"Hey, am I interrupting?" Will asked, walking through the glass door into Alicia's office. His hand gripped his cellphone, hard, and he could hear his pulse.

"Nope," she said, and he clicked it closed behind him. "How are you?" she asked, and her gaze dripped down him, molten, taking in the body that she now knew hid beneath the sharp lines of his suit. He looked back at her sternly.

"Good," he said, curt. She swallowed.

"Do you have a minute to talk?" Will asked, low as a croak.

"About last night?" she smiled through her uncertainty.

"Uh, yeah," he said.

She didn't speak, eyes widening. He watched those dark orbs swell, and remembered how they had darkened as he had pleased her for the first time last night, and his knees quaked and he coughed to clear his mind and throat.

"First of all, there are at least six people watching us right now, so I need you to look like you're stressed or disappointed or something."

"Disappointed?"

"The glass, Alicia, damn this goldfish bowl."

She thought she understood, but her pulse still fluttered fast and uncomfortable. She looked down at the documents on her desk, printed words blurring as she pulled her bottom lip hard between her teeth. Don't you dare hurt me at work, she thought.

"I… need to see you again," he stammered. She heard his nerves, and the shake in his voice more than his words made her feel steady again.

Damn you, she thought.

"Does that sound… feasible?"

"It does," she said, flicking up her gaze while her head stayed down. His groin clenched.

"Today."

"To— well I… I mean… okay," she said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

—-

She had never been to his apartment. It was both spartan and luxurious, and she was quietly impressed by his deliberate, curated art and furniture, by the dark wood and moody tones. It was perfectly him, she thought, remembering how he had lived at Georgetown, a mess like every other boy who had nobody to answer to, but unlike the others, he made some concessions to aesthetics. Not for him generic prints of noble statesmen or boxing matches. He had silk sheets and soft clothes, too; he said the things that touched your body for eight hours at a time were not where one should compromise. She had liked that about him, it was precocious and unmasculine, even while he had two baseball bats, one lucky and one sentimental, leaning against the desk.

She had slept on those sheets too, more than a few times. The first was when she had drank too much too quickly after finals at the end of 1L, and she had staggered back to Will's place while he bore as much of her weight as he could. On the way out of the bar, two guys from their class had winked at Will and one tried to high-five him, and he didn't get it until they were out on the street, and his chest ached with protectiveness and anger and had wanted to go back into the bar and say something, or do something, but she needed his care and so he gave it. He had slept on the floor, but in the middle of the night, she had woken up and looked around, and then lifted the blanket to invite him in. She saw she was wearing her skirt, shirt, sweater, pantyhose, and she looked at him, a softness in her eyes, a gratitude.

"I'm so hot," she said, peeling off her sweater.

"Do you want like, a t shirt?" he offered, and she grinned and nodded. He threw her a v-neck from his closet, gray marl, and she held it up to her cheek and said, "Jeez, what is this made of?"

As she unbuttoned her shirt, he said, "I'm gonna go get some water," ignoring the two full glasses on the nightstand. He waited outside the door. When he climbed into bed with her, she kissed him on the cheek. He winced at the sterility, but then she said, "Thank you for looking after me," and she put her head on his chest, and he felt proud and good and full, and they slept that way.

—

After he had left her office that morning, he had texted her his address, and told her he'd lied them both out of work. She hadn't liked that, that use of boss authority, but still she went to him, foot steady on the gas pedal, and nothing on the radio, just her breath and the ringing in her ears.

Outside his door, her throat tightened. She paused. Once was a mistake, twice was an affair. This is fucking stupid, she thought, wondering whether going inside would lose her the moral high ground with Peter (no, she decided), or risk her career (perhaps). But there was a wind of inevitability at her back, just like there had been last night at the hotel, when none of fate's furious obstacles could keep them apart.

