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*

“
Wow,” Elizabeth said, panting slightly, trying to catch her breath. “This place is amazing.”

They had run through the low-rise brick buildings of West Village and Chelsea
and were now up on the High Line, a former elevated railway recently greened into a long sliver of park above the Meatpacking district. The bare branches of a patch of birch trees strained like twisted fingers toward the gray sky. Elizabeth half expected a crow to emerge from a tangle of naked sumac, cawing a shrill warning. At just past 7:00 on a bitter March morning, she and Sebastian had the park to themselves.

“
Yeah,” Sebastian agreed. “It looks kind of Gothic at this time of year, doesn’t it? I like it even better like this. The first time I came here, it was June. Everything was green, there were kids and tourists all over. It had a totally different vibe. But I like this post-apocalyptic look.”

Elizabeth nodded. That
’s exactly how it felt. Like they were the only two people in the world. Well, if you ignored the sounds of the traffic below them. The illusion was broken by a pair of runners slashing through the park, their fluorescent Lycra tights cutting the gloom.

Sebastian and Elizabeth looked at each other and shrugged, smiling.

“Come. Sit. I brought breakfast.” Sebastian tilted his head in the direction of a bench, pulling off the small backpack he had been carrying. He took out a slim metal flask and a zip-lock bag. Elizabeth looked dispiritedly at the contents. Nuts, seeds, dried fruit. Bird food.

He handed her the metal cup, filled with liquid from the flask.
“Kombucha,” he said when she raised her eyebrows at the smell. “Fermented green tea.”

She took a sip.
“It tastes very ... healthy,” she said.

Sebastian laughed.

“Courtesy of Charles, I bet.”

“
How did you guess?” Sebastian smiled. Elizabeth loved that smile. It transformed his face from brooding bad-ass to delighted little boy.

“
This too?” she took a handful of the trail mix.

Sebastian nodded, pulling a slim foil-wrapped package from his bag. Chocolate. He broke off a piece and held it up to Elizabeth
’s mouth. “But this is all me. Vosges dark chocolate and bacon. It’s killer. Try.”

Elizabeth looked down at her hands, full with trail mix and tea.

“Just open your mouth,” Sebastian said.

She did, watching him. His eyes were on her mouth. He slid the square of chocolate onto her tongue, his lips slightly parted. His fingers just brushed her lip.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling, not looking very sorry at all.

Elizabeth didn
’t answer, absorbed in the sensation of the chocolate melting on her tongue, rich and bitter and sweet and salty all at once. She closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she said. “Now that’s more like it.”

She opened her eyes to see Sebastian looking at her, a funny half-smile on his face.

“I thought you’d like it, but I didn’t know you’d like it that much. That sound was almost orgasmic.”

Elizabeth laughed, looking away, embarrassed.
“I love to eat. I know dehydrated cashew crackers and pressed root vegetable terrine are good for you, but give me a break already.”

“
Totally,” Sebastian said, reaching a hand out to brush a stray hair off her face, stopping himself at the last second, pulling back. He laughed ruefully, shaking his head. “This no touching thing is going to be brutal.”

Elizabeth thought,
For me too. His draw was almost magnetic. The closer she was to him, the closer she wanted to be. A little voice inside her was screaming a shrill, persistent warning that she deliberately ignored. She threw back the last of the kombucha like a tequila shooter, and, handing Sebastian the cup, stood up. “What’s next?” she asked.

*

Elizabeth rested her head against the vinyl of the seat. She and Sebastian were in the back of a yellow cab, heading toward an as-yet-to-be revealed destination. While he spoke with his assistant on his cell, Elizabeth gazed out the window at the neon signs they were passing, her eyes registering the words, but her brain not processing them. She was reflecting on her day with Sebastian, realizing with regret that it was almost over.

After they
had run back from the park and showered – separately, of course –, Sebastian had taken her to MOMA. Elizabeth thought visiting an art museum would be innocent enough, but she hadn’t counted on the Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective. As they wandered among the larger than life black-and-white photographs of nude and semi-nude faceless male bodies, Elizabeth did her best to mask the strange combination of titillation and discomfort she was feeling.

“
I like this one,” she said, standing in front of a black man dressed in a leather fedora and three-piece suit with the crotch cut out. “It’s got great movement. And it spins the whole female as object, male as objectifier thing on its head.”

Sebastian nodded his head, thoughtfully.
“Plus he’s got a huge cock,” he said.

Elizabeth smacked him on the arm, and his serious expression split into a wide grin.

“Sebastian!” Elizabeth said sternly, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. It
was
pretty hilarious the way people tried to talk about the composition and the mood of a giant, engorged phallus.

Sebastian insisted they stop in the gift store where he bought her a slick hardback monograph of the artist
’s collected works.

“
Something to remember me by.” He smiled, all innocence. She would definitely have to hide that from Keenan and Gwen. The thought flashed through her head, igniting a small flame of guilt when she realized she hadn’t talked to either of them in days. She would call or Skype them tomorrow, she promised herself, after Sebastian was gone. She didn’t dare to even think about Steve.

For lunch, he took her to an Ethiopian restaurant, a long subway ride away in Brooklyn, during which they were forced to stand pressed up against each other holding on to the straps hanging from the ceiling. Elizabeth avoided Sebastian
’s gaze, trying to ignore the wave of sensation that washed over her each time the movement of the car swayed them closer together.

