My imagination runs away with me before I can stop it.

I imagine wrapping my arms around Cat’s waist.  Sliding my hands up the curve of her back and resting between her shoulder blades.  Pulling the zipper of her dress down.  The strapless red velvet falling to the ground.  I imagine Cat naked.

I imagine pushing her against the door of one of the parked cars.  Picking her up and wrapping her legs around my narrow waist.  I imagine her heels digging scratches into my back, leaving angry, red grooves of passion.  I imagine her scarlet lips pressing against my ear and whispering, ‘Fuck me.’  Entering her with such force that it takes her breath away.

What I don’t imagine is Cat pushing my body off of hers, stepping away from me, and covering her bruised lips with her fingers.   I don’t have to imagine it because that’s exactly what happens.

“Justin – what the hell are you doing?” 

“I-I...”  For some reason, the only thing running through my mind is if she’s wearing any underwear.

“Justin,” Cat says harshly, pulling my wandering thoughts to the present.  She stares at me with blue eyes widened - as though I’m crazy, as though I’ve never kissed her before – waiting for an answer.

“Do you wanna go somewhere?”

“What?!”

“Sorry, sorry,” I stutter, putting my head in my hands and trying to pull my mind from its passion-infused mush.  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No!”

“Then what are you doing?” she repeats, her features so stained with shock I can’t see if there’s anything else there: anger, offence, or, dare I hope, pleasure.  “You can’t just...I mean, what the hell...”

“Cat, I don’t know why I did that, I’m sorry.”

Cat pauses for the first time in our rapid, awkward back-and-forth, anxiously turning her purse over in her hands.  “You’re sorry?  Is that all you have to say?”

“Isn’t that what you want me to say?” I reply, my voice a few pitches higher.  So many things are coursing through my mind: confusion, embarrassment, surprise at my own actions. 

But, above all this, the animalistic urge to kiss her all over again.

She sighs loudly, throwing her arms up in exasperation.  “How the hell am I supposed to know?  I was hardly prepared for this, Justin.”

I remain silent, not trusting my lips to form anything comprehensible.  In fact, I don’t trust my lips to do anything at all.

Why did I kiss Cat?  I can’t explain it myself.  The moment she turned to leave it felt like the last chance I’d ever have to try and win her back; or to see if there was anything still there; or something, I don’t know.  The night was hitting her just right, reminding me of all the time I spent looking at that face; tracing its outline with my fingers and memorizing every detail.  I’m glad I did, because looking at her tonight brought it all back to me: how Cat’s eyebrows arch slightly over her eyes; how her lips pout quite unconsciously when she’s talking to someone; how her nose, lightly smattered with freckles, falls in a smooth slope from her forehead to a cute button.  It doesn’t matter what weight she is, her face will always be perfect to me.

 “I couldn’t help myself, Cat,” I reply with a shrug.  It’s the only thing I can think to say.

Cat is silent for just long enough to make me uncomfortable. She stares at me but her eyes show nothing, other than the cogs turning in her head.  What she’s thinking, I have no idea.

“Do you want me to come home with you tonight, Justin?” she asks finally, but softly, her eyes still holding mine.

Is there any point in lying?  “Yes.” 

“What will it mean if I do?  Is it just sex?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are we starting something again?” she asks, her voice edged with hardness.  “Because, Justin, I need to know.”

I sigh, shifting the stupid trilby on my head.  “I don’t know, Cat.  There’s still so much to sort out if we even wanted to be friends.  But, then...”  I trail off and run my eyes over her body as she turns her gaze to the ground shyly.  “I want you.”

“I just don’t want to rush into something we’ll regret,” she shrugs, eyes still fixed to the dirty asphalt.

I sweep my gaze over her again, feeling the ache to take her right here in the parking lot set itself in the pit of my stomach again.  It’s so difficult to reconcile all the hurt that Cat caused me in the past with how much I want her in the present.  So many parts of me want to throw this conversation out of the window and act on my impulses, but Cat’s right: what about tomorrow?  When the dress is off and my urges satisfied, how do I know all that hurt won’t just rush back and I’ll remember I can’t be with her?

