I can hear Sarah cooking me a steak and eggs breakfast as I’m lying in bed reading some new novel about drunk poets that takes place in flashback format after the narrator’s lost his mind. There are gray dirt smudges on the wall next to the mattress sitting sheetless on the floor of the unfurnished bare-bulb lit bedroom and my cock dangles, limp, dully aching, spent. “Come on, sleepy. Breakfast is almost ready.”

I get up, throw on some jeans and a sweatshirt because, besides my electric blanket, the apartment’s about 45 degrees until the landlord decides to fix the furnace. I wrap my arms around Sarah’s waist and kiss the side of her neck. She stops stirring the pan for a moment and with my lips I feel a vibrating in her throat. She scrapes along the bottom of the pan to keep the eggs from sticking and says, “Darling, I’m going to miss this.”

“I know. Me too.”

We eat breakfast in the kitchen with cobweb corners and talk about how weird it’s going to be but we’ll still be best friends because we’re too close to be anything else. I walk her to the door holding her slim, Slavic fingers; she’s all champagne smiles and bubble laughter and we press together for one last deep kiss, look into each other’s eyes too close to focus, say “Goodbye, baby,” and I shut the door behind her.

Ryan’s in the living room on the threadbare recliner watching daytime television. How to Make Millions in Real Estate. I sprawl onto the couch with my feet on the coffee table, a smile careening across my face. “Well man, I am finally single.”

“Shut up, you guys just broke up? That’s not what it sounded like.”

“My friend, that was goodbye sex. I am a free man today. And it feels pretty great.”

At the bar I see my old friend Lynn and one of her friends who has a bunch of piercings in her face and two poking out on either side of the top of her spine. Lynn’s been sleeping in my bed on occasion since me and Ryan moved into the new place because if you’re drunk and can’t drive home then you’d better be under an electric blanket with either Ryan or me, but Ryan’s bed is usually taken. The last time, she slid the cock out of my pants and pulled on it while I was pretending to sleep until she gave up. I didn’t want to cheat on Sarah, so I just went to sleep, hard-on and all. Tonight she’s all sweet on me, tugging at my shirt and big hugs and all that but I don’t tell her I’m single, just that she and her friend should come and hang out for some beers after the bar.

Back at the place we all wear our coats in the living room and play drinking games on the table with the cards sticking to the rings of dried beer spillage. Lynn brought a few of her friends and some of our friends are here, too. After a few games, Ryan’s leaning up with the piercing-faced friend and Lynn’s huddling against me, reaching over my lap to slap her cards down and dragging her hand slowly over my leg as she brings it back up to her fanned-out cards. It’s not long before I’m in the kitchen getting a beer and Lynn comes in, I lead her into my room, close the door behind her. I kiss her up against the wall and tell her. “I broke up with Sarah tonight.” She smiles and kisses me and says “really?” and her body’s a chainsaw against mine. She pulls me onto the bed and grabs out the cock, pops it into her mouth. All I can think is that all I’ve been thinking about lately is those two tongue rings she’s been wearing and holy shit the friction is even better than I thought it might be. She’s all tubes and vibrations and light-flickers: hum of a city from above on a clear-sky night. After a few minutes she looks up at me with sharp eyes shining like the crows wings, “I should probably get back out there to my friends.” She’s a real shot of whiskey, Lynn.

Back out in the living room we get back into drinking our beers with everyone else, who may or may not be wondering where we were for the past few minutes. I catch Ryan eyeing me. No worries. Soon all of the guests stumble out and it’s me and Lynn, Ryan and her spine-pierced friend, who go to bed giggling hand in hand while I’m shuffling the deck and we waste little time getting back to my room after they’re gone.

We, lip-locked, tear each other’s clothes off as we hit the bed and move quick, sloppy drunk into the action. It is a red thunderclap. It is two car windshields all smashed up and flying through the air together like freeze-frame falling snow. Her smile is strange and not what I am used to and shortly after I’m inside her I’m thinking of Sarah. I am thinking about how much Sarah hates Lynn and this is some kind of self-destruction, burning bridges, for sure, and soon I’m too distracted to fuck anymore anyway so I pull out and roll over. I fall asleep before I catch my breath.

Later the next day I tell Sarah about the whole thing. We have lunch. I’m kind of reeling about the whole thing because I really don’t like Lynn but even though I can’t stop thinking about Sarah I know we can’t be together because I just can’t do that again, being with her. Sarah tells me I should take Lynn out to dinner or something. Get to know her better, make her feel special. “Shit. Yeah, maybe,” I say. “Anyways. What else is new?”

It isn’t two days spent drinking with the guys trying to clear my head a bit before Sarah’s back at my house and telling me she has a new boyfriend, a guy I’d met, a friend of one of her girlfriends. They’re doing great, she says. Awesome. When she leaves I pick up the phone and ring up Lynn to see what she’s doing. She’s hanging out with her boyfriend at his house tonight. Excellent. So, I sit with my coat on all afternoon drinking Pabst, trying to finish that novel I’ve been reading, trying not to think.

Ryan comes home and he’s got Melissa with him who’s one of the girls who’s been staying warm under his blanket. She’s always nice and it’s good to see her but she looks stressed and when I ask her how she is, she shows me a little rectangular box and says “We’re about to find out, I guess,” and goes to the bathroom with Ryan. He looks pretty fucked up, too. I hear a sob, I hear the home pregnancy test hit the trash can, and Melissa walks out with the most sincerely shattered look on her face that I’ve ever seen, Ryan following her, his expression like he just died. At least, I guess, a little perspective. “You guys need beers?”