I knew she wanted to take things to the next level. She’d been talking about getting a place together, somewhere, she didn’t care. Like in Hong Kong, maybe, since I’d been spending so much time there lately, and she wanted to take the offers of a few galleries there who’d said they’d be interested in representing her in that market. It would help us spend more time together, she said.

Last week, when she mentioned one of the galleries again, I gave her a hint that I was open to the idea of getting a place together.

She’d shrieked, thoroughly surprising the people in the tables next to us in one of those New York steakhouses. When we got to her place she didn’t let me sleep much that night, nor much of the weekend that followed.

But now, to my surprise, even after a second kiss and more caresses up and down her back, she pushed off with her arms and sat on her heels, looking at me with a gaze I couldn’t read.

“So is it really over with her?” she asked in a voice that I also couldn’t place. Her usual teasing, light, and flippant attitude was gone.

I looked at her confusedly as I sat up also, leaned against the headboard of her bed, and then answered, “It’s been a year since that happened. I left LA a week later, and … I told you … no, you’re right … there are lots of things I haven’t told you that will remain private between her and I … but this doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t talked to her in a long, long time. And you and I have been seeing each other now for six months, so….”

“No, Aerin … we’ve been fucking each other for six months … spectacularly so, that’s true … but…” she argued.

“Again,” I interrupted her, “this doesn’t change the fact that …”

“Then why won’t you say that it’s really over with her, Aerin?” she asked, her voice was decidedly more stressed than I’d ever heard it. Where is she going with all this? Why is she so demanding all of a sudden?

“Can you tell me definitively that that’s the case? That you’re over her? That whatever magic it was that happened between you has really gone?” she followed up with a barrage of questions.