wanted to be close to someone. Adam was three hundred and fifty miles away at home with Ivy. Sometimes when Minnie played weddings they got a babysitter and Adam came with her, the two of them driving home together in the dark, her heels slipped off and cornered on the floor of the car next to her black, slick-footed stockings.
She tapped on Connor’s door and he opened without asking who it was—the luxury and privilege of being a man.
“Minnie Mouse! Fancy meeting you here. What’s up?” he said, his voice bright with alcohol.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“My room is your room,” he said, ushering her in. He closed the door behind them.
Connor was handsome in a sneaky way. His teeth were a bit big and his mouth had to do some extra work to cover them. His eyes were unremarkable, the color of chili. He looked like a computer-generated version of a man. Something aliens would create to explain humans to one another. Something plain enough to get the point across, but nothing too special. That was the sneaky part. The more Minnie looked at him, the more time she spent with him, the more handsome he became. Like one of those magic pictures that revealed something even deeper, even more important, if you looked at it long enough and let your eyes go out of focus.
“You’re a night owl too,” she said to him and meant for it to be a question, but it didn’t come out like one. It made her more insecure, the fact that she couldn’t even ask a proper question.
“Sometimes. Samantha is the early bird,” he said. There was one bed in the room. Connor sat against the headboard, crossed his feet at the ankles. He was wearing his glasses and usually wore contacts. He was wearing a blue Cubs T-shirt, which made her think of Adam, except she was already thinking of Adam, so it felt like wearing a wet bathing suit in the rain.
Minnie didn’t know where to sit. They were friends, had been friends for years. Close friends, even. But it wasn’t like she was used to being alone in hotel rooms with him. There was a chair and a desk. She pulled out the chair and sat there.
“Is it creepy if I say you can sit on the bed?” Connor asked.
“No. You’re not a creep. It would be creepy if you were a creep. Besides, I came over here. It’s not like you showed up at”—she looked at the clock, read the time aloud—“twelve forty-five in the morning at my hotel door claiming you couldn’t sleep. I’m the aggressor here.”
“What are you aggressing, Wilhelmina?” Connor asked. He smiled. Connor smiled a lot.
“You’re the only person in the whole world who calls me Wilhelmina. Not even my parents call me that.”
“It’s a pretty great name.”
Minnie shrugged, got on the bed beside him. He looked at her.
Minnie was shocked at how easy it was to kiss Connor. One moment they were making jokes about some random commercial and the next, Minnie had her head on Connor’s shoulder. So when Connor turned his head to look at her and leaned forward, they were kissing. Almost like an accident.
Once Connor was on top of her, there was a moment when he stopped kissing her, pulled away, took his glasses off and extended his arms so he was hovering over her.
“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked. Her mouth tasted like his—the pepper-metal of vodka, the bright, starry bite of lime.
“Are you sure this is okay?” she asked him.
“Samantha and I have kind of an open relationship thing. She has a guy…a man…she sees him sometimes. I don’t ask too many questions,” he said.
“Adam and I—” Minnie started, then stopped.
“Yeah?”
“This is okay,” she finished, nodding.
Connor and Samantha’s open relationship thing meant Connor had condoms. Minnie tried not to think about the other women he did this with. How often? How many? One? Five? One hundred? He was a pharmacist and Minnie thought about that when he was inside of her. She pictured him in his white coat, the name tag. She’d seen him in it a couple times when she went to the drugstore where he worked.
She opened her eyes and saw the pinched vertical line between his. I am having sex with Connor. I am having sex with the viola player. I am having sex with a pharmacist. I am having sex with a man who is not my husband. I am having sex