"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Good," she said, a luxurious stretch arching her spine. Her voice electrified him. "You?"

He hadn't slept very well, but he wouldn't tell her that. He had felt so unsure about being in that bed, her bed, their bed, for the first time. It felt like he was trespassing, and someone could walk in at any moment.

He was also struggling to hold back his feelings, trying to reign in the desperation that had been furiously unleashed. Last night, when he had spooned her, he had held her whole body still, held her suffocatingly tight, and when he kissed her neck, he dug his teeth in softly, until he realized he had her pinned like an animal and he felt embarrassed and released his grip. He had woken up soon after falling asleep. He watched her sleep, feeling guilty and voyeuristic, so he turned away and looked around her bedroom. Wondered what she had been through in this room. If this was a new bed, or if it was from the old house. He guessed he was on Peter's side of it, wondered if, when she had stirred during the night, she had thought just for a moment that he was him, wondered if that had fleetingly pleased her…

"How many times do you think we have woken up in a bed together?" he asked, to silence the taunts in his own mind.

"I wonder," she said, smiling as the sun backlit the curtains. It was Presidents Day Monday, so nobody was expected in the office. And she was in his arms. A luxury of riches.

"It's been a while, huh?" he said kissing her nose. The last time had been in another state, at another time, another life ago.

"God, we were just kids," she said. "What were we doing?"

The words bit at him. She didn't realize the blasphemy.

He smiled flat and hollow.

He felt like he felt when he had almost cried with Josh Garmin, his law school roommate. "I don't know what to do," Will had told him somewhere around the start of 3L.

"Tell her dude," Josh said, and Will was galled by the stupidity.

"I can't just tell her, dude. Like, then what? You know? She trusts me, she needs me."

"You're flattering yourself!"

"Okay," he conceded. "Well she needs something from me, and I don't want to fuck shit up for her, and I don't want her to get… whatever she gets… from someone else." It felt like tears, but he wouldn't, not with Josh, so his throat had burned as well as his temples with the choked restraint.

Just kids. Her words echoed in the cool morning light.

Will didn't say anything. He allowed her the moment of memory without rewriting her past to reflect his, to include the fact that nothing about it had felt juvenile or insincere, that nothing in all the years between then and now had hurt him like that want unreturned.

"Would we really only have lasted a week?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You said that once. Last year, I guess."

She smiled, unsteady. "We… we were way too young."

"And now?" he asked.

"That's… that's too much to think about," she said, tying to sound playful, and he felt ashamed again, that need shamelessly forcing its way free from the shackles he had placed on it.

He tried to distract them both with something more reliable, he kissed her mouth and her neck and her chest and then lower, and he used his hands and his mouth and he found peace there, losing himself in her and in his task.

She moved her hips against him, and she made those groans, and he was so thrilled at her pleasure, at having her, that out of nowhere he felt his own hips move, possessed of a quick rhythm all of their own, grinding into the bed and then, as his mouth still worked against her, he lost control and, almost, it felt, lost consciousness, just for a blinding flash, as he moaned and shattered.

"Oh my god," he said, "I don't know how…"

She looked down at him, startled and bemused and impressed, but then some sort of realization ran down her like chills, and he saw her thoughts on her face.

This is… he was… he feels….

"I'm sorry about the sheets," he offered, still absorbed in her, still working.

She couldn't focus, couldn't relax, said "Let's do this later," but he said, "No," scared that if she got up, she would coil in on herself.

He stilled between her legs, waiting to see if she really wanted him to stop.

She felt the heat of his breath on her, and she was still achingly halfway to wherever he was taking her, and so she relaxed her thighs and lay back and said, "Okay…"

After, they lay together, turned on the TV to watch the news. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings.

"Pat Roberts is such an asshole," Will said.

Alicia nodded. "But Lindsay Graham came out for her!"

"Yeah," Will said. "I think this will be alright."

She paused. "I think it will, too."

—-

In the kitchen, she made them breakfast. They couldn't go out to eat, couldn't take the risk.

"I can make pancakes!" She offered.

"Remember Clarence Thomas's hearings?" Will asked, as fragments of MSNBC floated through into the kitchen.

"Oh Jesus," Alicia said. "That was not a good year," she laughed, beating eggs into flour.

He watched her, watched all the tiny muscles around her wrists and on the back of her arms twitch as she whisked.

He certainly remembered the hearings, how they had sat and watched them from the brown couch at his Georgetown apartment, where Josh had a cable subscription. They had screamed at the TV, and he had fallen quickly, lethally in love with her.

