You wake up in Marc's apartment again—third time this week, fourth in the last two. The morning light cuts through those floor-to-ceiling FiDi windows, the kind you'll never afford, painting everything gold. He's still asleep beside you, one arm thrown over his eyes, chest rising and falling in that steady, peaceful rhythm that makes you irrationally angry. Of course Marc Buckley sleeps peacefully. Marc Buckley probably has never had an anxious thought in his entire stupid, perfect life.

You slip out of bed as quietly as possible, gathering your clothes from where they're scattered across his hardwood floors—floors that probably cost more than your annual salary. Your skirt. Your blouse, wrinkled now. Your bra, somehow ended up on the bookshelf. As you're tiptoeing toward the bathroom, you catch sight of it.

Your toothbrush.

Sitting there on his sink. Pink and incriminating. Next to his.

Fuck.

Your stomach does something complicated, something that feels like falling and flying at the same time, something that feels dangerous. When did you even leave that here? Was it Tuesday? Thursday? The nights are starting to blur together, bleeding into each other like watercolors in the rain.

This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't the deal.

You grip the edge of the sink, staring at the toothbrush like it's evidence at a crime scene. Which, in a way, it is. Evidence that you've crossed some invisible line that you can't uncross. Evidence that "just physical" has become something else entirely, something with overnight bags and morning breath and toothbrushes on sinks.

You hear him stir in the bedroom, the sheets rustling. Panic claws up your throat.

"You okay in there?" His voice is rough with sleep, warm like honey, and it makes your chest ache.

"Yeah, fine!" You sound manic. You grab your toothbrush—your toothbrush, Jesus Christ—and shove it in your purse.

When you emerge, he's sitting up in bed, all sleep-mussed dark blonde hair and rumpled sheets pooling at his waist. He's watching you with those stupid blue eyes, the ones that look at you like you're something precious, something worth looking at like that. It's been three months of this arrangement, and he still looks at you that way. Every single time.

"Coffee?" he offers, already reaching for his phone to order from that place you mentioned you liked once, once, six weeks ago, and he remembered.

"Can't. Need to catch the train." You're pulling on your shoes, not meeting his eyes. "Early meeting."

"You said that last time." There's no accusation in his voice, just observation. Marc doesn't do accusation. Marc does patient and understanding, which is somehow worse.

"Yeah, well. Corpo life." You force a laugh that sounds brittle even to your own ears.

He's quiet for a moment, and you can feel him reading you, the way he always does. Marc's a lawyer—he makes a living reading people, finding the cracks in their armor. And you? You're all cracks, all the way down.

"We could get breakfast," he tries. "There's that place—"

The thing is, Marc Buckley is perfect. Objectively, empirically perfect. He's hot—tall and lean with that swimmer's build and those hands that know exactly what they're doing. He's successful—corner office, important clients, the kind of job that comes with business cards that feel expensive. He's charming—that stupid New England prep school polish that makes everyone from baristas to your mother melt. He's good in bed—no, not good, exceptional, the kind of good that ruins you for other people.

And he's nice. Genuinely, earnestly nice. Opens doors. Remembering coffee orders. Asks about your day and actually listens to the answer. Makes you come first. Second. Sometimes third.

He's perfect. Too perfect for you and your studio apartment in a shitty neighborhood and your soul-crushing corporate job. He is messing up your head.