Will heard her approach and he heard her hesitate. He paced and swallowed hard, exhausted still from last night, and desperate for all sorts of things that he couldn't articulate. Would she knock? Would she leave, and text an excuse? Fuck he thought, was I too forward? He knew he had to be careful, knew she liked her hand held and her nudges soft. But his need was blinding and impatient, and he wanted more from her than he knew he could ever have. You audacious fool, she's going to destroy you, he castigated himself while he waited to see if she would knock. It's already too late, he reasoned back.

Somehow this woman had been the story of his life, and they had only spent one night naked together. Well, one and a half, if he counted that December night in 3L right before Peter had arrived, when Will and Alicia had gone to their spot on the fourth floor of the library and then their diner and their dive bar and ended up at her place and —

Knuckles against wood.

Will strode to the door, and paused to vigorously exhale. Breathe, relax, he warned himself, as if platitudes might restrain his raging need, might smooth the jagged edges of his vulnerability.

"Hi."

"Hi," she said, the faintest smile on her beautiful mouth. He grinned at her, standing in the doorway. "Can I… come in?"

"Of course, of course," he said, and he cringed behind her back at his inanity.

"Nice place," she said, as she peered discerningly around. What else was there to say?

"Thank you."

They stared at each other. He swallowed.

"You look beautiful," he tried, "I mean, you always do, but you just, I mean, your hair, you…"

"Will — " she had interrupted. "It's okay," and she smiled, a warm, giving smile, and in it, her permission, and so he thought fuck it and walked to her and held her head still with a hand through her hair and kissed her. He felt her respond and want flashed through him, a hot sear, and painful. He pulled back momentarily, saw longing in her eyes, saw the same look as last night and god how did he get so lucky. He pushed her jacket back off her shoulders, placed it on the couch. They didn't need to speak.

He sank to his knees, and kissed at her skirt.

In her heels, she looked down at him, watched him as he lowered himself and fumbled with fabric, trying to find his way to her.

He pressed his face into her skirt, too scared to look up and meet her eyes. He felt like this properly was where he belonged, down on his knees before her. He knew there was nothing he wouldn't give her, nothing he wouldn't do, or give up. She was the point, she was everything.

Grasping need wrenched his body. He wanted her even more than he had yesterday. Yesterday, she was still a fantasy, a chimera of a lifelong desire. But now, she was real. He had made her come and he knew how to, knew her sounds and her tastes, and knew how it felt to sleep with her and then sleep holding her.

He wanted to put his mouth on her, but he couldn't work out her skirt, could only bunch it upwards, couldn't find enough space. So instead he placed his palms on her legs and hoped she didn't notice they were shaking (she noticed). He ran his hands up her cool thighs to where she was hot. His fingers found her so ready that he moaned. She was vaguely embarrassed by that, still, but he was so turned on that he knew his knees would have buckled had he not been kneeling.

He stood back up to face her, working still with his hand. She stood rigid, in the middle of the room (she still liked the lights off), so he walked them back until she leant against the wall. She perched on a hall table that usually held his keys and wallet.

Will stared into her eyes as he dipped his fingertips into her, watched her mouth open and her eyes close. He couldn't look away. He liked the fact that she was here, that he would be able to remember her here, that he would throw his keys onto this spot every day and know. In the Presidential Suite, he had been so scared, trained by decades of want unrequited and dreams unmet to feel that she might flee at any moment. But now, a third time felt more likely that this second time had. He relaxed.

She reached down for his belt, and he withdrew his fingers and, needing as much of her as he could get, he put them in his mouth, a gesture so crude that she flinched and so hot that her lips fell open. She stared at him, her eyes black with lust, and reached down again, more urgent now.

His length was hard and straining, his need asserting itself to her. It felt good to be brazen, after all the times he had felt so ashamed of himself when they had shared beds and his body would respond to her like this. He had felt so ashamed that he couldn't control himself. Mostly, she had pretended not to notice, assumed this was just what happened when a boy was in a bed with a girl. That was easier thought than the idea that your best friend hungered for you in unspeakable ways, ways that you too thought about sometimes, but that implied so much risk that you were terrified.

