The van smelled like copper pipe and the cheap pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. Omar Reyes killed the engine and sat for a moment, both hands on the wheel, watching the apartment building through the windshield. Third floor. The window with the pink curtains half-falling off the rod. His phone buzzed in the cupholder—the dispatch confirmation, the address, the job: leak under kitchen sink. He'd taken the call twenty minutes ago, and already he'd memorized the way the sun hit that window, the way the curtains moved like something alive.

He grabbed his toolbox from the passenger seat. The latch was sticky; it always was. He had to jiggle it twice before it gave, and the sound of it—that small metal click—felt like a door opening somewhere inside him that he usually kept locked.

The stairwell was dim, the paint peeling in long strips that curled like dead leaves. He counted the steps without meaning to. Fourteen. Fifteen. The smell of mildew and old cooking grease got stronger as he climbed, and under it, something else—something sweet and musky, like fruit left too long in the sun. He stopped at her door and knocked twice. Polite. Professional.

The door swung open and the smell hit him full in the face—that same overripe sweetness, but stronger now, layered with sweat and something saltier, something that made his throat go dry. She stood in the doorway wearing a loose button-up shirt, pink, missing half its buttons, the fabric hanging open to reveal the pale slope of her breasts and the curve of her belly. The shirt was just long enough to cover the goods, but barely—he could see the waistband of a yellow thong digging into her hips, the thin straps riding high.

"Oh, hi," she said, and her voice was a breathless rush. "You're the—the plumber guy. Omar, right? I'm Cass. Sorry, the place is a mess, I was—I was doing stuff. Come in, come in."

She stepped back and he followed her into the apartment, and the first thing he saw was the coffee table. There was a towel thrown over it, but the towel was too small, and the shapes underneath were unmistakable—long, thick, curved. He looked away fast, but not fast enough. She didn't seem to notice. She was already talking, gesturing at the kitchen, her words tumbling over each other like water over rocks.

"It's under the sink, like, there's a puddle, and it smells—god, it smells like mildew, and I hate that, I hate when it covers up—" She stopped herself, blinked. "Anyway. It's leaking. I think. There's water on the floor."

He nodded and set his toolbox down by the sink. The floor in front of the cabinet was wet—a wide dark stain spreading across the worn linoleum, and the smell of it hit him as he knelt down: mildew, yes, but underneath it, something else. Something thick and animal. He opened the cabinet door and the smell intensified, and his hands went still on the pipe wrench. The trap was corroded through, the disposal housing cracked and weeping, and he could already tell this wasn't a tighten-and-go. This was a parts run.

It was her. The scent was coming off her, filling the small space under the sink, and he could taste it in the back of his throat—sweet and sour and utterly female. His cock stirred against his thigh, and he shifted his weight, angry at himself for it. Professional. Stay professional. He reached up and shut the water off at the valve and started pulling the trap apart, and the corroded fitting crumbled in his hand.

"I need to get under here," he said, his voice coming out rougher than he meant. "Can you—can you clear the sink? The dishes, I mean. I need to see the pipes. And it's worse than a leak—the trap's gone and the disposal's cracked. I'm going to have to replace the unit."

"Oh! Yeah, sure." She leaned over the counter, and the shirt fell forward, and he caught a flash of her breasts—pale, heavy, the nipples dark and pebbled, one whole areola slipping free of the open placket before she straightened. She started pulling dishes out of the sink, stacking them haphazardly on the counter, and every time she reached, the shirt rode up, showing the curve of her ass in that yellow thong, the fabric cutting between her cheeks, the underside of one cheek peeking out below the strap.

He looked away. He made himself look at the pipes. But the smell was everywhere now, and his hands were trembling as he reached for the wrench. He worked the fitting loose, knuckles scraping the cabinet wall, and every few seconds she shifted above him and the shirt swayed and he caught another glimpse—the soft under-curve of a breast, the pale swell of her ass below the thong, the dark shadow between her legs when she bent to stack another plate.

"Okay," she said, straightening up. "All clear."

He ducked under the sink, his shoulders scraping the cabinet frame, and the world narrowed to the dark space under the counter. The pipes were old, corroded, the joint weeping a slow steady drip, and the disposal housing was split along the seam. He reached for the wrench and his hand brushed something—a bottle of lube, half-empty, the label worn. He pulled his hand back like he'd been burned. He set to work on the trap, and it fought him—the nut seized, the pipe brittle, rust flaking onto his forearms—and he had to stop twice to breathe, because the smell down here was all her, thick and sweet, and the work was going to take a while.

