Red Light

They hadn’t met yesterday. She would never have followed a stranger into a bathroom, and she certainly wouldn’t have invited one to follow her.

She knew him. Once, a long time ago, she had known him very well.

They had even dated for a while in high school, although dated seemed like such an innocent word for everything that had existed between them. Years had passed since then. Other people had come and gone, other relationships, entire pieces of life lived separately. Yet sitting across the room from him that night, she suddenly remembered all of it. The sleepless nights. The arguments. The making up. The things they had done together and the things they had promised they would never tell anyone.

The place hadn’t changed much either. It was somewhere between a café and a bar, the kind of place where you could spend an afternoon drinking coffee and somehow still be there hours later with a beer in your hand. There was a foosball table in the corner, music loud enough to give everyone a little privacy, and groups of people crowded around mismatched tables.

She was drinking coffee with her friends.

He was drinking beer with his.

They sat at different tables and behaved exactly as they were supposed to.

She talked, laughed and gossiped with her friends. He talked with the guys at his table, drank his beer and eventually got dragged into a game of foosball.

And every now and then, they looked at each other.

Not constantly. That would have been too obvious.

Just often enough.

She watched him lean over the foosball table, laughing at something his friend had said, and wondered whether he remembered her the way she remembered him.

Then he looked up.

Straight at her.

Apparently, he did.

She lowered her eyes to her coffee and smiled.

God.

Some things really didn’t disappear. They simply went quiet for a while.

Twenty minutes later, she excused herself and got up from the table. The bathroom was down a short hallway at the back of the café. Just before she turned into it, she looked over her shoulder.

Only once.

He was already watching her.

She held his gaze for perhaps a second longer than necessary and disappeared around the corner.

That was all.

No message. No gesture. No come with me.

She didn’t need one.

Neither did he.

She entered the bathroom and closed the door, but didn’t lock it.

Then she waited.

One minute.

Two.

By the third, she was beginning to feel ridiculous. She turned on the faucet and ran her hands beneath the water.

Maybe he hadn’t understood. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. Maybe—

The door opened behind her.

She saw him in the mirror.

He stepped inside and quietly closed the door.

The bathroom was illuminated by a dim red light above the mirror. Enough for them to see each other. Not enough for anything to feel entirely real.

For several seconds, neither of them said anything.

She continued washing her hands as though his appearance behind her were perfectly ordinary.

He came closer.

Then she felt his fingers against the back of her neck.

Slowly.

Familiar enough to make her close her eyes for a second.

She looked at him through the mirror and exhaled.

“I wasn’t sure you’d understand and follow me.”

His mouth curved into a smile.

“How could I not understand? I know you too well.”

She turned her head slightly.

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

She turned around.

He kissed her before she could say anything else, one hand still at the back of her neck. There was nothing awkward about it, none of the hesitation that should have existed after so much time apart. Her body remembered him with humiliating ease.

His other hand traveled down her waist and between her legs, touching her through her pants.

She didn’t stop him.

Instead, she kissed him harder and let her own hand move down his body to greet an old friend.

A very hard, very familiar old friend.

The moment she felt him straining against his pants, a slow, satisfied smile appeared on her face.

He noticed.

“You like that, don’t you?”

“I always did.”

“Always?”

She pressed her palm more firmly against him.

“It might have been the only thing I liked about you.”

He laughed softly against her mouth.

“Only that? There was no love?”

“No.”

She kissed him again.

“Just sex.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“Maybe.”

His hand slipped beneath the waistband of her pants and into her underwear. Her smile disappeared, replaced by a sharp intake of breath. The reaction was immediate, and the look he gave her told her he knew exactly what he’d done to her.

Some things really hadn’t changed.

He slowly pulled her pants down and turned her toward the mirror. For a second she simply looked at their reflection beneath the strange red light—him standing behind her, his eyes fixed on hers in the glass, his hands on her body.

She smiled.

“So,” she whispered. “Are we doing this quickly?”

His eyebrows lifted.

“Quickly?”

“Our friends are about twenty meters away.”

“Good point.”

She glanced back at him.

“Do you have condoms?”

His smile changed immediately.

“Of course.”

“Of course you do.”

He took one from his wallet and placed it on the edge of the sink.

She stared at it, then at him in the mirror.

“You really came prepared.”

“I came for a beer.”

“With condoms in your wallet?”

“I like to be optimistic.”

She laughed, trying to keep quiet.

“You were the one who invited me in here,” he whispered.

“I looked at you.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe I was just going to the bathroom.”

“You left the door unlocked.”

That silenced her.

He smiled at her reflection.

“Still know you.”

She turned around, grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer.

