All I have left of your body wash sits in the corner of the shower. I try not to look, but inevitably, I twist under the faucet, rinse my hair, wipe my eyes, and it’s there. Figs—juicy and warm and vibrantly opening the senses. I should throw it away. But I remember how it feels on the pads of your fingers, gently prodding all of the known and secret places. You never liked using a washrag.

“I wouldn’t want you to feel dirty,” you said.

And I didn’t. Because with you, dirty wasn’t repulsive. To lick the inside of your armpits, or call you “daddy.” To wait, naked and on top of the covers and feigning sleep, until you found me. To kneel by the bed as you draped your balls on my face and told me I was so, so good…

Pale red soap scum streaks the walls, and I’m too much of a coward to wipe them away. Because I wanted you to see that they remained, to smell yourself on me.

“It isn’t like that,” you said at the bar, two drinks in. “I love him, but we each have needs the other can’t meet.”

“That’s where I come in.”

“Exactly.”

“And it doesn’t get in the way, knowing that your husband is . . . with someone else? And so often?”

You shrugged and sipped your Manhattan, a drink I’d never had before. “Sometimes, maybe.”

I wanted so much for you to be right.