Now, as she reached down and touched him, the boy in him burned for her, burned for all the times he had been ashamed of his want, or afraid of it.

Earlier, as he drove back home from the office, he had planned to get her into his bed, to do this there, so that later, when he fell back into it, he could ensconce himself in her again, know that they had been there, and smell her on the mussed up silk sheets. But maybe crawling alone into an empty bed would have felt too much of a loss, or maybe he just couldn't wait. He let her guide him into that waiting heat, and the novelty, still, of feeling her body make room for his, and accommodate him, raised chills the length of his spine.

It was like nothing had changed, like her hair still smelled of that lavender vanilla from the purple bottle, like she had just kicked off those little brown ankle boots that she wore for two years, like they had just finished watching a movie under that worn black blanket on her couch…

He didn't dare more with any speed or vigor, scared he would succumb to her too soon. Instead, he moved languorous, and deep as he could.

"Are we overdoing it?" she said, suddenly. She was talking about work, their private performances all day of discord and irritation. He smiled, keeping his face close to hers, his parted lips near her open mouth.

"Diane thinks I'm going too hard on you…"

She smiled, knowing and lascivious as his hips beat out their rhythm, slow and hard against hers.

"Am I? Going too hard?"

She laughed, and the sound flushed him with pride. He continued, "All those late nights…"

"No time off," she joined in, as he pushed all of himself into her. She was so charged by the power dynamics that pulled them in different directions.

"Buried in work," he said, dragging his teeth over her neck just above her collarbone, something he had learned that she liked last night.

"Up to my knees," she said, as his movement had her so lightheaded with pleasure that she barely could speak.

Children's cries abruptly startled her, and she was seized by an eerie flashback of hearing Grace or Zach fight or squeal or want something at just the moment when she and Peter most needed them quiet…

"It's just my neighbors," he said. She felt the vibration of quick little footsteps the other side of the wall she was leaning against.

But she was too far gone to think about these kids or hers, or anything else. She nodded and pressed her hips into him.

"Come on, let's go to the bedroom—" he said, and thought he might lift and carry her, but would that be too cliche?

"No no no no," she whispered urgently, knifing through his daydream. "Don't move," she breathed, thighs tense and abdomen taut. "Don't move…" He felt her start to clench around him, and he locked his eyes onto hers, her gaze hungry, pleading, expectant.

In that moment, he knew he was in danger, he knew this woman would decimate him, somehow, someday, but not now, and so all he could do was submit. He did exactly as she wanted, looked at her open, wanting mouth, and put a finger between her lips in case she wanted to cry out. As she shattered, she bit down onto him, her teeth causing him that same heady mix of pleasure and pain, and he bucked needily into her and before long he finished too, breathless and lost and infatuated.

They stilled, and then he helped her from the table to her feet.

She smiled awkwardly (what could she say?). He thought she looked scared (she was, but not of him, per se). He wanted to kiss her, wanted to run his tongue over hers, but he felt it somehow wouldn't be appropriate. He straightened out her clothes, and kissed her, first on the cheek, and then, lovingly, on the neck. Then he took off his jacket, needing something to do with his hands.

She smiled at him, slight and taciturn, and he almost laughed at the tension.

"Do you uh, want a drink?" he offered.

"Oh I, I have client meetings later."

"Oh, I just meant water, coffee?" He nearly said ginger ale — she had had a thing for it at law school, it reminded her of her dad, but he couldn't. The intimacy had slipped out from between them.

"Oh, sure, sure," she cringed, didn't know what to do, didn't know why it was like this.

"Sit down, babe," he said, half an accident, and regretted it. "Still or sparkling?"

"Whatever you're having."

As he went to the kitchen, she sat on the couch, plump, elegant, and shook her hands to relax herself.

In the kitchen, Will grabbed a Perrier from the fridge, and two heavy glasses that he used mostly for scotch. He paused for a moment, thinking about how to play this. Would she respond better if he were forwards or aloof?

