I told him I don't do this anymore, which was true, and I let him in anyway, which was truer.
The kitchen still smelled of garlic and burnt sugar, the tap counting seconds. His jaw glowed faint blue in the slatted amber. When he stood close, the port made its small electric sound — a frustrated insect reaching for a signal I no longer broadcast.
"You can't read me," I said. "You'll have to ask."
"Then tell me."
I pressed my hand flat against the cold counter to keep it still. My hands are steady except when they aren't. "Slow. Behind the ear."
His mouth found the closed scar where the port used to be, pale as a coin, and his breath came wet and warm against it. I made a sound I hadn't made in years. The not-knowing — I had built a whole life around that gap, the holy ignorance of one body guessing at another.
His thumb moved to the hollow of my throat. Lower. His hand opened my shirt, found the breast, the nipple, with a patience that did not guess.
That's when he said it, against my collarbone. "I bought your profile. Years ago. I know how you like it."
The horror arrived a half-beat before the heat, and the heat won. He pressed his palm between my legs through the fabric — exactly where the map would have said — and I let my hips answer, despising how my body welcomed the cheat, the stranger who already had the answers.
I let him think it was his secret.
I'd sold that profile to him myself.