"Can you turn on the water?" he called, his voice muffled by the cabinet. "Just a little. I need to see where it's coming from."

He heard her move, heard the tap squeak as she turned it. Water ran, and the drip under the sink got faster, a steady patter against the puddle on the floor. He kept his head down and his hands on the wrench, and the smell of her stayed thick in the cabinet, and he told himself to breathe through his mouth.

He worked the seized nut until his forearm ached, and the water dripped, and above him she moved around the kitchen, and he kept his eyes on the pipes.

"Is it bad?" she asked, and her voice was right there, right next to his ear, and he could smell her—that thick, sweet musk, so strong now it was almost a taste on his tongue.

"It's worse than I thought," he managed. "The trap's shot and the disposal's cracked. I'll have to run out for a new unit. It'll take me a while down here."

He turned back to the pipes, his hands shaking as he worked, and every time she moved above him the shirt swayed and he caught another flash—a nipple, an areola, the pale underside of a cheek below the thong strap—and each one landed in him like a small electric shock.

The water dripped. The wrench turned. He got the trap off and set it aside, and the disposal came loose with a groan, and he laid the dead unit on the floor and sat back on his heels under the cabinet, sweating, breathing her in, and knew he wasn't done.

"I've got to go get the parts," he said, and his voice came out thin. "A new disposal, a trap kit. I'll be back in an hour, maybe less."

She laughed, a bright scattered sound. "Yeah, okay. I'll be here. I've got—stuff to do anyway." She gestured vaguely at the mess of the apartment. "You know how it is."

He didn't. He lived in a studio with one window and a fire escape he'd never used, and his apartment was neat the way a trap is neat—everything in its place, nothing left out. But he nodded anyway, because nodding was easier than speaking, and he gathered up the dead disposal and the old trap and carried them out to the van.

She was standing by the counter, watching him, and the shirt had fallen open again, showing the pale curve of her belly, the dark shadow of her bush where the thong didn't cover. She caught him looking and didn't close the shirt. She just smiled, a little crooked, a little knowing.

"Thanks for coming out so quick," she said. "I really appreciate it."

He drove to the hardware store and stood in the aisle with a trap kit in one hand and a disposal box under his arm, and the whole time the image of her under the sink sat behind his eyes like a photograph he couldn't put down. He paid. He loaded the van. He told himself he'd take his time.

He didn't. He was back in forty minutes, parked crooked at the curb, and he let himself in with the key she'd left in the lock because his hands were full and he didn't think to knock.

The apartment was quiet except for a wet sound from the kitchen, and he stepped through the doorway and stopped.

Cass was bent over the floor with a rag, her back to him, and for one bright stupid second Omar thought she was scrubbing. Then his eyes caught up with the rest of her. Her big white ass was pointed straight at the door like a billboard, the cheeks pale and freckled and split wide by the bend, and the yellow thong was down around her thighs, a bright slack loop just above her knees. Her crack was painted with lube that had run down from somewhere higher, a slow glossy streak that caught the light and made the whole thing look glazed, and her asshole sat there in the middle of it, loose and hairy and still open, a dark little pucker that hadn't finished closing, winking at him with every breath she took. On the floor between her feet lay the purple plug, fallen out and abandoned on its side, its base smeared with the same lube, and stuck to the tip of it, like a garnish, like a signature, a nugget of poop that had ridden out with it and stayed.

He stood there with the disposal box in his arms and his mouth open and his cock going hard against his thigh, and he understood, in one long slow wave that started somewhere behind his eyes and rolled all the way down to his knees, that he was looking at something he was never supposed to see. Not a leak. Not a closet door. This. The private machinery of a woman he'd met yesterday, mid-cleanup, mid-mess, the plug on the floor like a dropped spoon. His brain offered him several things to do and he did none of them. He just stood in the doorway and let it happen to him.

She straightened up when she heard him, and she didn't flinch. She didn't scramble. She didn't grab for the thong or the rag or the plug. She just turned, rag in hand, and smiled at him like he'd caught her doing nothing at all — like he'd walked in on her watering a plant.

"Oh, hey," she said. "You're back fast. Did you find everything you need?"

"Yeah," he said. His voice came out thin. "Everything."