For years after Georgetown he had wondered where he had fucked up. He had mulled whether he had worn his heart too much on his sleeve, or if he hadn't pushed hard enough.

He had thought back then that she liked clarity, preferred when guys who liked her were direct, and weren't polite about it. But when Peter came along, Will was confused. Peter had played hard to get even while he pursued Alicia. By turns, Peter made her feel like his whole world, and one of his many options. Will had heard from Miriam, who had been his friend first but through him became Alicia's 3L roommate, how Alicia would agonize with her at night about whether Peter would call. She also told Miriam how he would tip so generously when he took her out, but only the pretty girls, and he would touch their arms as he paid them, and Alicia would sit still, small and unnerved, until he turned back to her and stared into her face like they were alone in the world.

And Peter wouldn't phone when he said he would. But then he would surprise her, and he would be extravagant in ways that emasculated Will, when Alicia would coyly share details of dates or gifts when Will goaded them from her, pretended not to feel seething envy and disgust, and pretended that they were just friends so of course she should tell him. Peter had bought her jewelry on their fourth date, which had seemed ridiculous to both Will and Miriam.

Miriam came from an old-money DC diplomatic family and recognized Peter's schmoozing type, called him a "flashy asshole" to Will, but to Alicia she could only caution gently against his cloying affection. When the news had broken, Miriam had phoned Will at work, the only number for him she could find after almost two decades out of touch. "Will?" she had said. "This is Miriam Benson," and before he could say a word, she said, "Holy fucking shit Will, have you seen this?" It had hurt Will to know that neither of them, ultimately, were surprised that Peter was the prostitutes and corruption type. Miriam's voice had sounded shaky, and Will wondered if she was enjoying the drama a little bit, or if he was just projecting a fucked up reaction onto her, because he was ashamed of his own. When Will had first heard, he had felt a moment of hope. He had never stopped waiting for Alicia's relationship with Peter to end: he had started waiting after the second date; kept waiting after the fifth; kept waiting after four months, when they nearly broke up because three people told her Peter had kissed a first-year student at a mixer (he had denied it); and kept waiting when she showed him the diamond and it felt like she had shoved her shining hand down his throat. Will had never stopped waiting.

"When did you get this couch?" Alicia yelled into the kitchen, trying to seem laid-back, and act as if everything about this situation didn't fill her with a dizzying mix of panic and excitement. Will grabbed the glasses and Perrier and walked back to her.

He poured them each out some water and sat on a chair. "I saw it at a hotel actually, in New York. It was in this great suite, with a rooftop balcony, and I was just in a mood. I had two of the best depos of my life, and I settled a case there and then that we thought would go to a jury. I asked about the couch, and ordered two for the apartment. The other one is…" a lump crushed his airways and he nodded over towards the bedroom.

She nodded. "What's the hotel?"

"The Plaza. I would love to show you that view. God it was so quiet up there."

"I love New York. I've never stayed at The Plaza."

He watched her drink. "Can I get you anything?"

She shook her head.

He reached for a remote control and turned on some music, low in the background. Anything to cut through the silence.

"Well," he said.

She didn't speak.

I've known you for almost twenty years, he thought, how have we run out of words now?

She looked at him, and smiled, like she agreed with his thoughts. She looked at the spot next to her on the couch, and beckoned him there with a nod of her head.

He put down his glass and sat next to her, and pulled her legs up onto his lap. It was instinct, an old habit lain down deep into muscle memory.

She sighed and let her head fall back against the cushion. He rubbed her calves.

"That feel good?" he asked.

"So good," she said, and moaned gently. His crotch stirred but he kept his focus. Then she sat up suddenly and leaned into him and kissed his mouth, and it was girlish and playful and his chest ached with the nostalgia. For a moment, he was taken back to the apartment she shared with Miriam. Miriam left town weekends to visit her boyfriend in Baltimore, and Will and Alicia used to sprawl on the couch, Sunday after Sunday, watching old movies and eating pizza or Chinese food. He would rub her shoulders, and she would lean against him, their intimacy absolute, but hollow where he wanted it to be full (and where she wanted it too, sometimes, but the complexity, the risk, terrified her, and she had decided they should wait until graduation for this inevitable thing between them to happen). He would inhale her neck and hair, and how many nights had he wished that she would turn around and kiss him, just like she just did. What would he have given? Her body language now was so familiar to him, that it hurt, somehow.

