On my fingers your slick scent mixed with the coconut musk of the suntan lotion we ’d repeatedly smeared over each other’s bodies. When your bikini top fell away, my hands caught your breasts, memorizing their delicate weight, my palms cupped as if bringing water to parched lips.

There wasn’t a particular night when we finally broke up, just as there wasn’t a particular night when we began going together, but it was a night in fall when I guessed that it was over. We were parked in the Rambler at the dead end of the street of factories that had been our lovers’ lane, listening to a drizzle of rain and dry leaves sprinkle the hood. As always, rain revitalized the smells of smoked fish and kielbasa in the upholstery. The radio was on too low to hear, the windshield wipers swished at intervals as if we were driving, and the windows were steamed as if we ’d been making out. But we ’d been arguing, as usual, this time about a woman poet who had committed suicide, whose work you were reading. We were sitting, no longer talking or touching, and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to argue with you anymore. I didn’t want to sit like this in hurt silence; I wanted to talk excitedly all night as we once had. I wanted to find some way that wasn’t corny sounding to tell you how much fun I’d had in your company, how much knowing you had meant to me, and how I had suddenly realized that I’d been so intent on becoming lovers that I’d overlooked how close we ’d been as friends. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to like me again.