At last, Evan spoke. “This coffee sucks. I need a beer.”

“Heading to Wrightwood Tap?”

“Nah. I’ve got a party. Want to come?” He dumped his coffee in the sink.

“A party on a Wednesday night?”

“It’s somebody’s birthday. And this is an interesting crew. They don’t care if it’s Sunday morning.”

“Where is it?”

“Old Town. Wells Street.”

Close to my condo. “I don’t know. I should probably keep working.” The prospect made me want to cry with boredom.

Evan took a step closer. “Come with me.”

Tess’s warning flew through my head. Be real careful. But I could handle myself at a party. There would be other people around, and I could escape and walk home whenever I wanted.

“I’ll get my purse,” I said.

The apartment on Wells Street was filled with about twenty people, most of them dressed in black, most of them young and impossibly hip, the type of people who slept until three in the afternoon and hit the clubs after a very late, very light dinner. A number of people had martinis in hand. There was the unmistakable scent of pot in the air.

“Billy, this is my friend, Carly.” Evan introduced me to a small woman wearing a black, spaghetti-strap dress. She had straight blond hair, parted in the middle to show the smooth skin of her face and light blue eyes ringed with dark liner.

We shook hands. “How do you two know each other?” I asked.

“Evan and I used to fuck,” Carly said.

“Oh.” I felt a little zing of shock and then envy toward this tiny blond thing. I couldn’t help imagining the two of them together. They must have looked amazing, with their blond hair, their smooth skin close together. I flushed at the thought.

Evan and Carly cracked up at my reaction.

“Sorry to be crude,” Carly said, “but let me explain. When we were together, Evan kept asking me if I’d ever been with a woman.”

I glanced at Evan, who shrugged. “Two women together-that’s hot,” he said. “I just wanted to hear about it.”

“But it backfired on him,” Carly said. “He got me to thinking, and then the thinking got me to doing.”

“And the rest is history,” said a tall woman, entering our circle. She laid a soft arm around Carly’s shoulders. She had black ringletted hair and a voluptuous body.

Carly, Evan and the woman laughed.

“So you, two?” I pointed a finger between Carly and the woman.

“Yep,” the woman said. “It’s been four years.” She leaned down and kissed Carly on the forehead.

“Wow, that’s great.” I said. My spirits buoyed with the thought that Carly was off the market.

“One of these two should have introduced me,” the tall woman said. “I’m Sharon.” We shook hands. “And it looks like you need a drink.”

“Please,” I said.

Soon, Evan and I were in the kitchen holding mandarin martinis. The drink went down my throat in a smooth, tangy rush. The rest of the guests seemed light years ahead of us in terms of intoxication, and I sipped my drink quickly in an effort to catch up. A funky song with a strong bass and violins in the background surged from the overhead speakers. In the room next to the kitchen, people were dancing.

“These things are too sweet,” Evan said, staring at his martini with disdain. “I need a beer.”

“I’ll keep yours as backup.” I took the martini from his hand.

Evan grinned.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He reached around me to the sink, which was full of ice and beer. His shoulder brushed mine. I set Evan’s drink down and took another sip of my martini.

When he’d grabbed his beer, he was still smiling.

“What are you grinning at?” I asked.

“You.”

“Explain, please.”

“You were jealous when Carly said we used to sleep together.”

“She said you used to fuck.”

“Yes, we did. And that made you a little crazy, didn’t it?”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

Someone opened the refrigerator door behind Evan, jostling him toward me. He put his face close to mine, his mouth near my ear. “You imagined it, didn’t you?”

I froze. I could barely breathe, much less respond.

“You thought of Carly and me together, and it made you hot.”

A coarse breath broke into my chest, causing it to rise and fall rapidly. I couldn’t have hid my reaction from Evan if I’d tried.

“And then,” he said, moving even closer. “And then you imagined us, didn’t you?”

The scent of marijuana became stronger in the air. I wondered if there was any truth to the secondhand smoke business because I felt almost stoned. The temperature in the kitchen seemed to have shot up ten degrees. I could feel the heat of Evan’s body. I could hear my own sharp intakes of breath. But I still couldn’t talk. Instead, I gulped the martini, imagining the cool liquid cleansing my insides. At the same time, I couldn’t stop imagining Evan and myself, our mouths together, our bodies entangled.

I coughed to scare away the image, and reached around Evan for the backup martini. When I looked up at him, his eyes were locked on my face, his lips slightly parted. “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You know just what it would be like, don’t you?”

Another nod.

Someone cranked up the music. Everyone in the kitchen turned to look into the adjacent room, where Carly and Sharon were now dancing, the others standing back to watch. The two women wound around each other with their moves, almost stalking. These were people who clearly knew each other’s bodies well. Every so often, one of them reached out to stroke the other’s arm or hair. Evan moved closer to me so that we were side by side, his arm around my back. I felt the pulse in my back, right where his hand was; I felt it in my head, in my stomach. Everyone in the room was riveted to the two women.

Carly and Sharon moved closer to each other, until their bodies pressed together, still moving. Carly’s cheek rested momentarily on Sharon’s breast. Sharon threw her head back, hips swaying, and touched Carly’s head. Carly’s hands went to Sharon’s undulating hips. The two of them moved like one body. And then Sharon was looking down, Carly up, and still swaying, the two of them began to kiss-open mouths, pink tongues.

My own mouth was a little open now, my body hot.

I felt Evan’s hand on my elbow. “Come with me,” he said, his voice low and rough.

I let him lead me out of the kitchen. We skirted the living room, where Carly and Sharon were still embracing. We walked down a hallway. I didn’t ask him where we were going. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to talk. Evan opened the door at the end of the hallway. It was a small bedroom with a tiny lamp next to a double bed.

“Is this their bedroom?” I said, glancing at the pile of coats on the bed.

Evan shook his head. “Guest room.”

He crossed the room and switched off the lamp light. The room went black.

“Ev?” I said. I reached out, and he was there, his arms wrapping around me, his mouth coming down hard on mine. We kissed, fast and greedy, as if this had been waiting for us forever. He pushed me against the wall and pressed his body against mine. I grabbed his hair as we kissed, pulling it, embracing him tight. His hands were all over my body, touching me through my clothes. I did the same, grabbing-finally-that hard chest through the soft cloth of his shirt, pushing my pelvis into his thighs. And in my head, I was imagining what it would be like to shed the clothes from my body and to have him push hard inside me.

“Oh, yeah,” Evan grunted. “Yeah.”

His words made me hotter. I bit his neck. He groaned, and I was grateful for the music banging outside.

His hands felt for the hem of my sweater, and I thought, here we go.

He pulled the sweater up, his fingers on my bra. I felt a hard tug as he pulled that up as well, so that my sweater and bra were in a ring around my neck. His hands were on my breasts now, Evan’s warm, large hands.