“I should have remembered that kissing you causes me nothing but trouble,” Cat laughs darkly, shaking her head.  “God, I came to this party all prepared for the brush-off from you, but this...”

“Like I said, Cat,” I breathe in deeply, trying to make sense of all my hazy-edged feelings towards her.  “I still care about you.” 

“Really?” her eyes snap to mine, and I see all the apprehension and self-doubt that I’m so used to seeing in Cat’s expression.  But her face changes, and she shifts uneasily.  “Then maybe spending the night together isn’t a good idea.”

I pause, turning the thought over in my mind.  “Well, can we at least talk?”

“Sure.  What do you have to say?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest expectantly.

“Not here,” I roll my eyes, glancing at the bodyguards at the door and a group of drunken girls helping their apparently soon-to-be-vomiting friend a few feet away.

“Why don’t you come back to my apartment,” she suggests, “It’s, I dunno, neutral ground for the two of us.” 

“Fine,” I shrug, mentally allowing her dress to fall to the floor.  “And if something happens?”

A coy smile creeps onto her face, and she looks away shyly.  “Then it happens.”

----------

When it emerged no cab in New York was willing to drive to Brooklyn so late into the night, Cat and I borrowed Trace’s driver for the trip over the bridge.   I discarded Cat’s suggestion that we “Just hop on the N” immediately: at this time of night?  Even thinking of her making the journey home through the dirty, dangerous New York City subway in the middle of the night makes my stomach turn.

When we arrive at Cat’s place in Bensonhurst, my heart sinks.  I can’t imagine what she’s using to pay rent - her savings, probably, and the little money she’s getting for writing - and it shows.  The building is probably a hundred years old but manages to have absolutely no character, with a dirty, gray exterior and a window on the fourth floor smashed in.  I can’t believe Cat’s living here.

“The lock to my building is busted, so if you have anything valuable, I suggest you swallow it for the duration of your stay,” Cat says over her shoulder as she walks up the stairs to her apartment; which is thankfully on the top floor, away from the busted door lock.

“Isn’t this place crawling with Mafia?” I ask, my eyes fixed on her hips as they move from side to side with each step.  I am concerned for her living in a place like this, I really, I am...but I still want to put my hand up her dress.

“I dunno,” she shrugs, fiddling with her keys as we stand outside her door.  “I only just moved in a week ago.  Excuse the mess.”

Inside, there’s no mess; there’s not enough space for there to be mess.  I recognize the few pieces of furniture that used to be in my house in Tennessee looking decidedly out of place in her new home: the black velvety couch that she admitted to buying purely because it resembled the one in Central Perk from Friends (we put it in the games room); a quilt that she had had to stitch at school begrudgingly hung over the back of a chair (in Tennessee, it lay on the bed in the second guest room); a rich mahogany side table that her grandmother had given her (it used to be in the hall, where we’d dump the mail in the morning); a TV set with a VCR but no DVD – well, that I never used.  Come on, Cat, move into the twenty-first century. 

The apartment smells rich with the sharp smell of antiseptic, and I can only say I’m grateful Cat scoured the place with cleaning fluids.  I have to admit, it looks better inside than I thought it would judging from the exterior; but it’s still strange to see Cat’s life away from me so suddenly reduced down to a few pieces of furniture in a grotty little apartment.  I want to bring her back to my place, where my cleaning lady Sophia comes in once a week and the walls are freshly painted and all the locks work.  I want to save her from this shabby lifestyle, because she deserves so much more.

Cat stands nervously in the doorframe, following my eyes as they settle on the surroundings.  

“Drink?”

“No, I’m fine,” I shake my thoughts from my head and tear my eyes from what looks to be damp in the ceiling corner. 

She twists her hands.  “So, what did you want to t-”

Before the last word can leave her lips, I throw any propriety from my mind.  We can talk; we have to talk, but right now, all I want to do is close the gap between us and pull the length of her body against mine.

