Helen wrote the letter at thirty, at her kitchen table, with a pen that leaked. She did not send an email. She wanted the delay. She wanted Adrian, thirty-two now, to hold paper and decide.

I am not asking you to be twenty-six again, she wrote. I am asking if you still think about the night we were cruel because we were afraid. I think about it. I would like to be kinder. I would also like to sleep with you, if you still want that, and if wanting it does not require us to lie.

He wrote back in twelve days. His handwriting had not improved. Yes. The bookstore on Harrison. Saturday. If you kiss me I will not pretend I don’t understand.

They met between the travel section and the essays. Helen’s coat was too thin. Adrian’s scarf was ridiculous. They looked at each other the way adults look when the past is a room they can choose not to reenter.

“Coffee?” he said.

“Your place,” she said. “If that is still allowed.”

It was allowed. His apartment was neater than the one she remembered, which meant he had become someone who put books back. She took off her coat. He did not rush her. She crossed the rug and put her mouth on his, and the kiss was not nostalgia. It was a present-tense hunger, slightly shaking.

They talked first, because they were not fools. They named the old fight. They named the years. Then Helen stood and unbuttoned her shirt and said, “I want your hands. I want you to ask before you go further than I have said.”

He asked. He asked at her bra, at the zipper of her jeans, at the moment he reached for the drawer. She said yes each time, and the yeses stacked into a heat that made her laugh once, helplessly, against his throat.

On the bed he took his time with her breasts, then lower, his mouth patient until she was wet enough to ache. She pulled him up and rolled him under her. When she took him in she watched his face change, the thirty-two-year-old version of a look she had loved at twenty-six and could love better now. They moved together without the old performance. She came with his thumb at her clit and his cock deep, a double bright thing. He came after, gasping her name as if it were still a risk.

Later she found the letter on his dresser, unfolded, a little worn.

“You kept it,” she said.

“I am thirty-two,” he said. “I keep the things I intend to answer with my body.”