously.

”I love you,” she declares. “I love you, and I will make this work. I love you, Grace, I love you Ryland, I lo—“

“You are so dramatic,” Grace laughs, a river of tears and snot streaming down his face. 

He rushes to hold her against his chest. She melts into him easily. 

A peal of thunder sounds, like applause. 

“I love you, too.”

So the Summer resumes happily.

They lounge languidly against each other on lazy afternoons. She kisses him before she goes to work, she kisses him goodnight, she tells him gently when he’s stressing her out, he backs off and gives her space.

They set boundaries. Don’t bother Stratt when she’s doing her research for her job (with exceptions), have at least an hour of dedicated Grace time set aside in between researching (with exceptions). Don’t procrastinate big conversations, don’t stew on things. Stuff like that. Because the hallmark of a good and healthy relationship, as it turns out, is mutual respect and communication. Who’d have thought?

Anyway.

She helps revise his application essays. He washes her mugs. She whispers those three beautiful words in his ears when he cums inside of her. He whimpers it back, convulsing. 

They both take time off from their jobs so he can take her to New York for a week just before her second year of law school starts. 

They stay in his childhood home in Long Island and he makes sure to get all the touristy stuff — seeing the Statue of Liberty, going to Time’s Square, watching a play in Broadway, strolling through Central Park and the museums — done the the first three days so they can spend the remaining four in the cabin. He points out stars and constellations before wiping the dust off his childhood telescope and showing her Venus, Jupiter, Neptune. She mistakes a satellite for a star and he laughs so hard at her insistence that she’s right even as the satellite cuts across the sky (“Must be a shooting star, then!”) that his sides start to hurt. 

When her school starts back up again, they are prepared and secure, respectful and communicative. She gets snappy with him sometimes, and he gets needy. But they resolve their fights with sincere apologies, with attentive conversation, and it’s okay.

She makes sure to carve out time from work and studying to be there with him when he sends out his applications, sharing stories of how terribly nervous she was when she was applying to law schools after passing the LSAT— “I vomited twice.” Grace does not vomit even once, but his hands do shake so uncontrollably that Stratt has to be the one to send them out.

They plan extensively about their futures. Stratt says she doesn’t realistically see herself moving out of California for years to come, and if she was ever to move anywhere, it would be back to Europe. Grace only applied to two in-state schools, and after getting his masters, he plans to get his doctorates. 

“So, long distance is definitely in our future,” he says. “Unless you’re planning on breaking up with me again next year.”

Stratt rolls her eyes. “We’ll make it work. We, like, sext all the time anyway.”

”It’s still obviously going to be different,” Grace huffs.

“I know, Captain Obvious. I’m joking.” She kisses his cheek. “But we really will make it work. Fly out to you every day if I need to.”

Grace snorts. “Yeah, you’d probably thrive in the time I’m away.”

She shakes her head with a scoff. “I’d miss you something fierce, idiot.”

They spend a week of Winter break in the Netherlands with Stratt’s mother and father. As expected, they are very serious people who are very wary about this blond American man standing beside their daughter, but Grace wins them over eventually with his inexplicable charm, his dead-parents sob story, his desire to pursue academia, and his (and he’s sure this matters far less than the other three) insane wealth at such a young age. 

He gets to see Stratt’s childhood bedroom, which is clean and neat and incredibly nerdy. She has a poster of One Direction up on her wall behind a small smart board, and Grace thinks to laugh about the drawn heart around Harry’s face, but it’s such low hanging fruit that he physically can’t bring himself to do it. 

”So you weren’t always leaving dirty mugs around,” he teases her instead.

Stratt rolls her eyes fondly. “Oh, I’m sure my mother cleaned those up after I moved away.”

He interviews for grad school. When they ask him about his gap years, Grace tells the truth he’s rehearsed with Stratt a million times— “I was taking a break to work and evaluate whether or not I wanted to continue pursuing Astrobiology. In the end, I decided I do. The break’s only given me the tools and resources I needed to succeed and sharpened my focus towards achieving this goal.”

He gets his decisions back during her spring break. She pops the pre-bought master’s-program-acceptance celebratory champagne in the middle of his kitchen and they whoop and holler around like madmen on New Year’s. Five rejections out of eight rejections. Doesn’t fucking matter— He’s going to Penn.

She drives with him from California to Pennsylvania for three days, because God knows he’s not going to spend the next two years of his life without a his truck. She tours the campus and helps him move his stuff into a small studio apartment. Just some of it. He leaves the rest with her in California. They have endless goodbye sex and make endless promises to call and text and make time for each other. 

And when comes time for her to leave, it is a very dramatic affair. Grace drives her to the airport and pays for parking to see her off at the terminal, and, already a mess of tears and snot, he hugs her weeping like a baby.

She laughs, emotional.

”You’ll see me in two months, Grace.”

”I want to go home with you,” Grace sobs.

She laughs again, reminding him, “You want to study aliens.”

”I don’t know what I was thinking. Let me drop out. I’ll miss you too much. I can’t do it.”

”You’re ridiculous. A year of waiting in anticipation to get into your dream school. You can’t back out now because you’ll miss me.”

Grace makes a show of gulping nervously.

“Don’t make me go back there,” he says.

She laughs. What an amazing sound. He commits it to memory. 

“I believe in you, Grace,” she says. And she leans up, captures his lips with hers, and kisses him deeply for as long as they can go without breathing, and when she pulls away, she is teary-eyed and smiling wide and beautiful. “I’ll see you in two months. I love you.”

Grace smiles at her fondly. “I love you, too.”