"I know," she said, propped up on his plush couch, eyes kind and a little sad,.

"What?" he said, softly, rubbing his thumb over her cheek.

"Sunday nights…" she murmured.

"Leesh," he said, his face lost and longing.

"Look at us, we're grown ups now," she said. "Well, sort of…"

"Sort of," he echoed and they kissed, limbs entwined.

And then the words came. They talked about school, the movies, the time they both got food poisoning when they tried a different Chinese place, the ridiculous people they had known and where they were now, who was divorced, whose partners were minor celebrities, or in office.

Their closeness swelled and crested, and as they kissed and talked and he rubbed her legs.

"I don't know what I would have done without you all those years, you know," she said, soft, all of a sudden.

"The feeling is mutual, baby," he said, and this time he didn't regret it.

"What do we do now?" she said. He didn't know if she meant right now, or now that they had done something that could not be undone.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, tender.

"Peter…" (she didn't want to say his name, and he didn't want to hear it) "…has the kids Sunday through Tuesday," she said, like a question.

"Both nights?"

"Both nights."

He smiled. "Okay. I'll make some plans."

She kissed him.

She gazed flinchingly at her watch, but before she could speak, Will jumped in.

"Not yet. I want to make you come again, what's the easiest way to do that?"

"The… easiest?" she stammered, taken aback by his directness. But he was done with hints, allusion, waiting.

"No, I, I just thought you…" he stumbled, gesturing at her watch and composing himself again. "What's the best way to do that? What's your favorite way to do that?"

She stilled, that twist of lust and shock pulsing inside her. She wasn't comfortable yet being as blunt as he was (Not yet. But she would be soon. He would make her be). Her mouth and throat dried, but the water was out of reach. She licked her lips.

"Oh yeah?" he said drawlingly. "Okay," and smiled out the side of his mouth.

(She couldn't speak, couldn't say, That wasn't what I meant, so she lay back.)

This time he took her skirt all the way off and put it down with her jacket. Finally, he had what he wanted.

The skin of her inner thighs was so soft against his face. (He would, before long, have a thing for this, it would be all he thought about when he woke up and showered alone, and gripped himself with one hand while the other braced against the tile as steaming water beat down onto his back).

He had fucked two women on this couch, but that wasn't like this. He was afraid of quite how different this was. His intention was total, his absorption consummate. He realized that she was quiet when they had sex, breathing her approval or making it known through the press of her fingertips into his shoulders, but when he was here, in his favorite place, he could pull these sounds from her, these whimpers that quivered through her throat, these groans, deep and smooth. They intoxicated him. He loved watching her stomach tense and tighten, loved watching her body brace for the sensation he was giving, the pleasure he conferred.

As he made his own personal kind of love to her, worshipping the softest part of her with his lips and tongue, one memory played itself over the backs of his eyes. He remembered one Sunday afternoon at her apartment, when they had studied together with Miriam who had just broken up with her boyfriend. Alicia was going out with Peter that night.

"I'm sorry about Bonnie and Clyde," she had said, earlier that week, when she told Will that Peter had made reservations for Sunday. "Raincheck?" she smiled innocuously.

He relaxed his clenched jaw, like it wasn't a big deal, like he hadn't arranged his week around those hours with her, like he didn't every week. "Anytime."

After their study session, Alicia had pushed herself up from the floor to take a shower. She had come back to the living room, hair wet and dark on her cream shoulders, a thick beige towel wrapped around her. "Do you think I can wear pants tonight?" she asked them. "It's cold as hell, but I think it's um, a nice place, so…"

"Why don't you wear your black pants with my boots with the heels?" Miriam had offered. Alicia nodded and thanked her.