He remembered that month in creeping, visceral detail. Remembered how they interrupted study sessions with the confirmation hearings, and would break up those with trips to Olde Towne Diner, where they made it their mission to try each of their 24 types of waffle before the end of school, and then they would walk off their meals with strolls up and down the Potomac.

Will had still had a girlfriend, but Helena shrank and receded like something sinking slowly into water with each refill of coffee at Olde Towne, each string of abuse they yelled at CSPAN, each deep breath they took down by the river.

Alicia had given him no indication that she was interested. Because of that, and because he was 23 years old, and because Helena was hot and she could be funny and he was comfortable with her, he planned to keep her around unless and until Alicia hinted otherwise.

But then, the power cut happened. When Helena and Will were in bed at his apartment one night, an outage hit the whole of campus. Alarm clocks, televisions, streetlights. It was dark. Dark like camp out by Lake Michigan had been when he was a kid, so dark that the sliver of moon threw just a sheen of gray light at them, and in darkness like that, Helena's jaw and ears and hair almost looked like hers, her mouth almost looked like hers, and her neck. Will had gripped her wrists, frantic. She guided him into her, feeling his urgency, and moaning with pleasure (he had wanted to tell her not to, because the dark didn't change her voice). He had never fucked anyone so desperately, and he couldn't stop kissing her.

"What was that, tiger?" she asked happily, afterwards.

"What was what?" he said, innocent. "You just look really hot today."

"In the dark?" She asked.

The next time he saw her it was back at home. He ended it. He tried the "it's not you it's me," but she said she didn't mind all the things about him that he tried to blame, she wanted more details, and she was angry, which he thought was fair enough, and she wouldn't stop until he said, "Look I… I'm in love with somebody else. I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry."

"Get the fuck out," she said, and he did.

—-

They ate the pancakes at the island in the kitchen, and Will watched Alicia for any sign of retreat. He didn't want her to withdraw from him, close up like a fist.

That had happened before. December, 3L. They had been in the library one Saturday night, back right corner of the fourth floor, when the heat had suddenly broken, so they went to Olde Towne. They sat down at the table that all the staff knew to seat them at, and she was still shivering. "Look at your red nose," he had said. "Rudolph," he teased, thinking fuck she's perfect, cheeks and nose pink, and eyes glistening, dark brown hair curling out from a white hat like she was the image of some perfect winter empress.

She had smiled back at him. "Oh my god!" She said, bouncing on her seat.

"What?"

"We did it! Just peanut butter and jelly left, twenty four out of twenty four! Yes!"

"Waffles for dinner?"

"Uh, yeah! Record-breaking, mission-achieving, waffles for dinner, in fact. I'm very goal oriented," she said, low and grinning.

"I hadn't noticed," he beamed. "Waffles it is." They drank cold beer and warm coffee and they toasted themselves on their accomplishment.

On the way out, she held his hand. She just picked it up, wordless. Maybe her hands are cold, he thought. Snow started sprinkling and they looked up at it, fingers entwined. He looked at her face, watched the perfect little flakes land on the warm rounds of her cheeks and dissolve into a shimmering sheen. He thought how good it was that they had spent five platonic nights in bed together at the Lakehouse last summer, how lucky that he knew not to expect anything from her, even in a moment as perfect and romantic and intimate as this, holding hands in the first snow, because god that would hurt. She smiled up at him, and he thought he saw something in her eyes that he hadn't seen before, but he told himself not to be stupid. You've been through this a million times.

On the way home, they stopped into Rusty's, the dive bar they liked, to get out of the snow. They had a couple more beers and watched the snow start falling in sheets, thick and opaque.

They slipped and staggered back to hers, and left their soaking shoes and socks by the door. Miriam was in Baltimore, and they kneeled on the couch, looking back out the window at the wonderland being made before them. He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him. Nothing out of the ordinary. She leant her head on his shoulder, something she had done a hundred times. He kissed her head, between them a pedestrian gesture.

"Will?" she said, quietly.

"Yeah?" he asked and turned to her.

She kissed him. He pulled his head back in shock, thinking she hadn't meant to do it, couldn't have meant to do it.

"Sorry," she looked down.

"No, no," he said, panicked, and he lifted her chin with a finger, and searched her gaze. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he found it, and he kissed her back, feeling her lips on his lips for the first time.

Outside was blotted and blurred by the blanket of white, and Will felt suspended in some new world as they kissed on the couch. He ran his hands up and down her back, dizzy and disbelieving, waiting for some instruction, some something from her.

"What do you want?" she said eventually, breathless.

I want to be with you, and only you, forever, he thought.

"What do you want?" he croaked back.

She didn't answer, but their bodies molded and moved with one another and their exhales grew shallow. He reached for the button of her jeans, couldn't believe this was happening, that he was touching her.