"Cool." She tossed the rag in the sink — it landed with a wet slap — and bent and pulled her thong back up like it was nothing, one leg then the other, the elastic snapping into place against her hip. Her pussy was puffy and swollen, more inflated than it had been when he left, the lips fat and dark and shining, and she didn't mention it. She didn't mention the plug on the floor either, or the lube, or the smell, which was thick and sweet and had gotten into the room the way smoke gets into a coat. She just gestured at the cabinet. "I'll let you get back to it."

He nodded and knelt down at the cabinet, and his hands were shaking so badly he had to set the box down twice before he could open it, and behind him she moved around the kitchen like nothing had happened, and the smell of her was everywhere, thick and sweet.

"No problem." He stood up, hefting his toolbox, and the smell of her was still in his nose, thick and sweet. "You might want to—to air the place out. The mildew."

"Oh, yeah." She wrinkled her nose. "I hate that smell. It covers up—" She stopped, and something flickered in her eyes, something he couldn't read. "Anyway. Thanks."

He nodded and turned toward the door, and his phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't look at it. He didn't trust his hands.

At the door, she said, "Hey, do you—do you do other stuff? Like, not just plumbing?"

He turned. She was leaning against the counter, arms crossed under her breasts, and the shirt had slipped off one shoulder. Her skin was pale and freckled, and he could see the edge of a tattoo curling around her ribs—something floral, half-hidden.

"I do some handyman work," he said. "Carpentry. Light electrical."

"Cool." She smiled again, and this time it was different—slower, like she was tasting something. "I might have some stuff for you. Like, my closet door is fucked, and there's this light in the bathroom that's been flickering—"

"I can do that." His voice came out steady, and he was grateful for it. "I could come back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow works." She pushed off the counter and walked toward him, and the shirt swayed with each step, and he could see the dark outline of her bush through the thin fabric. "What's your number? I'll text you."

He gave it to her. She typed it into her phone, and he watched her thumbs move, watched the way her tongue poked out slightly as she concentrated, and he wanted to be inside her. He wanted to be inside that loose, gaping hole he'd glimpsed under the sink. He wanted to bury his face in that thick, sweet musk and never come up.

"Got it," she said, looking up. "I'll text you later. With the—the details."

He nodded and walked out the door, and the last thing he saw was her standing in the doorway, the pink shirt hanging open, the yellow thong a bright slash against her pale skin.

The door closed behind him, and he stood in the dim hallway for a long moment, his hand on the railing, his heart hammering against his ribs. His cock was still hard, aching, and he could still smell her—that sweet, animal musk, clinging to the inside of his nose like a promise.

He walked down the stairs, and at the bottom, he stopped. He pulled out his phone. The message from dispatch was still there, the address, the job. He stared at it for a long moment, and then he typed a message to himself—a note, so he wouldn't forget.

Yellow thong. Purple plug. Gaping.

He deleted it. Then he got in the van and sat there, hands on the wheel, watching the pink curtains move in the window above, and he thought about tomorrow.

Tomorrow came at 8:47 in the form of a text message that made his hands go slick on the steering wheel. closet door. bathroom light. cabinet. u free? Three words and a question mark, and he'd already replied before his pulse caught up with him: On my way.

He drove the familiar streets with the window down, letting the morning air dry the sweat from his palms. The toolbox sat heavy on the passenger seat, the latch sticky as ever, and he'd checked it twice before leaving—once for the screwdrivers, once for the plug he'd slid into himself in the bathroom mirror, the small purple one he kept in the drawer under his socks. It sat inside him now, a warm pressure against his prostate, and every bump in the road sent a small shiver up his spine.

The apartment building looked different in the daylight. The pink curtains were still half-falling off the rod, but the sun caught them differently now, turning them translucent, and he could see the shadow of a figure moving inside. He killed the engine and sat for a moment, both hands on the wheel, watching the way the shadow moved—quick, restless, like a bird trapped in a room.

She opened the door before he knocked. She was wearing a thong and a camisole, the fabric so thin he could see the dark circles of her nipples through it, and her hair was wet, dripping onto her bare shoulders. She'd showered. The thought hit him somewhere in his chest, unexpected and sharp.

"Oh good, you're here," she said, already turning, already walking away. "The closet door is in here. It's been driving me crazy."

He followed her into the bedroom, and the smell hit him again—that thick, sweet musk, but fainter now, overlaid with the clean scent of soap. She'd showered, but she hadn't scrubbed it away. It was still there, underneath, like a secret she couldn't quite wash off.

