My foot swatted the ugly lamp and sent it tumbling to a prosaic thud, a moment lost on carpet but our wooden floors would have exploited. He was inside me again and with my back against the cheap wallpaper, my other leg under his arm, his eyes were on fire and piercing me with an intensity I hadn’t seen in years.

My body screamed, Amp it up!

I smeared my hand across his face and let a finger dangle inside his mouth before squeezing his cheeks together like his mother did when she’d scold him as a boy. Bingo! His mouth twitched and he squeezed my leg harder, slamming me back and getting deeper. He wasn’t blinking. Sweat was collecting on his forehead and it triggered a memory I’d almost forgotten. Our third date. The flea market on Hayte, 98° and he was sweating through a shirt made for autumn. Trying to avoid puddle pits, his boyish vulnerability snuck out and opened a path for us to really connect. Looking in his piercing eyes now, I couldn’t see it.

Then he hit a double play, knocking my g-spot and rubbing my clit with a series of thrusts that sent me right to the edge of an orgasm. I pushed him away but it was too late, he saw my face and knew he was close. He watched me back away, searching for a safe retreat from losing my power, but wanted this kill. “This is mine!” I thought. And before he could rush me, I rushed him. Our bodies flew back toward the bed, hitting the edge and sending us to the floor.

The shag chaffed my skin in sublime pain, a final note in this chord of pleasure and suffering. On top of him I rode and remembered, my head falling back as more memories flooded. Our 3 hour date on the bathroom floor after we tiled it. Feeling the twitch in his hand the moment before he told me he loved me. The safety I felt when I’d put my head on his shoulder in a crowded room. I let them come as the orgasm exploded in ripples of heat and was joined by his own. Then I felt his hand take mine, interlock and pull me back into our world together.

It was exquisite, and it lasted.

But as I looked around, at the place where he’d brought her, and the bed where they’d broken us, the merry-go-round’s music finally stopped.

I touched his face and saw his love, but it wasn’t enough. I got dressed, and felt him calling to me to forgive, but the door held more appeal. I opened it, and before my first foot fell outside, I heard him say in the voice I missed more dearly than anything, “Stay.”

I pulled the band from my finger, set it on the table, and without looking back and with the last ounces of love that were left in me said, “Goodbye, Martin,” before the door gently closed behind me.