the last run

I could claim I didn't plan it, but I did. I sat at the little desk in my staff room and emailed Roland two weeks ago, and the subject line was "last run?" He wrote back the same night, like he'd been waiting for it.

So yeah. I scheduled sex with my ex-husband. On a calendar. We picked a weekend and everything, like two people booking a dentist appointment. I'm thirty-four, I've been divorced three years, and this is what my life has come to. Honestly, I laughed out loud when I sent the second email confirming the dates.

The lodge was empty when I got there Friday. Lifts closed a month ago, just a skeleton crew and brown slopes going soft in the spring sun. My room is the size of a closet with a window that looks out on mud and snow patches. It's fine. It's mine until June, and then Roland moves to Chile for a season and that's the end of whatever this was.

I packed a duffel bag of things I don't usually discuss with coworkers. A vintage glass dildo with a swirl inside, two silicone ones in different sizes, a rabbit I've had since my marriage, a bottle of lube I checked twice so it wouldn't leak. I put the bag in the closet and locked it, which is stupid because nobody comes in here, but habit is habit.

Roland texted from the parking lot at six. "Knock knock" with a beer emoji. That's him all over. He still texts like he's nineteen. Sorry, no, he's thirty-six. A thirty-six-year-old nineteen-year-old.

I opened the door and there he was with a six-pack and a duffel of his own. He looked the same. Broad, calm, a little gray coming in at the temples that he pretends isn't there.

"You look good," he said.

"You look old," I said.

"Fair."

He came in and looked around the room like he'd never seen a dorm before, which he had, because we both worked here before we ever got married. Five years of marriage, three years of being friendly exes. Not one messy fight the whole time. People at the lodge thought we were weird. They were right.

He put the beer on the desk and held up a small thing in blister packaging. A bullet vibe, cheap one, the kind they sell next to the register at the gas station in town. He bought it as a joke, obviously, at a gas station on the way, and then carried it around for the last few hours of the drive.

"I couldn't find anything better without driving to Denver," he said. "So. It's a bullet. I'm aware of what it is."

"Uh huh. Give it here."

He handed it over. I set it on the bed. Then I went to the closet, unlocked it, and got out the glass dildo, the vintage one with the swirl inside it. He watched me cross the room and he didn't say anything until I set that next to the bullet.

"Okay," he said. "So we're actually doing this."

"You flew across two states."

"I drove, Maddie. Eight hours."

"Long drive for a joke."

"It stopped being a joke around Moab."

We sat on the bed with the beer and worked out the rules, and this part I want to get right because it's the part people never believe. Roland wrote rules on a napkin at our wedding. Of course he'd write rules now.

"Nothing goes inside anybody," he said. "Me or you. Toys stay outside, hands stay outside. We watch each other and we talk, and that's it."

"No kissing," I said.

"No kissing."

That's the weird part, I know. Two people who used to sleep together every night for five years, and the rule is no penetration and no kissing. But that was sort of the whole point. If it goes the normal way, it becomes the marriage again for a night, and then it's a mess and we both feel bad by Sunday. This way it's its own thing. A goodbye with a shape to it.

"Can I touch myself while I watch you?" I asked. "Obviously. Dumb question."

"Not a dumb question. Yes. And I'll do the same."

"And we can tell each other what to do."

"Yeah," he said. "I'd like that part. I've thought about that part."

"Since when?"

"Since the divorce, honestly. Since the afternoon we signed papers and got lunch and you said something about the rabbit and I couldn't sleep that night."

I didn't know that. Three years of coffee twice a year and he never said a word. That's Roland. He'd sit on a thing until he was ready to say it.

We finished our beers and he showered first, because he'd been driving all day, and I changed into a t-shirt and nothing else while the water ran. When he came out in sweats, skin still damp, he looked at the bed where the two toys sat like museum pieces and he laughed once.

"The packaging is still on mine," he said.

"Peel it. It'll squeak the whole time. That's romantic."

We killed the overhead light and left the lamp on. I sat up against the headboard with a pillow behind my back. He sat at the foot of the bed, facing me, legs apart, and he looked like someone about to take a run he wasn't sure he could still make. He'd make it down the slope. He always makes it.

"Say the rule one more time," I said.

"No penetration. No kissing. Toys and hands on the outside, and we talk."

"Good. Start with mine."

He peeled the plastic off the bullet and it did squeak, and we both laughed, and that broke whatever was left of the tension. He clicked it to low and held it against his palm like he was testing it, and then he looked at me and pulled his sweats down past his hips.

I'm not going to describe him like a stranger. He's my ex-husband. But three years is a long time, and the body I saw was familiar and new at the same time, and I felt my face go hot. He was already half hard and not pretending otherwise.

"You're staring," he said.

"You wanted me to stare."

"I did."

I pulled my shirt up over my breasts and he took a slow breath, and I put my hand between my legs without any ceremony at all. There's no point being shy with a man who's seen