And that’s exactly what I do.

-------------

Well, I guess this means the talking is going to come later.

I know it’s not unusual to sleep with you ex.  I also know it’s not particularly healthy.

I wish someone would tell my lips that as they reciprocate Justin’s motions, moving against his like they always used to.  Or my arms, as they snake their way around Justin’s neck, pulling his body closer to mine.  Or my hands, as they quickly work to throw off that trilby with a ridiculous feather stuck in the headband.  Or my legs, as they stumble backwards, unsure of which direction to take but knowing the bedroom is somewhere to the west.

This time, I don’t pull back from Justin’s kiss.  I enjoy the soft but demanding nature of his lips as they play with my own, stirring up memories of hot, passionate clinches between the two of us in the past.  As I allow myself to fall into his kiss, I wonder how on earth I survived two months without it.

I pull Justin into my room and we fall in a tangled heap onto the crisp white cotton of my bed, grasping each other frantically.  One hand smoothes over the downy softness of his shaved head, pressing his lips against mine so that I can get more, more, more of him against me.  The other lies against his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly beneath the palm of hand, growing more erratic with each passing second.

But my mind is far away from whatever my hands are doing: the only thing they can focus on is his hands, his touch, his body.  I bite his lips playfully in anticipation as his left hand follows the slit in my dress, gliding over my thigh and coming to a teasing stop on the top of my leg. 

A frenzied passion takes over us as we bite, pull and kiss each other to make up for the loss of time spent apart.  But, in spite of the speed of our passion, his hand massages the skin on my thigh at a frustratingly slow speed; rubbing his thumb in small circles, backwards, then forwards. 

And then, that tingling, glittery sensation glows in the pit of my stomach.  That feeling that only Justin can evoke.

“Justin, just...do it,” I moan, out of both pleasure and sheer annoyance.

He smirks.  “What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” I retort with a roll of the eyes.   Pouring my energy into half-hearted dirty talk will only distract from all the talking that Justin and I are going to have to do when this is all over; when we’ve exerted our passions on each other and are only left with the mess that has been there all along.

But that is the last thing on my mind.

His strong fingers slowly dip in between my thighs and start to rub against me, leaving the skin beneath the cotton of my underwear burning with his golden touch.  Without a word, he pushes my panties to the side and slides his fingers into me, eliciting a gasp I didn’t know I was holding in to escape my lips.

“Fuck, Justin,” I hiss, taking a breath for air as I dig my fingernails into his back.

“God, I’ve missed you, Cat.  I’ve missed all of you,” Justin murmurs as his lips drop kisses in the nook of my neck, his fingers still working against me.  “And I can tell you’ve missed me too.”

“Stop teasing,” I demand gruffly, pushing his hands from between my legs.  I immediately feel cold without his touch, but quickly go to work unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders and tossing it thoughtlessly to a forgotten corner in my room.

Justin reciprocates, arching my back to reach between my shoulders and pull the zipper of my dress down more quickly than it can unzip.  I smile slightly at his eagerness, before matching it by grappling with the belt around his middle.  I had forgotten about the torso now exposed to me: so hard and lean, with the grooves of his abs perfectly etched into his tan skin.

His boxers come off with the pants and he waits above me, perched on his elbows, as I shuffle out of my dress.  It’s an awkward and unsexy task to get the damn thing off, but the sooner I can get it to join the crumpled heaps of clothing on the floor, the better.

“Damn, you are wearing underwear,” Justin says with a smirk, casting his eyes over the horrendously ugly nude bra (strapless dresses demand the most disgusting of underwear) and black panties still encasing my body.

I roll my eyes, too frustrated and hasty to have him inside of me to even wonder what that’s supposed to mean.  Reaching behind to unclasp the bra and throw it as far away from me as possible (the one day I don’t wear underwear mildly attractive and I end up in bed with my ex – what are the chances?) , I take one final look at Justin.