She pressed her hand onto his to stop him.

"I don't know if…" she started. He waited. She didn't say anything. She pulled her cardigan closed around her chest. "Just let me," she said, unhooking his belt.

"Wait," he said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Well, you're not gonna… You don't… I don't want you to… if you're not gonna let me touch you," he said, and it was a barefaced lie because there were no circumstances under which he didn't want her to touch him, but it was pure and true because he didn't want to take from her, not when what he had imagined for the past two years was making her arch and groan and feel good.

She rested her hand on top of where he strained and burned. "Well, it feels like you do want me to," she said, teasing.

He felt ashamed, somehow, that his desire was so manifest, he felt so powerless and vulnerable that he couldn't find words, so he picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. He pulled her to him, and he tried again to run his hand around the waistband of her jeans, and she said, "It's just, it's too —"

He never knew the end of that sentence, and he had thought about it ever since.

The next morning, they woke up together and she barely looked at him.

"Olde Towne?" He asked rhetorically, because it was brunch and they never did anything else.

"Oh, I, I have to go."

"I… what?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I've got some stuff… I'll see you in class."

"Class? That's not 'til Wednesday," he said, incredulous.

She pulled on her boots. "Mhmm! See you then!" she said, and waved goodbye before darting out.

"She waved at me. Waved!" he told Miriam, who arrived home a few minutes later. "And then she left me standing here alone, in her goddamn house!"

He left, and he didn't go back that evening. Annie Hall sat on his desk, waiting. He didn't call, and neither did she.

After class on Wednesday, he walked up to her. She was packing up her bag and talking to Andrea, who had the seat next to hers. Seats were assigned. Alicia tried to be kind, but sometimes Andrea was too much. She was overeager, earnest, and not well schooled in social cues. She was peppy and preppy, with a blonde ponytail that wagged like a dog's tail as she animatedly gesticulated in her socially unaware way. She stood too close to people when she talked to them, and constantly dropped things - pencils, books - and then with a shrill peal of self-deprecating laughter, would say, "My mom always said I am just the biggest klutz!"

"Hey guys," Will said, trying to keep his voice even.

"Dude!" Andrea jumped in, "Did you see the game last night?"

Alicia mouthed, "I've gotta go…" and slid out.

On Thursday, she didn't come to class. She wasn't in the library, wasn't at home according to Miriam, wasn't at the diner, or at the pool where she took out her stress with timed laps. He wondered if he should go wait on her doorstep. His thoughts skipped back and forth, from she can't hide from me forever, to there is absolutely no fucking way you will demean yourself like that. He didn't go.

On Friday, Andrea walked up to him after class. Alicia was back in her seat today, and he watched her hair move as she took notes. He had words ready for her. But at the end of the hour, Andrea appeared and asked him something he didn't care about, and flicked her hair. Will noticed that she was flirting with him the same way he might notice a traffic light changing, or an elevator arriving. A plain occurrence, logistical. She put a palm flat on his chest, in the middle of the classroom, and he tore his gaze from Alicia to look down at her hand, and then up into her eyes, which were blue and pretty, by all accounts. He felt Alicia look over, felt her stare. She pursed her lips and walked out.

On Sunday, Alicia showed up at Will's front door. "Miriam's in town this weekend, so I'm here. I've got All The President's Men. Do you wanna order noodles or pizza?" He stared at her. "Are you gonna let me in?" she asked. He stood aside.

"Um, pizza, I guess."

"Good," she said. "Me too."

They ate and they watched, but she sat with her legs crossed, leaning against the far arm of the brown couch.

"Listen, Will," she said, after the credits rolled. "I'm sorry about last week. I shouldn't… I shouldn't have been weird."

His ears rang waiting to hear what she was apologizing for, and then his stomach dropped when she continued.

"I crossed a line. We're friends, you know? We don't… I think that, the snow… I was just in a mood, and it was inappropriate for me to… I'm sorry, anyway."

He looked at her blankly.

"Are we ok?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. You weak piece of shit, he scolded himself.

"So I entered this thing on Friday, some charity matchmaking game thing. It's at Lincoln Bar. Sarah made me. It's gonna be totally mortifying. Do you wanna come with? Grab a drink before?"

They went together and he left alone. He watched her leave, watched this big guy who had been on stage with her take her away with him. He watched through the window, watched the guy take off his jacket to keep the rain off her. He watched them cower intimately at a bus stop, laughing like children, like something hilarious was happening, something funnier than rain, and then… Will swallowed hard and looked away.

