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of
my fire, of course. That drove me to the whiskey bottle again.”
    She ran her mouth lightly along the stubble on his cheek. “I
haven’t seen you asking for a drink lately though.”
    He read the subtle comment just as she’d meant him to. “I
can’t make any promises, Clarie. I am a fuck up. But I’ve started to try to write
again and since you came into my cabin, I…well, I can’t think straight. I don’t
know. But I’d like to come out of my hibernation long enough to actually take
you to a movie and dinner, if you were serious about that.”
    The casual way he said it, the assumption he would want to
see her again, filled her with a quiet sense of wellbeing. She said, completely
honestly, “I was serious.”
    She was about to add that any university would be thrilled
to have him teach again. If he wanted to. Even NYU.
    But she didn’t want to rush it. New York was not so very far
away. And they had time.
    He kissed her. “There is one thing I absolutely have to
venture out to do, though.” His hands wandered down her thigh. “I have to buy
some condoms.”
    She laughed. “Just so long as you only use them with me.”
    “I promise.”
    And he did.

Epilogue
    Six Months Later
     
    Clarie fanned herself at the open window of her apartment
with an old copy of the Atlantic. The ventilation in this fourth-floor walk-up
was crap. If there was one thing she was going to buy with her first
honest-to-goodness paycheck—once her fancy degree finally landed her a job,
that is—it was going to be a window air conditioner. Or else a one-way plane
ticket to Alaska.
    New York in the summer gave a girl thoughts like that.
    The buzzer to the front door of her building sounded,
announcing that she either had a visitor or else somebody was trying to sneak
in.
    Dropping her makeshift fan on a nearby table, Clarie pushed
the button to the intercom. “Yes,” she said in her toughest New Yorker voice,
in case it was the latter. “Who is it?”
    “Uh oh. You don’t sound like you’re in a good mood.”
    Clarie laughed at the familiar voice on the other end of the
intercom and said, “I am now,” before buzzing him in.
    She hadn’t expected Liam until the weekend, but more and
more often lately he had been surprising her, showing up in the middle of the
week and staying longer and longer each time. Now that it was the summer,
though, she intended to reciprocate so he wasn’t always the one who had to
travel. Besides, she missed the little mountain cabin that she thought of as
their own personal love nest. It had been too long since she had sat on that
awful plaid couch and watched the fire with Liam.
    Although she would get that man a television if it was the
last thing she did.
    At the knock on her apartment door, she opened it right
away.
    “Hey, you.” She kissed him, noting the four flights up
hadn’t left him the slightest bit out of breath. Running in the mountains was
good training, as it turned out, for a Manhattan walk-up.
    God, would she ever get over the thrill of seeing this
man—even better since he was her man?
    Liam slid one arm around her waist, keeping the other behind
his back, and kicked the door shut.
    She tried to look around him. “What’s that?”
    Grinning, he darted away so that she couldn’t see what he
held behind his back.
    “No, no, no,” he admonished. “You have to sit down first. I
have a surprise for you.”
    He wore khakis and a dress shirt—the sleeves rolled up—which
for Liam was tantamount to wearing a suit. In this weather especially, it was
out of character for him.
    “What’s going on?” she asked, sitting down at his request on
her couch, which was IKEA student chic, but a step up from the plaid if she did
say so herself.
    “Well, first let me ask whether you know what day this is?”
    “Ah, Wednesday?”
    “No.” He laughed and she smiled, knowing very well what he
meant, but surprised that he knew it. It warmed her in a way not even this
humid summer day