There’s no way to describe Justin’s face right before sex.  His features harden with a resolute determination that he's going to perform his task well, but his eyes show nothing but a willingness to be with me; he looks at me, and has always looked at me, like I’m the most beautiful person in the world.  It’s a comfort to see that in a moment where I always feels so vulnerable.

Justin’s solemn expression breaks into a grin when he loses eye contact to dance his gaze over my body.  His eyes finally settle on my panties, before he hooks them with his thumbs and pulls them down my thighs with a wink.  They land somewhere between his socks and my bra.

I feel suddenly shy, exposed to him as I am; but before apprehension can take a hold of me, his hands pull my thighs apart and he pushes inside of me in one smooth movement.

We lay there for a moment.  Still and waiting, allowing our bodies time to adjust to each other before they realize this isn’t something new, but rather something they’re going back to.

And then, he starts to move.  First, slow and gentle strokes that fill me and tantalizingly awaken every unused sensory pore, Justin’s body meeting mine in a very gentle ecstasy.  But then, his movements start to quicken and become more demanding, until our bodies are crashing together in a syncopated, angry dance.  My fingernails etch scratches into the moving muscles of his back as he grunts, pushing deeper and deeper until I put a hand on his shoulder to calm his thrusts.

“God, Cat, you feel amazing,” he whispers roughly into my ear, pausing for a moment to bite at the soft flesh of my earlobe.  “So fucking amazing.”

“You do too,” I reply, bringing my legs round to lock behind his waist.

Justin suddenly slips his hands underneath my back and pulls me up in his arms, until my body is straddling his as he sits on the bed.  I begin to make my own moves on him, alternating between a frantic pace and a slower, more sensual speed that makes him dig his fingers into the soft flesh of my backside.

I know he’s close when his breath hitches in his throat and his eyes clamp shut.  Justin pulls me closer to him than I already am, resting his forehead between my breasts as I continue rolling my hips, moving up and down on his tense body as his fingers dig into my waist.

“Cat –” he begins desperately, his eyes still held shut.

“It’s okay,” I murmur into the softness of his short hair, resting my lips on his head and my hands on the back of his neck.  “I’m here.”

-------

When it’s over, our bodies remain in their closed off, protective hugging position as we cradle each other gently.  I know what I want to say – what I always say after we’ve had intense, passionate sex – I love you.  But I don’t want to ruin the moment of quiet bliss with talk of our relationship.

On a side note: why does the sex have to be so much better when you’re not with the person anymore?  It seems a cruel trick of the Fates that the last twenty minutes with Cat were as good as at least three one night stands put together. 

After keeping that second thought to myself along with the first, we slowly uncurl from our position and lay down beside each other on the rumpled bed, the sea of disheveled clothes bringing the reality of what had just happened to us.     

We give each other time to regain our senses; catch up on the breathing that we had forgotten to do in the heat of climax.  My body groans its thanks to be relieved sexually as my mind laughs its ass off, saying, “You just couldn’t keep your hands off her for two seconds, could you?”

We lay side by side, untouching, in silence; wondering just how long to leave it before one of us has to break the sexual reverie and remind us why we’re really here.  It’s sort of scary as we wait for the other to go first, knowing that once we do start talking we’ll be up all night, because there are just so many things to say.  Should I say I’m sorry for how I broke things off with her?  Should I ask her why she moved on so quickly when I wasn’t ready to?  Should I tell her just how much I’ve missed how things used to be?  Should I ask her to have sex with me again, because it felt so damn good?

“Justin, I’ve had a lot of time to think over everything that happened between us.”   Cat’s voice, smooth but vulnerable, breaks through the dark silence of the bedroom.

Thank God, she’s going first.

“And I know that I was the base for a lot of our problems,” she says slowly, staring straight above her at the slats of wood in the ceiling as she speaks.  “I lied, I tried to be someone I wasn’t, I just...I completely lost myself in our relationship.  I was so involved with you that I completely forgot about me.” 