The closet door was half-off its track, hanging at a crooked angle. He knelt down to look at it, and she crouched beside him, close enough that her arm brushed his. Her skin was cool and damp, and he could smell the soap on her, something floral and cheap, and under it, that musk, that animal sweetness that made his throat go dry.

"I was trying to get something off the top shelf," she said, gesturing vaguely. "And I guess I pulled too hard. It just—came off."

He nodded and reached for the door, and his hand brushed something on the floor—a bottle, plastic, the label worn. He picked it up without thinking, and the words on it made his stomach drop: XXL German Pussy Pump. He set it down fast, but she'd already seen it.

"Oh, that's my new one," she said, and her voice was bright, unembarrassed. "I haven't even tried it yet. It's supposed to be the best one they make."

He turned to look at her, and she was kneeling beside him, the camisole falling open, showing the pale curve of her breasts, the dark shadow of her bush where the thong didn't cover. She was looking at him with her head tilted, waiting, and he realized she'd asked him something.

"Sorry," he said. "What?"

"I asked if you could fix it now," she said. "While I film. My subscribers love behind-the-scenes stuff."

She was already pulling out her phone, propping it on a stack of books on the floor, angling it toward the bed. And then she was kneeling on the bed, the thong pulled aside, showing him the place where the pump would go—her cunt, bare and gaping, the lips swollen and dark, still slick with something that gleamed in the morning light.

"This is where it goes," she said, and her voice was different now—lower, slower, like she was tasting something sweet. "Right here."

He couldn't look away. He couldn't breathe. His cock was hard as stone against his work pants, and the plug inside him throbbed with every heartbeat, and he knew—he knew—that he was about to cross a line he'd been staring at for years.

"You want me to watch?" he asked, and his voice came out rough, cracked.

"I want you to do whatever you want," she said. And she smiled, slow and crooked, and reached for the hem of her camisole.

She pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. Her breasts swung free, heavy and pale, the nipples dark and pebbled with the cold. She lay back on the bed, the thong still pulled aside, and spread her legs, and he saw it all—the gaping hole of her cunt, the stretched ring of her asshole, still loose from whatever she'd done the day before.

"The pump's not even here yet," she said, and her voice was dreamy, distant. "It's coming in the mail. But I can show you how it works."

She reached down and slid two fingers into herself, slow, and her eyes fluttered closed. The sound she made was small and broken, and he felt it in his own body, in the ache of his cock, in the pulse of the plug inside him.

"I've been thinking about you," she said, her eyes still closed. "All night. I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about the way you looked at me under the sink."

He didn't answer. He couldn't. He was on his knees on the floor, watching her fingers move inside herself, and the world had narrowed to the sound of her breathing, the smell of her musk, the sight of her body opening for him.

"Come here," she said, and opened her eyes. "Come sit on the bed. I want you to see it up close."

He stood up. His legs felt weak, and he had to brace a hand on the wall to steady himself. And then he was sitting on the edge of the bed, and she was shifting closer, and her hand was on his thigh, warm and sure.

"You can touch me," she said. "If you want."

His hand moved before he could stop it. It landed on her hip, on the warm skin above the waistband of the thong, and she sighed, a soft animal sound, and pressed closer.

"That's good," she breathed. "That's—that's really good."

He slid his hand down, over the curve of her belly, into the wet heat between her legs. She was soaked, slick and hot, and she gasped when his fingers found her clit, a small swollen pearl under his thumb.

"Oh," she said, and her voice cracked. "Oh, god."

He pushed two fingers inside her, and she was so loose, so open, that they slid in without resistance. She moaned, long and low, and her hips rolled against his hand, and he felt the plug inside him pulse with every beat of his heart.

"That's it," she whispered. "That's—right there."

He curled his fingers, and she cried out, a sharp broken sound, and her hand flew to his wrist, gripping it tight. Her eyes were open now, staring into his, and he saw something in them he didn't expect—not hunger, not play, but something raw and needing, like she was falling and wanted him to catch her.

"I'm close," she said, and her voice was thin, desperate. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."

He didn't stop. He pressed his thumb against her clit and fucked her with his fingers, slow and deep, and she came apart under his hand—her whole body arching, her mouth open in a soundless cry, her cunt clenching around his fingers in waves that seemed to go on forever.

