He laughed at this. “Sure. This – how shall we say – sturdy mother of two is a ho.”

“Sturdy? As in, Becky got fat?”

Sighing, he said, “We’re meeting for coffee at ten am Friday. Feel free to join us.”

“I don’t do gang bangs,” she said curtly. Her sarcasm was hurtful, she knew, but she sold it as light bickering, she thought. And if she was honest, maybe she didn’t trust Tony. His face took on a certain dreaminess when he talked about Rebekah, my high school girlfriend, looking like he’d just swallowed a spoonful of whipped cream.

“Did you two have actual sex?” Brett asked now. “Or was it just dick pics and BJs?” She dried the final plate and placed it on the stack of tacky-damp Franciscanware plates.

“Do you really want to hear this?” The way he asked, wearing the creamy expression, made her think she did not. “We did it constantly. Like four times a day. She wanted me all the time. I swear I had a blister on my dick for most of junior year.”

“Wow,” Brett said. “Well, until that summer.”

“Yeah.” His puffy jaw hardened.

The summer before senior year, Brett knew, Rebekah attended a house party in Chelan and slept with the captain of the track team. Brett said softly, “Maybe coffee isn’t such a hot idea, Blister Dick.”

He pulled the plug from the sink and stared at the swirl of sudsy water. “I wasn’t asking your permission.”

Brett decided to surprise Tony with lunch Friday, to make up for being a jerk about Rebekah, and also because she was curious to see him post-coffee date. (Later, too late, she would realize the folly of both thought processes.)

Tony was a consultant who worked short-term IT assignments around Seattle. He’d just started a gig in South Lake Union, the techy, bro-ed out neighborhood on the edge of downtown. Walking down Westlake Avenue, Brett cradled a Gladware packed with enchiladas and a side of beans and rice, fragrantly warm and wrapped in a cloth napkin. It was eleven-thirty as she passed the food trucks in the Terry Street parking lot, smelled spicy samosas and charred carne asada.

Double-checking the address on her phone, Brett entered a glass skyscraper and rode the elevator to the sixth floor. A man wearing a badge and a Bluetooth earpiece sat behind the shiny gray desk that bisected the lobby.

“Hi. I’m here to see Tony Ladorowski.” Brett held up the plastic container.

“Tony Ladorowski,” the man said, tapping his iPad. “Works for SDI Tech?”

“He’s on contract here. Through SalesMate.”

“So he doesn’t work for SDI.” The man pressed his lips together primly.

“I guess technically not,” she said. “Maybe he’s not back,” she said. Leading the witness. Alarmed suddenly, because what if Blister Dick wasn’t back yet from his non-date coffee date?

“Well technically, I can’t admit you into the secure area. I’ll have him paged. You can wait over there.” The guard tilted his head, indicating two metal-framed chairs in the corner.

“I’ll just text him,” she said.

“He’s been paged,” the man said.

He never blinked, Brett realized. The heavy-lidded eyes behind matte frames did not blink. She sighed, set the Gladware on one chair and stood beside the other. She leafed through an old Wired magazine. Music played, too soft to recognize but that she knew somehow was hip.

Minutes passed. People in expensive athleisure-wear went in and out, swiping their lanyards, ignoring the owlish man. Beside her the enchiladas cooled, the cheese congealed, the refried beans turned mealy. Where was Tony? She’d taken a long lunch to come down here.

She pulled out her phone to text him, then heard the elevator chime, and the dorky laugh she loved. She smiled as Tony strolled in with a stack of takeout containers, lunch obviously, chuckling at whatever the tall, slender Asian woman walking beside him was saying.

He saw Brett. His eye slid past her and then returned, taking an extra second to place her. Out of context, she told herself. Out of mind. “Brett? Honey?”

“Hi,” she said, embarrassed now. Add a prairie dress and braids down to her ass and her insecure wifey gambit would be complete. “Hey.”

“What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

The co-worker smiled politely, took one of the containers and oozed by on four-inch heels, swiping her card to enter the inner sanctum. (Really? Brett thought. She’d thought techies were hairy-legged girls with blue hair and Birkenstocks.)

“I just wanted to bring you lunch,” Brett said, knowing it wasn’t enough.

