But I was drowning in my own emotions.

This was what happened when the sex was good. That air of possessiveness. I tried to separate the two but sex came with emotions. Not always love, but there was some level of possessiveness, and if the sex was given often enough, entitlement. Sex led to drama. I didn't want any drama.

I told myself I didn't want Mark, repeated that in my head over and over, my mantra, my denial.

Karl was comatose, an overworked Greek God who was dehydrated and sleep-deprived.

I whispered his name a few times. No response.

Mark was a married man, late getting home, anxiety showing in his face as he drove.

I said, "Kiki Sunshine enjoyed you."

He turned away, put his eyes back on the road. "Not as much as you enjoyed Karl."

Silence returned.

I said, "And I guess you did Kiki Sunshine for me too."

"Of course."

"You're so kind."

He winked at me. "I did that for you. I did it all for you."

"Bullshit."

His words terrified me. His words delighted me.

Karl, I analyzed him. I think he admired intelligent women, but was afraid of intelligent women, couldn't handle us beyond sexual acrobatics and yoga-inspired positions created in an act of passion. In the act of the zipless fuck. After the intimacy was done, after fucking, he had nothing to offer. No, I stand corrected. He had plenty to offer. But after the fuck was done, he offered nothing. I gazed at his arm. I gazed at his angel.

I asked Mark, "Where is Kenya?"

"Kenya? Who is Kenya?"

"The woman tattooed on his skin."

"Oh. Kenya."

"They were engaged."

Mark grunted. "He told you he was engaged to Kenya?"

"What happened?"

Mark looked at his sleeping brother, looked concerned, then put his eyes back on traffic.

I teased, "Did she get the Frankie treatment too?"

He snapped, "Is that really any of your business?"

His tone hurt my feelings. Made me want to judge him. I asked, "Was I your first affair?"

"No. Not the first."

"Have you always been unfaithful?"

"No."

I paused, took an intense breath as I pulled at my hair, twirling my mane around my finger.

I whispered, "Do you ever feel guilty for cheating?"

"You feel guilty for sleeping with a married man? Am I the first married man you slept with? You want to get into asking those kinds of questions right now? Is that where you want this to go?"

I stopped there. Stopped and shifted against Karl's weight, swallowed.

For a moment I thought Mark was going to screech to a halt and throw me out.

For a moment.

He had backbone. I had crossed some line and been put back where I belonged.

He cleared his throat, his face lined with the beginnings of an apology, said, "Nia..."

"It's cool."

"I'm sorry about-"

I snapped, "It's cool."

That ended that.

I had become emotional. That was a crime. His life wasn't my business, as mine wasn't his.

He didn't need to know about Logan. Or any of my other lovers.

I didn't need to know about The Jewell of the South.

We all had secrets. Everyone had their right to own their secrets. I was his secret. I knew I'd become his secret before he penetrated me the first time. Penetration. Men penetrated women. They knew they did. Each thrust was like a sledgehammer trying to break down an emotional barrier. I had felt Mark inside me, touching the bottom of my true feelings.

I had felt Karl inside me, widening my emotional walls.

Still I felt them both, as if only the combination could shatter my emotional barrier.

Anais's affairs with men outside her marriage, no matter how it was romanticized, ended in pain, if not for her, then for her lovers, for her husband, the man she cuckolded with her other lovers. Involvement with a married man never had a happy ending.

I was angry at Anais. Angry at the way she never stayed to explain everything to me.

We passed the largest city in the Carolinas, then put Charlotte in the rearview mirror.

I was an hour away from Kiki Sunshine. I wanted many hours, many miles to come between us. Mark pulled off the interstate, stopped at a gas station, went inside, came back with a can of Red Bull, bottled water, and a blue Gatorade. He handed me the Gatorade. I couldn't suppress my smile.

I didn't ask him how he knew that was my favorite, didn't ask if his choice was random.

Maybe we had a stronger connection than either one of us realized.

That was better than sending me flowers every day for a week. Better than him bringing me an engagement ring. Better than sex.