When she finally went still, she was breathing hard, her chest heaving, her skin flushed pink. She looked at him, and there was something new in her eyes—something soft and wondering.

"Wow," she said. "You're good at that."

He pulled his hand back, and his fingers were slick with her, and he brought them to his mouth without thinking. She tasted like salt and honey and something darker, something that made his cock throb against his work pants.

"I want to do that to you," she said, and her voice was low, rough. "I want to taste you."

His heart stopped. And then it started again, harder than before.

"Okay," he said, and his voice didn't sound like his own. "Okay."

He didn't move. His hand was still in the air between them, her slick drying on his knuckles, and the room had gone very quiet — just her breathing, slowing, and somewhere down the hall the drip of the bathroom tap he'd been hired to fix. She watched him lick his fingers clean and something in her face changed, softened, turned over like a page.

"Wait," she said. She sat up on her heels, knees sinking into the mattress, and her hand came to rest flat on his thigh — not grabbing, just there, warm through the thin cotton of his work pants. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah."

"You've got a plug in." She said it the way she said everything, flat and unembarrassed, like she was reading the weather off a window. Her thumb moved once, a small arc on his thigh. "I could see it. When you knelt down at the closet. The base of it, right through your pants."

His ears went hot. He looked at the floor — at the bottle of pussy pump still lying where he'd set it, at the dust bunny wedged under the bed frame, at anything that wasn't her eyes. "Yeah."

"Is it purple?"

He nodded.

She made a sound low in her throat, half a laugh and half something else, and her fingers curled, catching a fold of his pants between them. "Okay," she said. "Okay, so — I'm not, like, judging. I'm the last person. I just — " She tipped her head, and her hair fell over one shoulder, still wet, darkening the strap of nothing, because she wasn't wearing anything at all anymore. "Have you ever worn one before? Like, not just today. Like, is this a thing you do?"

The question sat there. He could feel the plug itself — the small purple one, warm now, settled, a pressure that had stopped being an intrusion an hour ago and become something closer to a held note. He'd put it in in front of the bathroom mirror that morning and looked at himself and looked away and looked back.

"Yeah," he said again. And then, because she was waiting, because she wasn't laughing, because her hand was still on his leg: "It's — a thing."

"How long?"

"A while."

"Like how long is a while, though." She wasn't letting it go. Her eyes were on his face, steady, and there was no cruelty in it — just a plain wanting to know, the same way she'd wanted to know about the leak, the closet door, the light. "A year? Two? Since you were — "

"Since college." It came out fast, before he could weigh it. "Sophomore year. A guy I — " He stopped. The sentence had run out ahead of him and he could see where it was going, and he didn't know if he wanted to follow it into the room. "I bought one at a shop off campus. The guy at the counter didn't look at me. I remember that. He didn't look at me once."

She let go of his pants. She sat back on her heels and crossed her arms under her breasts and just looked at him, and the looking was the thing — not the tits, not the gaping cunt still wet between her thighs, not any of it. The looking. Like she was doing arithmetic on him and the sum kept coming out interesting.

"So you've got a drawer," she said.

"What?"

"A drawer. At home. With stuff in it." She said it like it was obvious, like everyone had one, like she'd just described the weather again. "Everybody's got a drawer. Mine's the one under the bathroom sink and it's got — okay, it's got a lot in it, I'm not gonna lie to you. But you've got one. And nobody's ever seen inside it."

He thought about the drawer. Second from the top, left side, under the folded socks — the small purple one he'd worn today, and the bigger one, the black one, and the one that vibrated and the one that didn't, and the douche bulb he kept meaning to throw out and never did, and a length of soft rope he'd bought at a hardware store in a different neighborhood so nobody would clock him, and the cheap plug-in massager he'd had since the college apartment, the cord frayed at the base where it bent. He thought about the way he closed it. The way he never left anything on the nightstand. The way he'd lived in that studio for four years and nobody had ever been inside it but him.

"Yeah," he said. "I've got a drawer."

She smiled then — not the crooked one from the doorway, not the slow one from the counter. Something smaller. Something that had been in her pocket a while.

"I knew it," she said. "You've got that face. The — I've got a drawer face. I can always tell."

He didn't know what to do with that, so he did nothing. He sat on the edge of her bed with his cock hard against his thigh and his hands loose on his knees and let her look at him, and the looking didn't stop. It moved. Down his chest, over the front of his work pants where the shape of him pressed the fabric, and it caught — she caught — on the small lump at the back of his waist, the one that wasn't quite hidden by the tail of his shirt.