At the restaurant, a dark dive filled with the smok
y smell of roasted coffee, they ate spicy curry, scooping it up with spongy flat-bread. Elizabeth found her eyes fixed on Sebastian’s mouth, remembering how it had felt against hers, wondering how it would feel kissing other parts of her body. She had to keep asking Sebastian to repeat himself, she was so distracted. It wasn’t just that he was gorgeous, though that was definitely part of it. And it wasn’t just how every part of him screamed sex, from his laugh to his walk to the way he ate, looking at her as if he wished she were dessert. No, there was something more. She realized what it was as they wandered around the streets of Brooklyn after lunch, looking in the shop windows, making up stories about the people they passed on the streets.

“
Frigid,” Sebastian said as a tall sexy blond swung past them, teacup poodle peeking out of her Hermes handbag.

A sixty-something woman hunched toward them, wearing a kerchief, her weathered face pinched in a perpetual frown.
“Now her, on the other hand,” he said, leaning closer to her and lowering his voice, “anyone, anytime, anywhere. But she’s in therapy for it.”

Elizabeth laughed.
“What about them?” she asked, nudging him with her elbow. A sweet-faced elderly woman and what appeared to be her twenty-something grandson were walking arm in arm.

“
Them?” Sebastian deadpanned. “I see them at my leather club every Tuesday. She’s the top.”

Elizabeth snickered, linking her arm in his and resting her head against his shoulder. He stopped walking and looked down at her.

“Hey,” he said. “No fair. If I’m not allowed to touch you, you’re not allowed to touch me.” He disengaged his arm from hers. “Unless you’re ready to beg, of course.” He smiled at her, a mischievous glint in his eye.

“
Oh, right.” She pulled away from him, her cheeks coloring. It just felt so natural to touch him, like his touchy-feeliness was contagious. She had to consciously remind herself not to. “Well,” she conceded, “maybe some touching is okay. Friendly touching.”

“
Like this?” Sebastian said, linking his arm through hers.

“
Yes,” Elizabeth said, enjoying the warmth from his body, his distinctive smell.

“
How about this?” He slid his hand down her arm to hold her hand.

She shook her head. His bare skin against hers was just too much. She couldn
’t concentrate on anything other than the place where their fingers connected. It was this, she realized, that made her want him. Chemistry. Something in her came alive when he touched her or looked at her or said her name.

He hooked his arm through hers again.
“Fine. You let me know. By the way, I booked us a table at Ducasse for tonight. Do you have anything to wear?”

Elizabeth thought of the casual wardrobe of jeans, t-shirts and sweaters she had brought.
“No,” she said. She should have listened to Nina. Of course, when she was packing she’d had no idea she’d be having dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant with Sebastian Faulkner.

“
Come on.” Sebastian pulled her into a shop with women’s clothes displayed like rare artifacts in the window. “Let’s take care of that.”

It was while Sebastian was examining her critically in one of the outfits he had chosen as the pneumatic shop girl undressed him with her eyes that Elizabeth had another realization. Sebastian wanted her. His attention wasn
’t on the twenty-something with the enormous knockers, it was on her. He wanted to listen to her, to amuse her, to please her. He was entirely focused on
her
. For the last seven years, at least, she had lived her life feeling like an appendage to Steve and the kids, something that was useful, necessary even, but taken entirely for granted. It felt strange to be the center of anyone’s attention, but it also felt good. Better than good. Amazing.

In the end, Sebastian chose a simple black sleeveless sheath cut out of thin, buttery suede and a pair of fishnet stockings. No man had ever told her what to wear before. It had always been the opposite. But she was wearing them now, under her sensible camel coat, huddled next to Sebastian – for warmth, she told herself – in his slick black Prada suit. They
’d eaten at Ducasse already, an experience Elizabeth would remember for the rest of her life, and were now en route to their final destination, their last stop before Sebastian headed to JFK and out of her life. His duffel bag was in the trunk.

The taxi driver pulled to the curb just as Sebastian ended his call.

“This is it, mon,” the dreadlocked driver said.

“
Thanks,” Sebastian said, slipping him a bill. “Keep the change.”

From the wide grin that spread across the man
’s face, Elizabeth guessed it was a big one.

Sebastian hustled her past the wall of a bouncer standing in front of an unmarked door and down a steep dark stairwell, pulling open the steel door at the bottom. A throb of music swelled out to greet them, the syncopated beat and maraca rattle of South America. The dance floor – and it seemed the entire club was a dance floor – was alive with color and movement as couples moved together
, perfectly synchronized with the music and each other. Elizabeth stared, her eyes lighting on first one couple then another, mesmerized by the fluidity of their movements, the casual ease with which the men spun their partners away from them and reeled them in, their hands sliding over their partners’ waists and hips with sensual familiarity.

“
Come on,” Sebastian said, pulling her to a dimly lit corner of the dance floor. He had given his jacket and bag to the coat check girl and unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his sleeves so that he looked like the other men in the club. Elizabeth, however, didn’t look a thing like the diminutive, butterfly-hued women fluttering around their men, with their hourglass figures and deep cleavage. She felt awkward and self-conscious at first as Sebastian put one hand on her back, holding her hand with the other, guiding her gently. It had been more than a decade since she had danced the salsa, but her body hadn’t forgotten the three-four rhythm. She let the music wash over her as Sebastian led, one firm hand on the small of her back, warm through the suede of her dress.

One-two-three-and-one-two-three-and, she counted to herself. Her feet caught the beat of the song and her body followed suit. When it came to Latin dance, she thought, women were lucky. As long as their partners knew what they were doing, they just had to keep the rhythm and let the men lead. And Sebastian definitely knew what he was doing.

“You’ve done this before,” Sebastian said, crossing her arms over her head and turning her so that her back was pressed against his chest, her arms crossed in front of her. He spun her away from him and reeled her back in, draping her arms around his neck. His hands slid slowly down her back to rest on her hips.