“You’re talking too much.”

Then she kissed him.

This time there was no teasing in it. No pretending they were simply two old acquaintances who had accidentally found themselves alone together. His hands settled on her hips while hers moved over his chest, rediscovering a body she hadn’t touched in years.

It was strange how familiar he still felt.

Different, obviously. Older. Broader. The boy she remembered had become a man somewhere along the way, and she wanted to discover every difference.

But there were things that hadn’t changed at all.

The way he kissed her neck. The way his hand tightened at her waist when she pulled him closer. That irritating little smile whenever he realized he had gotten a reaction out of her.

She remembered that smile.

She had hated that smile.

She had also spent an embarrassing number of nights kissing it off his face.

“Stop looking so pleased with yourself,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m standing in a bathroom with my high-school girlfriend while both our groups of friends are sitting outside.”

“Ex-girlfriend.”

“Very important distinction.”

“Extremely.”

He kissed her again.

The urgency that had been building between them across the café finally took over. There was nothing romantic or careful about it. It was fast and hungry, driven by years of memory and the ridiculous excitement of knowing their friends were only a short hallway away.

She gasped and pulled him closer.

They kept kissing.

His hands moved over her body, familiar and demanding, and she found herself remembering exactly why sex between them had always been so dangerously easy. They simply fit. There had never been much they needed to explain to each other.

The red light reflected them in the mirror, turning the whole thing into something that felt almost separate from reality.

She watched him watching her.

That alone made her want him more.

He touched her breasts and moved lower again, and she caught his hand, bringing his fingers to her lips. She sucked them slowly without taking her eyes from his reflection.

His breathing changed.

She smiled around his fingers.

That was another thing she’d remembered.

She loved hearing him lose control.

The quiet sounds he made, the uneven breaths, the way his composure gradually disappeared whenever the pleasure became too much. Hearing him enjoy her had always turned her on almost as much as being touched herself.

And tonight was no different.

She closed her eyes for a moment and surrendered to the familiar rhythm between them. Every movement brought another wave of pleasure until the café, the people outside and all those years apart seemed impossibly far away.

Then his breathing changed again.

She knew that sound.

She remembered it.

His body tightened against hers as he reached his climax, still holding her close. She felt the intensity of the moment pass through him, and seeing him lose himself with her after all those years sent another rush of heat through her.

For several seconds neither of them moved.

Then—

A knock hit the door.

They froze.

“Seriously?” a woman’s voice called from the hallway. “Is someone in there?”

She covered her mouth, desperately trying not to laugh.

He buried his face against her shoulder.

“Yes!” she called.

“Are you going to be long?”

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

“No!”

His shoulders started shaking with silent laughter.

She slapped his chest.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re laughing.”

“I’m not.”

The woman outside muttered something before her footsteps disappeared toward the main room.

They stared at each other.

Then she laughed.

“This is ridiculous.”

“It was your idea.”

“It absolutely was not.”

“You looked at me.”

“Oh, apparently looking at you is legally binding now.”

“With that look? Yes.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling.

Then the music outside changed.

She recognized the song immediately.

An old one.

Something they had listened to when they were seventeen.

Their eyes met in the mirror.

For one dangerous second, the bathroom wasn’t only about sex anymore.

There was an entire lifetime between the two people reflected there—the teenagers they had been, the adults they had become, and all the years during which they had belonged to completely different worlds.

“Do you remember?” he asked.

“Don’t.”

“That summer—”

“I said don’t.”

“Why?”

Because she remembered far too well.

She remembered lying awake until sunrise with him. Sneaking home. His ridiculous old car. The fights that had seemed catastrophic when they were seventeen. The certainty that whatever they felt would last forever.

It hadn’t.

Of course it hadn’t.

But apparently desire had a much better memory than love.

She turned around.

“This isn’t nostalgia.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

She looked into his eyes.

“Five minutes in a bathroom.”

Something shifted in his expression, but he nodded.

“Okay.”

There should probably have been something meaningful to say after all those years.

Instead, she kissed him.

He kissed her back.

Slower this time.

Outside, their friends continued drinking, talking and playing foosball, completely unaware that two people who had supposedly gone to the bathroom at different times had just reopened a part of their past beneath a red light.

Eventually, they would have to straighten their clothes and return separately to their tables.

He would pick up his beer.

She would sit down in front of her coffee.

Someone would complain that she’d taken forever. Someone would challenge him to another game.

Nobody would know.

She fixed her hair in the mirror and caught him watching her.

“Three minutes,” she said.

“What?”

“You go first. Give me three minutes before I come back.”

“Still bossy.”

“Still annoying.”

He smiled and reached for the door.