"It's still in you," she said.

"Yeah."

"Right now."

"Yeah."

She reached out and touched it. Just the flat of her hand, right there at the small of his back, over the fabric, over the base of the plug pressed up under the denim. He flinched — not away, into it, a jerk of the whole spine — and she felt the flinch and her eyebrows went up and she did it again, slower, pressing, and the pressure traveled all the way through him, a dull full ache in his gut that made his breath come out wrong.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, that's — okay, that's doing something to you."

"Yeah."

"You're shaking."

"I know."

She took her hand back. He felt the absence like a dropped stitch. And then she shifted on the bed, crossed her legs under her, and her cunt made a small wet sound against her own thigh, and she didn't pretend not to hear it. She just watched him. Waiting. The way she'd waited at the door, the way she'd waited at the sink, the way she'd waited on this bed with her fingers inside herself and her eyes on his.

"So," she said. "How big is the drawer?"

"What?"

"The drawer. Is it a little drawer or a big drawer. Is it, like, one thing and some lube, or is it a whole — "

"It's not small."

"Okay." Her mouth did something at the corner. "Okay. And what's in it."

"Cass — "

"No, I'm asking." She said it lightly, but she meant it. "I showed you mine. Not literally, I know, I know, I'm gonna, but — you saw the pump. You saw the plug. You saw everything under that sink. I'm not keeping secrets in this apartment, Omar, I don't have the — " she waved a hand at the room, at the towel thrown over the coffee table in the other room, at the puddle still drying on the kitchen floor, " — the bandwidth. So. What's in the drawer."

He looked at his hands. The calluses on his palms, the small pale scar on his left thumb from a box cutter in a different apartment, a different year. He thought about the truth of it — that he'd never said any of this out loud to anyone, that the words had lived in his chest for eleven years like a stone he'd swallowed and grown around.

"Plugs," he said. "Three of them. Different sizes. The purple one's the smallest."

"You wore the smallest one to my apartment."

"I didn't know — "

"I'm not mad." She laughed, and it was real, bright. "I'm — that's kind of perfect, actually. You wore your starter plug to come fix my sink. That's — " she shook her head, hair swinging, " — that's so polite of you."

He almost laughed. It caught in his throat and came out as a rough sound, and she heard it and grinned at him like they'd shared something.

"What else," she said.

"A — " he stopped. Started again. "A vibrator. A massager, kind of. From college. The cord's frayed."

"Still works?"

"Still works."

"Good." She said it like it mattered. "What else."

"Lube. Obviously. A — " He hesitated, and she didn't fill the silence, and he had to walk into it alone. "A rope."

Her eyes came up fast. "A rope."

"It's not — it's just a soft one. Nylon. From a hardware store."

"What do you do with it."

"Nothing." The word came out too quick and he knew it, and she knew it, and she tilted her head and waited and he made himself say the rest. "Nothing with anyone. Just — on myself. Sometimes. Around my thighs. Or my — " He stopped. He could feel his own pulse in his throat.

"Around your wrists," she said. Not a question.

He nodded. He didn't look at her.

The apartment made its small sounds — the drip in the bathroom, the low hum of the fridge, a car passing three floors down with a bass line you could feel through the floorboards. She let the quiet run. She was good at that, he was learning. She let it run until it wasn't quiet anymore, until it was a thing they were both standing in, and then she put her hand back on his thigh.

"Hey," she said. "Look at me."

He did. Her face was calm. Her eyes were the pale blue of a swimming pool in a photograph, and they weren't laughing at him. They were doing the arithmetic again. The sum kept coming out interesting.

"I want to see it," she said.

His stomach dropped. "What?"

"The drawer." She said it plain. "Not — like, right now, not tonight, you don't have it in your van, obviously. But I want to see it. Someday. I want to see the whole thing. All of it. The rope and the — the frayed cord and the three plugs and whatever else you didn't tell me."

"Why."

"Because you've never shown anybody." She shrugged, one bare shoulder rising and falling. "And I've never seen a drawer I didn't get to open. It's a — it's a condition. I'm very nosy. It's the ADHD, probably. Or the anxiety. One of them. I can never remember which one's which."

