The clothes that littered the floor looked like an obscene breadcrumb trail.

You followed the path with your eyes. High-heeled shoes tipped over on their sides. Running shoes bracketing them.

A shirt, a dress, under—You squeezed your eyes shut as if that could erase the images but when you opened them again, it was unchanged.

Lacy black things— things you’d would never wear—look as if they were dropped just before their owner climbed into bed.

Your gaze flickered upward, past strong calves, over knees, beyond a pair of hands loosely clasped together. Up the ladder of his bare, ridged abdomen, pausing at a new scratch on his left pectoral, about where his heart is supposed to be, stopping to meet his gaze.

"Where's Theodore?" You blurted out. Your mind rejected the scene. You superimposed a different story than the one laid out in front of you.

But Mattheo just stared stonily back at you, dazed and unresponsive. As if he wasn’t really here.

"The guys you were meeting for beers?" You toss out desperately, giving Mattheo every chance to spin an account different than the one you saw before you.

Mattheo remained stubbornly silent, eyes completely empty. Not a thought. Not an emotion behind them.

Astoria rose like a ghostly specter from behind him, and the earth stopped. Time stretched out as she slid her hand up Mattheo’s spine, over his shoulder and then brought her manicured fingers across his chest. There's no question she was naked. She pressed her lips to Mattheo’s neck, all the while looking at you.

And he didn’t move. Not one muscle. Just..completely gone.

"Mattheo..." His name was no more than a whisper, a painful scratch against your throat.

"Your desperation is sad." Astoria’s voice sounded wrong in this room. "You should leave. Unless..."

She stretched out a bare leg and draped it outside of Mattheo’s hips, which were still covered in the cotton of his sweatpants. "Unless you want to watch."

The pain in your throat worsened as she remained wrapped around him and Mattheo made no effort to move away.

Astoria’s hand drifted down his arm and when it reached his wrist, he moved—a tiny flinch. You watched with alarm as her fingers glided across his abs, and before she could take hold of what you started to believe belonged to you, you spun on your heels and hurried out of his room.