Cat stops, goes over her words in her head, before rolling her eyes and rubbing them with her hands.  “That sounds stupid.   Our relationship was great and God, did I love you...”

I love you too, Cat.

“But I’ve been fucked up for a long time now, and with all the changing – moving to New York, all this attention on me, the new people that were suddenly involved in our lives – it sparked something off in me.  I just wanted things back to how they used to be, but in the process I fucked everything up.”

“Do you think...” I begin, shifting my gaze from her to the ceiling, unable, as she was, to look at the other while talking.  “Do you think this would have happened if we hadn’t moved to New York?”

“Probably,” Cat responds helplessly.  I feel her eyes bore a hole into the side of my face.  “We were so comfortable in Tennessee, it would have taken something big to shake us.  But it would have happened.”

I shrug a response to show I agree with her.  No one could have coasted along as happily as Cat and I did for much longer than we did; especially not with everything that was going on with her.  No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t help her with all that insecurity.  And I did try, really hard.

I touch on something that has been plaguing me for a long time; something that Cat’s never really offered me an explanation for.  “The lump.”

There’s silence from the left side of the bed.  I swallow hard, hoping she’ll answer and hoping that, if she does, it’ll shed some clarity on a situation that I still don’t understand.  Why didn’t she tell me?

“That was something I was totally unprepared for,” Cat replies blandly, as though there’s no other way to say it.  “I handled it badly, I know.  But I was scared, Justin; I thought I was going to die.  We were the last thing on my mind.”

“Cat, I’m not gonna lie,” I begin, turning my body on its side to face the rigid form lying beside me.  “I wish you had told me.”

“I know,” she whispers, stealing at glance at me from the corner of her eye.  “I wish I had told you too.”

“Did you feel as though you couldn’t?  Did you think I was too immature to deal with it?  Was it me?”  The words fall from my mouth in a stream of desperate, anxious questions, laying my insecurities out for Cat to see.

Cat turns her head to meet my eyes and she slowly shakes her head.  With one hand, she reaches over and cups my cheek with the palm of her hand, scanning my face with her eyes in such a probing way that I feel more than naked beneath her stare.  The smoothness of her skin soothes the rough stubble on my cheek, and I lean into her touch. 

Wordlessly, I place a small kiss on the delicate skin on her wrist.

“Justin...” she sighs as my lips graze against her.

“I can’t help it,” I murmur against her wrist, taking her hand in mine and turning it over to kiss the skin on the back of her hand.  “I want you, Cat.”

“But, Justin –”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt her hastily, lowering her hand onto the pillow between us, but keeping our fingers entwined.  “For everything.  For not being more supportive after I found out about the lump; for going off to LA when we had so much to sort out; for breaking up with you the way I did.”

Cat stares at me, wide eyed.  “I wasn’t looking for an apology, Justin.  I understand why you acte-”

“But I meant what I said.  I wasn’t in love with whoever it was that you were trying to be when I came back from LA; I don’t know who the hell that girl was.”

“I was confused, Justin.  I could feel my relationship crumbling because of something I had done and I wanted to do anything I could to salvage it.”

“By going to the gym?”

Cat pulls her hand from my grasp and starts to roll away from me.  “It was stupid, I know that now.”

“But, whatever,” I shake my head in confusion and wrap my fingers around her wrist to stop her movements.  “I gave up on us too easy, and I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have bailed the first time the goin’ got tough.”

“Well...I’m sorry too.  And I hope you know that.”

An easy silence falls between us.  I guess because we had such a long time of not talking that when we did, it all came out pretty succinctly.  The only thing that we haven’t touch on – what happens now.

“So...does this mean we’re friends again?” Cat ventures lightly, hitting the pillow that her head lies on.

“To be honest?” I sigh, disliking the words about to leave my mouth but knowing I can’t stop them.  “So much has gone on between us, Cat.  I don’t think I could ever go back to being one of your friends.”

Her brows furrow with hurt.  I can see it etched all over her expression in the few inches that separate our faces.  “Why?  I said I’m sorry.”