He sat with it. The plug pressed against his prostate with every breath, a low steady ache, and his cock was so hard it had gone past pain into something dumber and more honest, and a woman he'd met yesterday was sitting naked on a bed in front of him asking to see the inside of a drawer he'd kept hidden for eleven years.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

She smiled, and it was the crooked one after all. She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the corner of his jaw — not a kiss, exactly, a placement, a mark — then sat back and looked at his toolbox by the door.

"So what did you bring today," she said. "For the jobs. The closet, the light, the cabinet. What's in the box."

His hands went still on his knees.

"Tools," he said.

"Just tools?"

He thought about the box. The screwdrivers, the wrench, the plumber's tape, the little jar of spare washers, the flashlight with the dead battery he kept forgetting to replace. And under the tray, in the bottom of the box, the thing he'd put there that morning without quite deciding to — the second plug, the black one, bigger than the one inside him, wrapped in a rag, sitting under the tray like a confession he hadn't made yet.

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. She was already watching his face, and her eyes had gone bright and narrow, and she sat back on her heels with her hands on her thighs and her whole body tilted toward him like a plant toward a window.

"Omar," she said. Slowly. Tasting it. "What else is in the box."

He looked at the toolbox across the room. The sticky latch. The scuffs on the lid from four years of other people's apartments. He thought about standing up and walking over there and opening it in front of her, and his hands had already started to shake — not from the cold, not from exertion, from the thing underneath the tray, the black one, the one he'd never worn outside his own bathroom, the one he'd wrapped in a rag that morning and set down in the bottom of his own toolbox and driven across town with, and he still didn't know, exactly, why he'd brought it, except that he'd known, somehow, walking up those stairs yesterday, that he'd need it.

She didn't move. She just waited, knees wide, hands flat on her thighs, and the drip in the bathroom kept its slow time, and the morning light came in through the half-fallen curtain and lay across the bed between them like something you could pick up.

"Show me," she said.

He stood up. His legs were unsteady and the plug shifted inside him with the movement and he had to stop for a second with his hand on the wall and breathe through it, and she watched him do that, all of it, without looking away.

Then he crossed the room to the toolbox and knelt down in front of it, and his hands were shaking so badly he had to try the latch twice before it gave.

He got the lid open. It came up with the small complaining sound the latch always made, and the smell came with it — machine oil and sawdust and the flat mineral ghost of the plumber's tape, the smell of every apartment he'd ever crawled under. The tray sat on top like it always did. Screwdrivers laid in their slots, heads up, by size. The adjustable wrench with the taped handle. A coil of Teflon tape, half used. The little glass jar of spare washers he'd never once needed. The flashlight, dead, where he'd left it.

She hadn't moved behind him. He could hear her breathing, slow and even, and the bed creaked once as she shifted her weight from one knee to the other. He could feel the heat of her at his back, two feet away, three, the animal fact of a naked woman sitting on a bed in the morning light watching him kneel.

"Okay," she said, quietly. "So that's the top."

"That's the top."

"And under the top."

He put his thumb under the lip of the tray. It lifted easy — it always lifted easy, that was the whole point, the tray was the door and the bottom of the box was the room and he had never once, in four years of this box, opened that room in front of another person.

The rag was where he'd put it. Same gray shop rag he used for wiping his hands, folded in a square around the thing, the way you'd wrap a sandwich. He lifted it out and set it on the floor between his knees, and the rag was damp at one corner where the lube had bled through, and he looked at that damp corner and felt his whole face go hot.

"Can I — " she started.

"Yeah."

She came off the bed. He heard her feet on the floor, the small flat slap of bare skin crossing the laminate, and then she was beside him, crouched down on her heels, close enough that he could smell her — that heavy sweet musky thing that lived in the room now, that had gotten into his sinuses and stayed there — and she reached over and unwrapped the rag herself, corner by corner, like she was opening a present she'd already guessed the shape of.

The black one lay in the gray cloth. Bigger than the purple one by a third, matte black silicone, flared base, the kind of thing that looked like a serious object and not a toy. It sat there in the shop rag on her kitchen floor between his knee and hers, and the morning light found the faint sheen of the lube he'd put on it that morning and never used.

She didn't touch it. She just looked at it for a long moment, and then she looked at him — at his face, at the flush that had climbed his neck, at the shake in his hands that he'd stopped trying to hide.

"That's the other one," she said.

"That's the other one."

"The one you don't wear."

"Not — " His voice came out rough. He cleared it. "Not out. Not to work. Only — "

"Only at home."