After that we were back on I-85, the heat horrendous and the humidity close to one hundred percent, each minute taking me closer to Atlanta, moving me away from Kiki Sunshine.

Mark smiled and shot me a playful wink. "I love you."

"Love spoils sex. Don't spoil the sex."

"Why combative all of a sudden?"

I drank more Gatorade, thinking. "Do you love Jewell Stewark?"

"Is she an issue?"

"If this continues, she will become an issue for me as I will become an issue for her."

"Only if you make her an issue."

I chuckled. "If you don't tell me, maybe I'll ask Jewell what I want to know."

"If you want, I'll set up the meeting."

"Fuck you."

"All that education from Hampton, can't you say something a little more profound?"

"Fuck you."

I was getting emotional. Mark was getting emotional.

And Karl was being Karl. Working hard, fucking harder, going with the hedonistic lifestyle.

I didn't want to have the Logan disease where infatuation led to love and love spoiled the party.

Mark said, "I saw you first. Karl beat me to you. But I saw you first. What ever I have, either he imitates or tries to steal. He tries to steal what ever I have. He ruins everything. Always has."

"Why?"

"Because that is who we are. We were born minutes apart. No one understands us but us, and even we don't understand ourselves. Our lives are separate, but they are the same life. Our bond is unbreakable. If he died, I would know it and in response I would die within the hour."

He said that and I wanted to cook for him, watch him eat, bathe him, make love to him, give him orgasm, then send him home to his wife, pleased in all ways, leaving nothing left for her to do but suffer.

But I had seen the way he enjoyed Kiki Sunshine. I'd invited her, yes, but I had seen Mark with another woman. Maybe I wanted to see him in that way, needed to know how special I was to him.

Kiki Sunshine had taken him in her mouth, was trying to suck the life out of his body and leave a husk of a man where a man once stood. I had seen them soldered together in a perfect blend of hardness and softness. His orgasm was a volcanic outpouring that erupted across her stomach.

It was never safe to invest in one love. Love needed to be diversified. When we made it to Atlanta and I relinquished him to his wife, I hoped a vast emptiness wouldn't consume me.

Mark had had sex with Kiki Sunshine as if I was nothing special. Had to keep it real. There was no relationship here. This was still zipless. It was just the extended version, the remix of a zipless affair. The emotions were high, but nobody wanted a commitment. We all wanted to use each other to achieve and give satisfaction. We were filling voids, releasing stress, fucking. And they had fucked Kiki Sunshine the same way they had fucked me. I was just another woman. New yoni turning old. For them this was still zipless. I didn't need to get caught up. I didn't need to become to them what Logan was to me.

But still, it was part of me to always want to feel special, even when I wasn't.

Maybe that came from being a woman. Maybe that came from growing up in L.A.

I closed my eyes, tried to make myself blind. Pretended I didn't have the ability to see beyond the moment, pretended that down the road I couldn't see red lights flashing.

Again three phones rang at once. Mine flashed DNA: LOGAN.

Maybe Kiki Sunshine was right.

Maybe men needed to get in that last fuck so they could say good-bye.

THIRTY.

Birmingham, Alabama.

In the heat of the morning sun I had traveled east to west to meet with Logan.

He was coming from Memphis, a four-hour ride down Highway 78 to get here.

I was nervous. Felt like I was standing in a bed filled with spiders.

He had left me feeling uncomfortable in my own life. I wanted it to end.

I wanted the dreams about him to end.

The best way to deal with fear was to face the nightmare. So I was here to deal with my fear.

I was on 11th Avenue South, in the Five Points South district, the center of Birmingham's nightlife. Daytime was filled with people who loved to eat and shop. The Original Pancake House, a place to get smoothies, a tattoo shop, and a decent hotel, all of that was right here.

I was at Starbucks, sipping on an iced green tea when I saw his Range Rover pull up and pause, looking for an open parking meter, finding none, then circling the block.

I crossed the street and waited in front of Surin West for a moment, but the heat was not to be reckoned with, so I stepped inside, the smell of Thai cuisine welcoming me like an old friend.