—-

Two weeks later, she kept talking about this Peter. Will sat with Miriam at her kitchen table, when Alicia walked into the room, a shock of lipstick on her mouth.

"Well isn't somebody a vamp!" Miriam said, standing up. "You look hot, girl." Miriam kissed Alicia on the cheek as she walked to the bathroom.

Will stared at Alicia's mouth, red, now, and, somehow lewd.

"What?"

"You look… different."

"Good different?" she asked.

"Well, you…" he started, and he saw her eyes flicker in doubt. He wanted to say you don't need that, but who was he to lecture her? Maybe she liked it, and maybe it made her feel good, and he hoped that it did, hoped that it wasn't for him. Will hated that she wanted to attract Peter so much, he saw the lipstick in the context of all the things he had come to know about this guy, like that his exes were a string of beauties who favored high heels and tight skirts.

"Sure," he said.

"Ok, I gotta go," Alicia said, as Miriam came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table again.

"Don't break his heart!" Miriam yelled after her.

Will winced.

"Do you think she is wearing that stuff because she thinks she's not good enough without it?" he asked Miriam once she had left.

"What are you talking about?" Miriam said, not looking up from her magazine.

Will shrugged and looked out the window.

The next week, Will was on the way back from baseball practice, feeling unusually pumped and upbeat, when he saw them coming on M Street. He steeled himself. It was the first time they had been properly introduced.

"What are you guys up to?" Will asked.

Alicia hesitated. Peter spoke, "We're going down to the Potomac, actually. She knows all the best spots!"

Will nodded, smiled, ignored the feeling of blades in his chest.

"Oh you know what?" Alicia jumped in. "I just gotta run into this store and pick up a card for my mom. You guys will be alright for just a second?"

The men stood together, leaning against the wall. He's so goddamn tall, Will thought.

"You're uh, in school here too?" Peter said, sounding like such a man.

"Yup. 3L also."

"Hmm," Peter said. "What are you doing next year?"

"A firm, in Chicago."

"Oh, no kidding."

Will looked at the sidewalk, looked at the black splotches of gum that had grown as firm and dark as the concrete over years and years. He dug a toe of his sneaker into it.

"Oof, that's a nice ass," Peter said, causally elbowing Will. Will snapped his head up to face him as if he had just confessed to a murder. Will watched Peter watch a tall Blonde woman pass them.

"What, you don't like her? You like a more petite gal? Curvy? No judgment, dude. What about that one?"

Will couldn't kick his ass. Alicia would kill him, if Peter didn't first. He gawped, grasping for words, when the bell above the store door tinkled cheerily and Alicia bundled out.

"When… When's Veronica's birthday?" Will stammered, and Peter's eyes narrowed at him.

"Is that a Picasso print?" Peter interrupted, looking down at the card in her hand. "My mom's gonna love you. A girl who knows her art history," he said. "We'll uh, we'll see ya later, Will," he said, throwing a burly arm around her, and Will thought how small she looked beside him as they walked away.

"It's not a fuckin' crime," Josh had said when Will got home. "It's just looking. They're not even married." He tried a new outlet.

"Ew, fuck!" Miriam had said. Better. "She didn't hear anything?"

"No, she was in the store the whole time."

"Good. God, he's just somebody's sleazy uncle waiting to happen, isn't he?" she laughed.

How is this funny? He thought. "Well, what are we going to do?"

"What do you mean? We're not going to do anything," Miriam said, rummaging through her purse. Will stared at her, unsure how or why this conversation wasn't a priority. "Either she'll work it out by herself, or she won't," she said, pulling out a chap-stick.

"And what happens if she doesn't?"

"I don't fucking know," Miriam said. "Dude. She's a big girl. Go get drunk. Go get laid. Just let it go. Okay? I'm late to meet a friend." She punched him jovially on the shoulder and walked away.

—-

He took those words to heart. Started sleeping with girls, first just the ones that made him laugh and then the ones that caught his eye, and then whoever he found at Rusty's. When that didn't work, when it just made him feel hollow and hateful, he pursued something like what she had. Someone to think about, someone to do things with, someone to give all of this feeling to.

"So, what's going on with Andrea?" Alicia had said, slipping onto the bar stool next to him one night when everybody was out for Miriam's birthday. She put a glass of red wine down onto the bar. He had never seen her drink that before.

Will didn't turn to face her. He wasn't sure they were close enough anymore for her to be able to tease him. He could smell her shampoo and he took a fiery gulp of Jack to replace it.

"I don't know. I mean, I think it's quite serious."

"It's…" she stifled a smile, trying to be kind. "Really?"

