“So now I never see you again?” I asked. I was lying on my side looking at Lou who was rolling a cigarette.
“It’s only two. Stay the night.” She pulled her lips into a sexy grimace. “We’re not done yet.”
“What about breakfast?” I crawled closer to her and rested my cheek on her porcelain white thigh. “Or is that forbidden?”
“Of course not.” She stroked my lips with tobacco fingers. “We have to eat.” She lit the cigarette and her cramped bedroom filled with smoke. If it had been anyone else I would have complained. “We can even have dinner some time, if you’d like that.”
“But we can never shag again.” The moonlight filtering through the curtains caught the smoke above her head and coloured it blue.
“We can if you don’t fall in love with me.” She made it sound so business-like, as if it were just a transaction, a necessary exchange of bodily fluids.
“But what if we do sleep together again and then I fall in love with you?” Gingerly, as though we were in the middle of the most casual conversation in the world, she picked slivers of tobacco from between her teeth.
“That would not be my problem.”
“Don’t you want some romance in your life?” She shook her head. “I could never live without it, no matter what pain it caused me.”
“That’s your choice.” She stubbed out the cigarette in an over-flowing ashtray. I could already feel it then, deep in the trenches of my soul, that this one would be hard to walk away from − simply because she would make me.
“What if we become friends and you find me oh-so charming and you develop feelings for me?” She sat naked on the bed, her back against the wall, my head still on her legs.
“Don’t talk silly,” she said and curled herself in two, her lips, those red strips of desire, hovering above my eyes. “Are you ready for round two?” I was already thinking of round ten.

The next day, on my way home, my legs wobbly and my lips raw, I wanted to rewind. I wanted to experience the entire night again. Not only because it had been every inch as spectacular as Lou had promised, but even more so because it was a night free of worry. We had slumbered and fucked in her smoky bedroom, drifting in and out of both activities, lost in a perpetual motion, always doing something, even when not fully awake. My mind had gone blank and for a few hours I was able to pretend that Claire didn’t exist, that Lucy was not my boss, that I had never even met Sarah. Life had been simple − just sex. Now, out on the street, sucking fresh air deep into my lungs, it all came back and I wondered if it was possible. If the dream world Lou had created for herself could be more than a silly utopia. Judging by the heaviness of my heart and the darkness in my soul, it wasn’t and it would never be − not for me anyway. I weighed the possibility of Lou and I becoming friends. I couldn’t be less emotionally unavailable. There was absolutely no room in my heart for a fourth contender. Maybe we could just shag then. But then what? Isn’t that usually where the trouble begins − after the shag? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Anna. I needed to cleanse my soul. I needed her to hook me up with a therapist, preferably a really unattractive male one.

To be continued…