Will had stared at her like he had never really seen her before, stared at her bare feet on the floorboards, stared at her face scrubbed clean, watched the rivulets of water run into the creases of her body, the inside of her elbows, the backs of her knees.

It wasn't that he hadn't seen her body before. Both of the past two summers they had gone to a lakehouse in Virginia that belonged to the parents of one of their moneyed classmates. The first summer, Alicia had worn a one-piece, more conservative than the other girls, but the second, she wore a two-piece and Will had tried to stop gazing at her, tried to stop thinking, those hips. They'd even shared a room that summer. There was an odd number of girls and boys, and the solution was too obvious for anyone to even discuss. "It's fucking weird that you guys aren't fucking," Miriam had said to them both on the last night, after too much beer and too much sun, as she stood up from the campfire and said, "I'm going to pass out. Hope you keep each other warm out here, or in there, or whatever you do." Neither Will nor Alicia had said a word back, and that night, when she lay on his chest like she had each of the other nights, he felt for the first time a flicker of resentment at how she controlled their relationship. He choked it down, and kissed the curls that spread out over him. "Good night," he whispered, breathing that lavender. "Good night," she said back, kissing him on the cheek and then turning her back for sleep.

But in just a towel in front of him, her hot, wet skin, was just so accessible, so taunting, and he had wanted frantically to stride right up to her and do exactly what he was doing now, wanted to run his lips up her damp legs, and please her, please her enough that she wouldn't go out, and she would stay in, with him, this night and every other night.

When Alicia had turned on her bare toes and walked back to her bedroom, Miriam had looked at Will, pity creasing her forehead. He had stared back, feeling shamed, and pathetic.

"What's wrong with you?" he snapped at her, defensive.

"Right. What's wrong with me…" she had said, rolling her eyes and turning the page in the textbook.

He thought now of the towel and the wet hair as he worked between her legs, and he gratified himself for then and for now.

"Don't stop," she moaned, fingers in his hair, and he wouldn't stop, now or ever, until she told him to. Her legs gripped his head as he carried her into a black, ecstatic oblivion.

"Oh my god," she whispered as he moved back up her body, feeling pleased with himself, and he adjusted them to lie together. He rubbed her neck, and inhaled her hair, not having to hide it any longer.

He pulled a cashmere blanket from the chair over them both to keep her warm. They talked about work, and the meetings she had later, and he listened closely, trying to quiet his own internal dialogue, and press down the anger.

Will was angry at Peter for hurting Alicia, raging actually, for the 24-year-old who he had known and loved, who had been so hopeful and good and undeserving of the horrors that this man had wrought on her life. He felt protective and angry for Sunday night Alicia, and lakehouse Alicia, and fourth floor of the library Alicia, and sad that she now bore fracture lines that ran through her like they would run through a glass that had not shattered when it was dropped but might fall apart the second you put it back on the shelf. Will knew how hard she was working so hard to hold herself together. And he was angry at himself for not fighting harder, angry that he didn't, or couldn't, do anything to stop this, to protect her and keep her whole. He was angry that he had felt so shy and unworthy of Alicia, who he had seen as such a woman when he was hardly a man, and angry at himself for conceding so easily to Peter, just because he was bigger, flashier, and lower of voice, as if their two years of soul-baring, bed-sharing intimacy didn't count for something.

Now as he held her, their breath synchronized, he kissed her earlobe and neck.

"I have to go," she said, frowning.

"Okay," he said, "I should, too."

They sat up and she kissed him again.

They decided she should leave first, alone, just in case, and he walked her to the front door. "So this weekend?" she asked, girlish, again, in a way that picked up his pulse.

"Absolutely. It's been a while since we spent a Sunday night together."

"Oh my god," she said, smiling sad and happy and excited and all sorts of other things that coursed uncomfortably through her. "Sunday night."

"I can't wait," he said.

"The feeling is mutual," she said, and kissed him on the cheek before walking out.