There is a knock on the door. Not a loud knock, but a firm one, a man’s knock, and she hurries quietly across the living room where she had been sitting absorbed in a book. Don’t get the wrong idea: she isn’t the kind of woman who belongs to a book club and cruises through all of the best sellers in the order they are suggested on Oprah’s book list. The book that she flips over and lays down, wide open, on the arm of her couch before jumping up an — no, she gets two steps towards the window before she hastily turns around and folds back the top corner of the page she had been reading before closing it and stuffing it awkwardly in between the plump leather couch cushions where it wasn’t likely to be found. The book that she was reading would never be found in the Times with raving reviews, as it is a trashy romance novel, full of disgusting smut and idealistic relationships that would never work in real life, but that make mothers blush when they so much as read the title and see the cheesy cover art that looks like it was made in the 80s, even though the book was copyrighted barely a year ago. But this woman isn’t a mother (never), and she isn’t a wife (not anymore), and she is horny lonely. Unbearably lonely. Most of her friends are happily married, living the domestic dream with three perfect children, a dog, a minivan, and a husband that comes home every night instead of citing “late nights at the office” as his excuse for being gone.
     He had done that to her at least five nights a week, and when she finally found out what was going on, she didn’t know what to feel: anger and heartbreak knowing the man she married was cheating on her, or relief at knowing the man she married didn’t find her so dull that he was working overtime just to get away from her, just dull enough to cheat on. She didn’t love him anyway, she decided finally, after spending a week in her pjs, wandering around the house with a box of tissues in her hand and sobbing every time something in her too-big-for-a-single-woman — oh god, she is a single woman now! and this thought brought with it a fresh cascade of tears from her wishing well eyes caked with several day old, smeared make up — when her big, empty house reminded her of how that lying, cheating, manipulative, backstabbing, deceiving, heart-breaking, dream smashing, life-plan-ruining, low-down, filthy, no good, two-faced, jackasshole son of a bitch had left her for some (her mother’s word) floozy from the office. Of course she is lonely! so when she stuffs her trashy romance novel into her couch cushions she is not just hiding an embarrassing choice of reading material, she is hiding the fact that she is lonely. Only a three and a half months since he’s been gone, and she’s already lonely.
     The visitor at the door knocks again, but she doesn’t open right away because she is looking out the window, across her front yard, to the street to see if she recognizes the visitor’s vehicle. It’s the plumber she called for a couple days ago. Her eyes trail from the logo on the plumber’s truck to her unkempt yard, tall grass and weeds swaying in the light, late-spring breeze. He used to mow the grass and fix the minor leaks when he was here. Aside from being a brilliant businessman and a spectacular lover (when his heart was in it, as well as his dick), he was also quite the handyman.
     She remembered how she used to fix sandwiches and lemonade; he’d take a break from mowing and they’d sit on an old blanket in the half-trimmed yard and eat together. Sometimes they’d talk, and sometimes they didn’t need to talk, but eventually they just didn’t, and eventually, she stopped making picnics and just sat at the window, fingers absently tracing patterns in the condensation beads that formed on her tall, icy glass of lemonade. She often thought about adding some of his vodka, but she wasn’t a drinker, so instead of the slow burn of the vodka in her throat, she watched him push the lawn mower back and forth across the yard with a slower, more painful burn in her chest. She’d get up and fix him some lemonade, and with shaky hands that made the ice cubes clink against the sides of the glass she’d carry it outside and wait on the sidewalk for him to turn around and see her. When he did, he would shut off the mower and walk across the yard to where she stood, smiling sweetly as she raised the glass towards him slightly with one hand while brushing her hair from her face with the other, gestures that meant, to her at least, “i’m here, and i’m yours.” When he didn’t see her, she would wait until the sun-heated pavement became unbearable to her bare feet before heading back up the sidewalk, leaving the glass, no longer clinking (but not because she wasn’t trembling), on the front porch railing, and slipping silently back inside.
     Once, she waited just inside the entryway, crouched down where she couldn’t be seen through the two long, cut-glass windows on either side of the front door. She raised herself up so that she could just watch out one of the windows as he shut off the mower and walked across the yard to sit on the porch and drink the lemonade. Now there is a stranger on the porch, but as she walks quickly on bare feet towards the door, she realizes that there always was a stranger on the porch.
