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water and let the wine wear off before I drive.”

    “Oh sorry, of course. You stay as long as you like. I’ll be done absorbing in five minutes or so. We can back the DVD up, or see what’s on TV.”

    “Cool, thanks.” His voice drips with relief.

    “Hey, Noah?” I say to the ceiling.

    “Yeah?”

    “Thanks for coming tonight. In every sense of the word. But you know, thanks for showing up. This was really nice. Thanks for making me come too.”

    “Oh. Well, thanks for making me dinner.”

    I laugh. “This is like some base-desires meet-up. What do we have left? Should we build a fire and some shelter?”

    He squeezes my foot again. “I think you’ve wrecked me for the rest of the night.”

    I suddenly think of poor Noah, venturing out into the fifteen-degree darkness, braving the lumpy, icy sidewalk again, starting up his cold, lonely car, and driving home to Jamaica Plain. It’s hard to stop myself from telling him he can stay the night…but it’s not fair to put him in a position to make that complex and nuanced a decision for us both. And I don’t know if I’m ready to wake up beside him or in the next room from him, to negotiate the shower in the morning, to wind up commuting downtown with him or whatever else might happen if we’re not vigilant.

    Then again, we could have bonus sex in the morning.

    Eventually Noah gets up, and I listen to him wander to the bathroom. I use the opportunity to put my bra and shirt back on. I can feel him leaking from me, like some precious prize escaping my grasp. I like it. It feels dirty and weirdly satisfying, as though this sexy, sweet man has soiled me. I’m grinning when he reappears from the kitchen with a tumbler of water.

    I speak without even knowing I had something to say. “Can I talk to you?”

    “Sure.” He sits on the coffee table right in front of me, attentive.

    “I like you,” I say. “You seem really nice and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed having sex with you.”

    “But?” he prompts.

    “No, no buts. I…I can’t help but feel like I should be telling you to feel free to crash here. But I don’t want you to worry about what I really mean by that. I don’t want you to think I’ve changed what this is all about. I’m worried I’ll scare you off. Which is stupid, considering the psycho circumstances. ”

    “I think I understand what you mean.”

    “So, what this is, it’s still the same. You’re here to impregnate me, for money. I’m not after a relationship. But we’re going to know each other kind of intensely for this week and maybe next month. Is it okay if I say stuff like that? Invite you to stay over? It doesn’t mean anything aside from, ‘I’d like you to stay over, if you want that too.’”

    “I think you should feel free to say whatever it is you want,” Noah says, looking me in the eye. “And I promise to take you at face value and not read anything into it.”

    I release a trapped breath. “Thank you. That’s what I was getting at.”

    “And we’ll just both have to agree to not feel offended when the other person says no. I mean, there might be some night when I come over, and suddenly it’s two a.m., and it’s snowing, or we’re a little drunk, and I really just want to crash here. But if you say, ‘not tonight,’ then I’ll go home.”

    “After you sober up,” I say and nudge his uninjured knee.

    “Yeah…unless you feel like picking up my cab fare.”

    “You keep doing what you just did, and you can help yourself to a kidney.”

    * * *

    Noah did sleep over. In my bed. We finished our movie, then stayed up watching TV, and I fell asleep toward the end of one of the late shows. We slept side by side, cautious, neither of us ready or wanting to risk the intimacy of bringing up spooning. He woke up just after me, and we smiled at each other before we spoke. It felt nice and just the tiniest bit nerve-racking, opening my eyes and finding him there.

    He’s in the shower