I was still buzzing when I got home. The Bryansford presentation had landed. That clean, electric certainty where every word goes exactly where you put it, and the room knows you've won before you do. I'd walked out of the boardroom at three with my blood running warm, and the rest of the afternoon was noise around that feeling. The first thing I'd done in the cab home was send the team flowers and a thank-you each. The second was decide I wasn't going to bed.
I let myself in and dropped the bag by the door. The condo was tidy in the careful way it always was when I'd barely been in it. Straight to the bathroom, shower hot, the day off in pieces on the tile. Bergamot and cedar. The soap I'd been buying since London. Stupid quantities, so I'd never run out. Hands moved over my skin with more attention than the wash required. Late nights. Weekends. Work that took water and steam and time to come off.
Twenty minutes later: hair half-dried, black top, dark jeans. Tonight was a jeans night, not a heels-and-collarbone night. Boots that changed how I walked. I checked the mirror once, fast. Done. Keys, phone, card. I grabbed the duffel from the hall closet on the way out. Not because I'd need it. But I'd learned that lesson exactly once.
The September air hit my skin as I crossed the garage. I slid into the cool leather seat and turned the stereo on. ♪ Goldfrapp, Black Cherry, track two. Same album I'd been driving on for the last five years. Reliable in the way the right music is when you don't want surprises in your own head. I took the long route across the river. The conference-circuit hotels were part of my rotation; nobody saw the same face twice. Almost five years in, the system ran without me thinking about it. Friday at this hour, the road was empty. I let the music do its work.
I was passing through Allston when I heard it.
From somewhere behind. The bass found me before I clocked the beat and could brace for it. It bypassed everything above the neck and landed in my whole body at once. Stomach tight, instant heat, a throb between my legs that made my thighs clench. And then I was gone.
Dark room. Green laser cutting through smoke. The tack of rubber against rubber, a body pressed to mine and both of us slick with it, bass so heavy you stop being a person and start being a pulse. A sniff, a swallow, warmth flooding up from the chest. Time bends. The pulse becomes the beat, the beat becomes a rolling orgasm that bleeds across hours and days until you surface on a Tuesday, crashed out behind some stranger's sofa, no idea what district you're even in. Fuck, Carlisle.
My hands were locked on the steering wheel. The light ahead of me was green. I don't know how long it had been green. The car behind me flashed its high beams.
I breathed. Unclenched my fingers and thighs. Swallowed. The taste in the back of my throat was just air. Just September. I was thirty-one years old, sitting in my car at a green light in Allston, and for the turn of a light change I'd been twenty-two on a dance floor in Brixton with my jaw clenched, eyes all pupil, and latex slick against my thigh.
I'd loved that life. Loved it enough that it nearly consumed me. Loved it enough that I'd wanted to let it.
I put the car in gear and drove.
\ \ \*
The lobby was marble that didn't quite finish at the back wall, where the budget had clearly gone. I checked in with the card that wasn't linked to anything and headed for the bar. The room could wait. The room always waited.
The bar was called something forgettable. They always were. The lighting did the job. A four-piece in the corner was working through covers, the singer a man in his late forties who'd done his time and didn't need to push. Something I half-recognised. I took the corner. Bulleit, neat, two fingers. The order was its own small pleasure. He poured and didn't try to make conversation. I appreciated that.
The bourbon hit warm and smoky. I let it sit on my tongue before swallowing and my shoulders dropped a fraction. Friday night crowd. A few suits winding down, two of them arguing about something sporting they'd probably been arguing about since college. A couple leaning in by the window, second or third date. She was doing most of the talking, he was doing most of the smiling. A woman alone near the back, laptop open, glass of white untouched beside her. Actually working, not posing. I'd been her plenty of times. She wasn't tonight's project.
I was halfway through the bourbon when someone sat down two stools over.
I didn't turn. I let my peripheral do what it does. Tall, lean, dark-skinned, hair cropped almost to the scalp. White shirt, sharp dark blazer, no jewellery except a watch she didn't need to check. Grace Jones without the war paint.
She ordered a gin and tonic without consulting the menu and set both hands flat on the bar like she'd just bought it. Late thirties at most.
Most people fidget. Check their phone, touch their hair, scan the room. This woman didn't. She sat the way I sat.
Okay.
I let two beats go before I turned my head. She turned hers at the same time, which told me she'd been waiting too.
"The Bulleit," she said, nodding at the bottle by my glass. "You either love bourbon or you're punishing yourself."
"Can't it be both?"
"I'm guessing, love," she said. "People who are punishing themselves drink vodka."
"People who are punishing themselves drink bad vodka. Good vodka is its own reward."
"Spoken like someone who's done the research." She turned on her stool, all the way toward me, deliberate, giving me a look as long as the one I'd given her. I sat and waited.
"Monique," she said. No last name. No handshake. Just the word laid face-up on the bar. Smooth, no hesitation. A card played from the top of the deck. I knew that move. I'd been doing it for years.
"Alex."
"Are you staying here, Alex?"