It killed him that she was being polite with him. He wanted her to say, "Are you kidding?" and laugh with him like they would have done up until three months ago, when she started being pulled away from him. It was slow at first, but recently it hadn't been slow, and now he couldn't remember the last time they had been alone together.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "She said she wants me to meet her parents."

"Oh! Okay, well that's great," she said, and she meant it, and he knew she meant it, he knew she wasn't jealous, and that they had slid somehow into cordiality. That nothing seemed to make her jealous broke his heart. He had thought hard, and he was ashamed of it, about who he could go for to hurt her most, about whether she had an achilles heel and just who it might be. He considered mutual friends, former roommates, her moot partners, wondering who would make her reassess, and discover that he was, after all, important to her.

He turned and looked her in the face. Saw she was wearing those goddamn earrings as if they weren't gauche as all hell for a place like this. He looked at her dark red mouth.

She met his gaze, and she swallowed.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"Sure," he shrugged, finishing his drink.

"Is that… is that… whiskey?"

"Yup." He said, beckoning the barman for another. "Alicia…" he started, his veins on fire. She waited. "Are you happy?"

She paused. Started speaking, stopped. Started again. "I am," she sighed. He didn't say anything. He didn't say "with him" but they both knew. She continued, gently. "He's… loving, Will, and he takes care of me. He's incredibly smart and ambitious. I think he wants to run for Congress one day," she said, expecting a laugh or reaction that didn't come. She saw he was hurting, knew it was somehow to do with her, but couldn't allow herself to know how much, or exactly why. She sighed. "But I miss you!" It wasn't I miss you, it wasn't loaded and pregnant, it was I miss you! And it was so friendly that it was caustic. (She didn't mean for it to sound that way.)

"Well do you wanna watch a movie on Sunday?" he asked, tipping back his new glass, his question blunt and resigned like the final offer from a salesman that knew he wouldn't sell.

She flinched and he nodded. She didn't need to say, "I'm sorry, we have plans," but she said it anyway, and the we echoed in his head as he said, "Okay," and pushed himself up from the stool, slapped down a twenty, and walked out into the night without another word.

(He didn't know that she went home and cried that night).

—-

"These pancakes are really good," Will said. "Do you cook a lot?"

"I uh… I used to."

"Oh yeah? What happened?" he asked, chewing, and then he stopped, swallowed quickly to clear his mouth. "You know what, don't answer that," and they met eyes and smiled with all that did not need to be said. (She felt surprised at how comfortable this domesticity felt, another man in her kitchen. But she supposed he wasn't just 'another man.' She was grateful.)

He put their dishes in the dishwasher, and he washed up the pan and the whisk in the sink. He sat back at the island, leafing through the Times. She brought last night's wine glasses back from the bedroom, Merlot marbled dry at their base. She put them in the sink and ran the faucet, the T-shirt she was wearing riding up as she leaned forwards, and he stared at her hungrily, and seconds later he was standing behind her, hands wrapped around her, moving, grabbing, kissing her neck.

He gripped her hips. It was everything the bedroom hadn't been: fast, animal, rough. Maybe he was trying to prove something to her. Maybe he was trying to prove something to himself.

They showered, and in the bedroom he smiled at her.

"What?"

"You look really sexy in a towel," he smiled.

They got back into bed and watched a movie. The new Woody Allen.

"That was alright," she said afterwards. "It was no Manhattan or Annie Hall."

"Do you know I've still never seen that?"

"Which?" she asked.

"Annie Hall. Do you… you won't um, remember this, but you totally bailed on me the Sunday we had it planned."

"No! Did I?" she laughed.

"You did! And I never watched it!"

"Oh my God, I'm sorry," she said, smiling a pitying frown and kissing his forehead.

"You should be, that cut me deep!" He smiled.

They laughed together, and it was a nice laughter that held somehow their past in a knowing way, that made it a real and important thing, but not so heavy and serious that it could not be teased.

"Well you bailed on me when I wanted to go see the cherry blossoms and you said you would help Andrea Simmons go buy a new dresser!" she ribbed, eyes widening like she had caught him.

"Oh jeez, I remember that!" He chuckled. "You didn't even want to go with me…" he started, remembering how Peter had been out of town the weekend the trees had bloomed. He benched the rest of the sentence. "Do you think I wanted to do that? Four hours at Pottery Barn! Four hours anywhere with Andrea, I can't be around people that happy." She giggled.

"I was jealous," she said, coy and smiling.

"No, you weren't," he replied, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I wanted you to be, but you weren't."

"I was," she said, their words still light and easy, and comfortable, somehow.

"Jealous of what?" he asked.

"Well, you were, you were my best friend," she said, and he wasn't sure how that answered the question but he took it, and he held it, and it nourished him.