Colette poured wine and did not close the curtain. She was forty-one. The window faced a brick wall and, three floors down, an office that went dark at seven. Amir, thirty-eight, stood behind her and put his mouth on the place her shoulder became her neck.
“You’re sure,” he said. Not a scold. A check.
“I am sure,” she said. “No one is in that building. I like pretending someone could be, someone grown, someone who chose to look. I like that we chose the glass.”
They had talked about this for weeks the way other couples talked about holidays. Consent as logistics: which window, which hour, what they would do if a light came on across the way (close the curtain, laugh, keep the rest for the bed). Tonight the office stayed dark. The brick did not care.
Colette set the wine down and turned. She undressed facing the glass, not as a performance for a phantom, as a decision she wanted Amir to witness. He watched, then joined her, shirt first, then the rest, until they were two adults reflected in a black pane.
He lifted her onto the wide sill. The wood was cool. She hooked her ankles at his back and said, “In. Slow. I want to see us.”
He rolled a condom on because they were not reckless about the parts that mattered, and then he pushed into her, the city a rumor at the glass. She watched their reflection, her mouth, his hands on her hips, and the watching made her tighter, wetter, suddenly impatient. “Harder,” she said, and he gave her harder, one palm on the window beside her head, not to show anyone, to keep them both from tipping.
She came with her forehead against the pane, a fogged oval that would be gone by morning. Amir followed, groaning into her hair, thirty-eight and visibly undone by a brick wall.
They left the curtain open while they drank the rest of the wine on the floor. If a light had appeared in the office, they would have closed it. It did not. The thrill had been the choosing.
“Next time,” Colette said, “the lamp on. Still this window. Still us deciding.”
“Next time,” Amir said, “I will ask again. I like asking.”