     She opens the door, interrupting another one of those persistent knocks, and finds herself looking up into the most ruggedly handsome face that the gods must have chiseled from the stones of Mt. Olympus itself and animated his electric blue eyes with its sacred fire. His charcoal-colored shirt, embroidered across both pockets with his name and the company logo, is curiously tight and loose in all the perfect places, loose and comfortable where it tucks into his dark blue pants held up by a simple black belt, tight and thin across his muscled chest and arms, biceps bulging beneath the fabric that looks as if it will burst if this blue collar Adonis even thought about flexing those amazing arms. Noticing her astonishment before she does, he flashes a dazzling smile while simultaneously placing his toolbox on the ground, wiping his right hand against the side of his pants before extending it to her, and brushing his slightly wavy, chestnut colored hair away from his forehead with the fingers of his left. “I’m Dave,” he says with a slight Southern drawl that makes the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up with excitement. She simply nods in response, knowing somewhere that she must appear stupid but finding herself unable to do anything about it. Finally, he loosens his grip on her hand, and this simple movement seems to bring her back into reality. “Hi, I’m Anna,” she replies quickly, while letting go of his hand, pulling away from his hand more than slightly embarrassed.
     “The leak is in here,” she says as she turns towards the kitchen, and he follows behind, but not before taking care to shut the front door behind him. When they are both standing in the center of her spotless kitchen with its lustrous countertops and gleaming white and slate-grey tile floor, she motions towards the sink and says, “It’s been like this for a couple of days. When I turn on the sink, water comes out.” With a slight chuckle, he replies in that cool, hypnotic voice, “Isn’t that kind of the point?” Becoming conscious of her crimson-flushed face, she laughs as well, but without the same ease. As Dave bends down to look at the pipes under the sink, Anna realizes with a slight shock that there is more than embarrassment burning her face red. There is also desire there, a desire not felt since...
     Well she used to sit and watch him work, when he’d let her. She always marveled that those powerful arms that could do anything were also able to hold her gently; the mouth spouting expletives like a fountain at whatever task he was working on would also plant tender kisses on her face and whisper sweetness in her ear. There were other times when...
     She comes back into reality to find herself sitting on the cool tile, staring at him, but more importantly, that he is staring back at her with a bemused, quizzical expression playing around the corners of his mouth and in his sparkling eyes. She stands up quickly, frantically searching for an explanation she could give him. “Would you like anything to drink?” she offers, while backing towards the fridge. “Thank you. Some OJ would be real nice, ma’am, if you have it,” he replies. She retrieves a glass from the cabinet and turns to get the orange juice from the fridge, shaking the carton before filling the glass almost to the rim. When she turns back around, Dave is standing behind her. Startled, she narrowly avoids spilling the juice all over him and the floor. He accepts with a smile the glass that she offers with a nervous laugh, draining half of its contents in a couple big gulps. “Thanks,” he says again, and as he reaches to put the glass on the countertop that Anna is standing against, his hand brushes hers, and she a shiver runs down her spine from that simple contact. She brushes her hand against his again, and this time he takes it in his own before bending down to kiss her.
     While she finds this act surprising, she is more surprised to find that she is thoroughly enjoying the feeling of this stranger wrapping his arms around her and pressing her up against the side of the fridge. She raises her arms as he lifts her blouse over her head before tossing it on the floor and beginning work on removing her skirt, only stopping long enough to allow her to slide his own shirt off of his muscled back. She feels his lips part slightly, and she tilts her head more to allow him to deepen the kiss, moaning gently as his skilled hands begin to touch in all the right places...
     Like His hands once did, back before they were divorced, before they were married, when he would visit her at the TasteeTreet. She was sixteen, he was seventeen, and nothing seemed to make more sense back then than to spend slow afternoons with him in the back, making out against the freezer. Then she was nineteen, he was twenty, and they would spend long winter nights making love in his dorm room. And then she was twenty-two and he was twenty-three, and they christened each room in the house they moved into the week after their honeymoon with sex that would make her blush when she would get random memories of that first night while at the grocery store. And then she was twenty-four, and he was twenty-five, and one night he came home late and she just knew that he had been giving someone else memories that would make someone else blush...
     A tear rolls down her cheek, and she begins to sob, startling Dave and causing him to take a step back from her. She brings her hands up to her face and mumbles, “We can’t do this.” Confused, he stops unbuckling his belt, moves her hands from her tear drenched face and cradles her chin in his own hand, reaching up with his thumb to wipe the fresh sadness from her left eye, while the right still flowed unimpeded. “Sure we can, baby,” he whispers softly in a reassuring tone that causes her to pause her crying for a moment as she looks up into his brilliant blue eyes. “Sure we can. I’ve got a condom in my wallet, you’ve got a gorgeous body, and I don’t have another appointment for an hour and a half.” This only serves to bring the tears back with redoubled strength, and before he can get away, she throws herself at him, pressing their two mostly naked bodies against each other. This act would ordinarily be a suggestion to invite a move to the next level of intimacy, but instead, she just wraps her arms around him and bawls into his bare chest. Panicked, he pats her head awkwardly with one hand while trying to unfasten her arms from their death grip on his body with the other. “Lady, you’re weirding me out!” he exclaims as he tries once more to struggle away from the breakdown-in-progress that seems now permanently attached to him. He suddenly stopped reading. “Wait just a damn minute! What the hell is this? what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

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