You opened the sliding door and stepped onto the balcony because the bedroom had gone too still. The clock on the microwave inside had said two in the morning. Arjun had stopped texting back hours ago. The cold of the metal floor went straight through your socks. The city below was mostly off now. A few windows. The moon was high enough that it cleared the next building over. You leaned on the rail with both forearms and looked at it. The stubble on your jaw caught the wind.
Your weight shifted on the rail and the rail came up higher than it should have. You looked down. Your feet were narrower. The socks bagged at the heels. The bones in your wrists where they rested on the metal had thinned. You laid one hand flat on top of the other and the upper one was smaller than the lower had been a moment ago. You pulled your sleeve back. The forearm above it was bare and pale and you didn't know whose it was.
Your shirt was no longer your shirt. There was something silky against your ribs where the cotton had been, and something tighter underneath, with lace at its edge. You looked down past the rail. Your stomach was flat in a way it had not been since you were nineteen. The hair past your shoulder was long now and the moonlight made it silver. Something at your hip was lace too. You hadn't owned lace.
The robe — whose robe — slid off one shoulder and you let it. The night air on your bare skin was a temperature you could not place. Cold. Warm. Both. Your nipples tightened against whatever the bra was. You smelled the smoke from a cigarette someone down on the street was finishing. You leaned forward and the cup of the bra pressed against the rail and the weight on the inside of it was new and substantial.
The moon was very white. The wind moved the long hair across the side of your face. You did not push it back. From the apartment behind you the phone on the bed was lit up. Three messages. You knew they were from Arjun and you knew you would not answer them. Not as the person you were now. Maybe in the morning. Maybe not.
The buzzer from the lobby went off behind you. You held still on the balcony for a second. Then you walked back through the open door, past the lit screen of the phone on the bed, to the panel by the door.
You pressed the door release without speaking into it. The intercom went dead. You walked back through the room, tied the robe loosely at your waist, and stood in the open doorway. The hallway lights came on as he stepped off the elevator. He had not shaved. He was holding nothing.
He stopped when he saw you.
"Who are you?" he said.
"A friend of his," you said.
He looked past you into the apartment. The phone on the bed was lit up with his own messages. He could see it from where he stood.
"He left an hour ago," you said. "Asked me to wait up for whoever came by."
He came inside. You closed the door behind him.
You didn't ask what he wanted. He didn't ask either. He set his keys down on the entry table the way a man does in a place he has been before. The robe came off at the door. The bra unfastened in the back. He watched you. You watched him watch you. The lace at your hip dropped to the floor and the moonlight caught it on the way down.
He met you at the bed. His hands were colder than the room. His mouth was at your throat and his thumb was at the corner of your jaw and you arched up onto him because the body knew what to do without asking. The mattress was the same mattress you had slept on alone an hour before. The window was still open. The wind moved the curtain against your calf.
He pressed into you and you closed your eyes and the inside of your skull was very white for a long second. He moved slowly because he thought he had time. He didn't. You came under his weight with the back of your head turned toward the moon.
Afterward he was asleep with one arm across your stomach. You watched the ceiling fan that was not on. You watched the blade nearest the window catch a sliver of the moonlight. You watched it shake very slightly in the wind from the door.