By the time the new academic year arrived, I still had an apartment full of dust and a couple of boxes to unpack since I moved out of my boyfriend's place. Well, ex-boyfriend now. I had tried to tackle all of that in the beginning, but I couldn’t part with many things when the breakup was still fresh. Then I left all of it to the side during the summer, with some traveling and then with my assistant job, and then Leo.

We exchanged numbers. I sent him a text.

We could go out sometime.

It seemed like the most casual thing to say, without sounding too forward or needy, while still making it seem like I wanted a repeat of what happened on that last day of the program. I shouldn't voice my complete inaptitude to get over the best sex of my life, mostly because I was starved for affection. But this thing that happened between us was something different. And I’d love to have that again, if only to keep me tied over until the next time my heart decided to break for someone else.

If it wasn't already on the way. But then, it was so easy for it to do that.

A full week of silence went by.

I didn’t want to, but after every time I checked our conversation thread and nothing changed, I had to kickstart the process of convincing myself there was nothing to come from it. That he either was busy or that he had something better to do. And it was fine.

Unsuccessfully, I was trying to mimic the way Leo touched me, using three of my fingers and not much lube. I’d reach into my hole under the shower, trying to push my head against the wall in an attempt to feel like someone was doing that to me. And I came and came, calling out his name until my voice got hoarse, and then I came again. I was so sore and my cock was completely spent, yet inside I felt ready to spark at the smallest of touches.

My mind was laser-focused on reproducing those sweet and hot memories. There was nothing that came close to it.

I tried to go out, saying yes to acquaintances when they invited me for drinks and parties. It was an attempt to think about something else, or someone else.

Easier said than done.

I found many a man to dance with, some even better looking than Leo, but at no point I felt as hard as I did when he fucked me against the floor of his office. How I felt taken from everywhere and completely at his mercy. These men wanted something easy and quick, and I had no doubt I could give it to them. But what was the point of just being a hole when I could be whole? They wanted just a vessel, and I felt like more than that.

After I cried for the boyfriend who dumped me, I didn’t want to cry again.

Then, cut to me on a Saturday night, weeks after all that went down, with tears streaming down my face in the middle of a club. The music was pumping loud and making even my heart shake, but I was depressed and sad, completely over whatever was going on around me. People looked at me weirdly, as they should. I was a mess, and it felt like nothing else would get me to change.

And then I saw him again. That same night, as I walked home from the club.

There was me, on one side of the street, alone under the flickering lights, and on the other side of the street, Leo and another guy. My man had an arm around his companion, and there was a lightness to the way they laughed, most likely drunk on alcohol, and maybe even love. It was a hard-to-swallow pill to me. I wanted to be that man he was holding onto. I would give anything, and everything to be that man. I was on the verge of screaming that aloud, but it was just him turning to stare at me, from across the street, for me to sober up.

Everything was fast, at most a couple of seconds. In that exchange of glances, I saw him analyzing me, judging me like no one else did -- or maybe like everyone else had done these past weeks, only I hadn't seen it. Leo most likely thought he didn't want his worlds to collide, the one we built on frail foundations, and the one that seemed to be where his life had grown roots. And who was I to curse him for wanting to be happy? Whatever happened between us was just a blip in the radar for him, most likely. While for me it was the explosion of fire and color that pumped me full of life. It was the highest high I'd ever reached, and now it was all careening fast into the abyss.