It smells like whiskey and stale air and unhappiness and fear. It's dark, late, and you can tell that even with the curtains over the windows pulled tight. There are bottles strewn all over the floor and index cards and papers crunch under your feet when you walk.
You're scared - so very scared that your heart feels like it's going to fly out of your chest - and you're high on a combination of pills that make everything not matter so much, while making everything matter too, too much.
You've never seen him before this moment, and he's never seen you, but he lets you in anyway. You don't notice he's drunk, not right away, and he doesn't notice you're high, and it's a perfect combination.
He says something in German, and you like the way it sounds, all guttural and hard endings, nothing like your own accent and nothing like Italian. You ask him if he thinks you're pretty, and he tells you that you are. He uses your name, the one you were born with, and you take his hand and you put it on your thigh.
When he asks you if you're sure, you straddle his thighs, and he doesn't ask again. He's hot and solid and male, and he tells you to take your dress off for him. You do, without hesitating.
He takes you on the coffee table, and it's a blind thing - all want and chemistry and the need for skin against skin and someone inside you. He's strong, and he holds you, and he owns you then. Yours and Claim and Yes.
After, he picks you up, as if you're a delicate thing made of breaking, and he carries you to the couch. It's like something out of a fairy tale, and you think he's beautiful. He speaks to you in French, calls you pet names, makes you feel beautiful.
And in the moment before he rejects you, you think this is what all the movies and songs and books are about. This.