The owl-eyed man chose this moment to rise up behind the desk. “Everything alright?”

“Fine,” Tony said. “All good. This is my partner. Brett. Bringing me lunch.” He gallantly stacked the Gladware on the other containers. “Thank you, babe. What a surprise. I’ll just keep this takeout one for tomorrow.”

Willing him to stop talking, to just stop before she died of embarrassment, she said, “Well, okay,” and bolted for the elevators. As the doors closed, she saw Tony looking at her, confused, one arm curled protectively around his lunches.

After dinner, Brett washed her dishes and stood at the sink, staring at the townhouse opposite. The wall was a bluish-gray that could also seem purple or mauve, depending on the light and time of day.

Tony had texted her twice since she fled.

First: You ok? Lunch was delish, thank you babe

Then: Looks like we’re working late. Fukkkk consultant life. Be home soonish, with a GIF of a horse staring out an apartment window.

She hadn’t replied to either.

Refilling her wineglass, she went into her bedroom, plopped into her beanbag chair, and opened her laptop to Facebook Search.

Primo was the ex she still thought about, if she and Tony were fighting or in a weird place. He was a lean Puerto Rican, a skateboarder who worked at a fancy hotel on the East Side. They’d had a casual thing for about a year; they never discussed dating. She’d found sparkly fake nails in his bed more than once. He seemed uncapturable, a wild animal that would turn dull-eyed and listless if tamed.

You romanticized dickish behavior, she reminded herself. They’d never gone out during the day, never done anything besides drink in bars late at night and fuck. He loved eating pussy; sometimes she’d pretend to come, just to get his face out of her vagina. Still, seeing his photos made her heart race a little. Would she fuck him again? Maybe. With two condoms.

She searched for another ex, Luther, an artist, short and wiry, an unbearable braggart about his collages, renderings of himself in various stages of shirtlessness. He too had been hard to pin down. He’d weep after they had sex, curl up on his side moaning about trauma and intimacy. She’d met Tony about then, and his straightforwardness, his guileless smile, had made him seem like a visitor from another planet. Planet Notadouche.

Or did he just not have game, not know how to appear elusive, desirable, unavailable?

Nice guys grew boring but alternatively were liable to get snatched up by a co-worker or a high school ex. The players kept things interesting but if she was honest, the sex never was that great. Hot, yes, but she’d never felt confident with Primo or Luther. Or content. Each encounter had felt like a victory in a confusing, frontless war.

When Tony texted simply home, she closed her laptop, curled into the beanbag and closed her eyes. She heard the plop of his shoes on the doormat. The thunk of Gladware landing in the sink. Water running. They both had a thing about transit hands, the germs that came with a bus commute. Then a long, leisurely fart, also presumably held over from the bus.

Her bedroom door creaked open. She felt a twinge of annoyance. They kept separate bedrooms, were obliged to knock upon entering the other’s space. He didn’t speak and it was quiet for so long that she thought she’d misheard. So she rolled over on the beanbag, saw him standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light.

“Do you really not trust me?” he said quietly.

She sighed. “How was coffee?”

Now he shifted, leaned into the door. “It was fine, Brett. It was coffee.”

“Oh, good,” she said, too brightly.

“Stop being phony. It was uncomfortable as fuck. Her getting fat and boring made me think I was getting fat and boring. I was looking forward to it until you got weird about it.”

She struggled to rise from the beanbag. The surface was slippery and she couldn’t get a grip. “I got weird? You had sex constantly and she cheated on you with a guy with calves the size of cantaloupes. And what, you still needed to have coffee and validate yourself?”

He stood still, not moving to help her up. “Yeah. You’re right. I did. All of that.”

She slid off the beanbag, landing on her laptop. She looked up, panting a little. “Babe, lunch was a peace offering. I felt bad for being such a jerk.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “You were checking up on me.”

Now, for the first time, she felt worried. She’d mistaken his stillness for tentativeness. She’d assumed he hadn’t understood her lunchtime visit. But now she heard anger in his voice.

“I told her you called me Blister Dick,” he said. “We had a good laugh.”

He shut her door, and as she lay there on the floor, she contemplated “we.”