She sat back on her heels and let her hands rest on her thighs, and her cunt was right there, inches from his elbow, still puffy and open from the pump, still wet from an hour ago, and she didn't close her legs or shift away or do any of the things a person was supposed to do. She just sat with him in front of an open toolbox and a plug in a rag, and the drip kept its time in the bathroom, and a garbage truck groaned somewhere down the block, and she said nothing at all for a while.

He found he could breathe in that nothing. It was the first quiet in eleven years that hadn't been a lie. He looked at the black plug and the rag and the tray tipped up against the side of the box, and he thought: she's seen it. It's out. It's out and she's still here and the ceiling hasn't come down.

"You brought it," she said finally. Not a question this time either. Just the fact, laid down flat, the way she laid everything down flat.

"I brought it."

"On purpose."

He thought about the morning. The bathroom mirror, the purple one going in easy the way it always did, and then his hand hovering over the drawer, over the socks, over the black one wrapped in its rag. He'd told himself he was just cleaning the box. He'd told himself he might need a spare. Neither had been true and he'd known it while he was telling himself.

"On purpose," he said.

She nodded slowly, and something moved across her face — not amusement, not pity, something more careful than either, the way she'd looked at the leak under the sink, like a problem she was interested in solving and had all morning to solve.

"Okay," she said. "I've got a question. And you can say no. You can say no to any of this, I keep saying that and I mean it, I'm not — I'm not trying to, like, corner you. But I've got a question."

"Ask."

She picked up the black plug. Just lifted it out of the rag, held it in both hands, turned it over once the way you'd turn over a stone you found on a beach. The base was wide enough that her thumb didn't quite reach across it.

"Have you ever worn a plug before?" she said. "Like — not this one, not the little one. A real one. Have you ever put something that big inside yourself?"

He looked at her hands around it. The pale skin of her fingers, the chipped glitter polish on one nail, the plug sitting in her palms like a question with a shape.

"No," he said.

"Not even close?"

"Not even close."

"But you bought it."

"I bought it two years ago." The words came out of him flat and fast, the way they did when he'd already decided to say them. "I bought it at a shop in Pilsen, and I brought it home, and I — " he stopped, and then made himself finish it, because she was holding it and there was no version of this where he got to keep the rest in his chest. "I got it in once. Almost. Halfway. And I sat on the bathroom floor for an hour with my hands shaking and then I took it out and put it back in the drawer and I haven't — "

"Since."

She looked at him. Her eyes had gone soft at the edges, and the arithmetic was still running behind them, but the sum had changed — he could see it change, the way you can watch weather turn in a sky.

"Two years," she said.

"Two years."

"And this morning you wrapped it in a rag and put it in your toolbox and drove it across town."

"Yeah."

She set the plug back down in the rag, gently, the way you'd set down something that belonged to somebody else. Then she reached out and put her hand flat on his chest, over his shirt, over the heart that was going like a bird in a box, and she left it there and didn't say anything, and he stood there kneeling on her kitchen floor with a naked woman's palm on his sternum and a black plug in a shop rag at his knee, and for one full breath he wasn't shaking.

"Okay," she said, at last, and took her hand back. "Okay. So you're not gonna put that in today."

"No."

"No." She nodded, like she'd known. "That's a someday thing. That's a — that's a whole other morning. I've got a whole list of those. I'm very organized about the things I'm not doing yet." She stood up, and her knees cracked, and she bent over and picked up the rag with the plug in it and folded it back the way he'd had it, corner over corner, and held it out to him. "Here. Put it back. It doesn't have to come out of the box more than you want it to."

He took it. His fingers brushed hers on the cloth, and he felt that brush all the way up his arm. He laid the bundle back under the tray, set the tray down over it, screwdrivers and wrench and dead flashlight back in their places, closed the lid, and pressed the sticky latch until it clicked.

She was watching him do it. She'd stepped back to lean against the counter, arms crossed under her tits, one hairy leg crossed over the other at the ankle, and the tile under her feet was still damp from the puddle she'd made hours ago, and she looked like she'd been standing in this kitchen her whole life.

"So," she said. "The closet."

She was watching him do it. She'd stepped back to lean against the counter, arms crossed under her tits, one hairy leg crossed over the other at the ankle, and the tile under her feet was still damp from the puddle she'd made hours ago, and she looked like she'd been standing in this kitchen her whole life.

"So," she said. "The closet."