“What do you think about when you steal those gazes as I walk away?” Her coy smile was the tip of an iceberg. The way she sipped at her straw hinted at a spaghetti logic of such complexity it caused his brain to turn over and pull the duvet around its head in retaliation.

Leaning away from her in the rickety chair, he pondered the question. It was a trap, and he had already fallen into the hole, and he thanked whatever had stopped time to view the punji stakes at the bottom of the pit. There was no admitting to her that his only moments of clarity these days were the wisdom passed by her inner thighs as they brushed the corner of his jaw; how his religion was of orgasms like the linen on the clothes line to which he went as a child: everything felt so vivid touched by lips. The question pierced because of his failed attempt to love her, then loathe her, then ignore her, before simply slipping into acceptance as each day brought him to dread her smile at dinner.

“Your sexy ass.”

She smirked into her tea.