“I know, and we can forgive each other all we want, but... it doesn’t change that there was something really intense here.  How can I go back to seeing you as just one of my friends after everything we’ve been through?”

Cat lowers her eyes, swallowing a lump in her throat.  “So, what are you saying?”

I muster every fiber of strength in my tired, sexed body.  Scenes from our relationship and its demise flash through my head, the memories showing some of the best moments in my life and some of the worst.  But then, that was always how it was with Cat: you took the good with the bad.  I knew that when there was a period where everything was great, an argument that would send us both into spirals of depression for a few days, before we made up and started the whole process over again. 

It was a rollercoaster, and I loved it.

“Do you wanna give this whole thing another shot?”

Cat’s eyes snap to mine in surprise, her eyebrows arched with shock.  “What?”

“Just...I dunno, turn a new leaf.  Start afresh.  Put the past behind us.”

“But we can’t put the past behind us, Justin,” Cat whispers, apparently feeling no need to raise her voice in the still darkness of her bedroom.  “It’s part of us.  We can’t just forget about it.”

“Why not?” I complain, my voice coming out far more whiney than I had anticipated.  “I just want things back to the way they were.”

Cat bites down on her bottom lip, the moonlight that creeps through the window above her bed casting light on eyes glittering with tears. 

“I do too.  But I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

“Don’t you want to be with me, Cat?” I plead, feeling my heart break with every morose expression that flickers across her features.

“I do.  I did.”  Cat groans and shakes the tears from her eyes.  “I don’t know, Justin.”

“So, what,” I snap bitterly, the rejection causing a defensive surge to pour from me.  I pull myself into a sitting position.  “A goodbye fuck and that’s it?”

“It’s not that at all.  I just...I don’t think we can ever go back to what we were, Justin.  We’re both too different for that; we’ve grown up.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, throwing the white sheet off in disgust as I pinpoint my scattered articles of clothing.  “If that’s how you feel, I’m going home.”

“What?” Cat sits up and watches as I hop ridiculously around her small bedroom, trying to put my boxers on with one hand while picking up my trilby with the other.

“You obviously don’t feel the same way about me as I do about you,” I spit, wishing I could sound more dignified but know that it’s impossible when I’m not wearing pants.  “There ain’t no point hanging around to hear the rest.”

“You’re being a little rash,” Cat sighs in an annoyingly grown up manner, pulling the sheet up around her chest.  “I never said I didn’t want to get back together, I just don’t think it’s as easy as you’re saying it is.”

She trails off and watches me for a moment extricate my clothing from hers, tossing her panties off my shirt in forced annoyance.  Secretly, I kind of want to keep them.

“Stay,” she says, her naked body emerging from the sheets to put a hand around my wrist.  “Just stay the night and we can talk things over in the morning.”

I pause, holding my trilby in my right hand and with one foot successfully in the leg of my boxers. 

“It’s four am, for Christ sake, we can’t think clearly at this time,” Cat reasons, pulling slightly at my arm and pointing toward the clock sitting on her side table.  “Just come back to bed.”

I drop the trilby pathetically, and step out of my boxers slowly.  As much as I hate to admit, leaving isn’t even an option.  I have no cab fare on me, no other person I could catch a ride off...I’m stranded.

“Come here,” she soothes, enveloping me in a hug that puts a balm on my firework temper.  “Let’s just enjoy tonight and sort it all out tomorrow.”

I sigh and nod against her chest as we fold into one of our old sleeping positions, tangling our limbs together in an intricate, vine-like intertwine.  As I rest my head against her chest, I feel her heart beat ease to a more normal rate, telling me our little argument had a greater effect on her than she’s willing to show.   

But I know Cat.  Despite all of her soothing words and gentle kisses, I know that when I wake up tomorrow morning, there’s a good chance she’ll be saying the exact same thing to me.

How can we change everything that has already happened?  I’m sorry, Justin,  I just don’t love you anymore.  It’s over.