The Sweater I Never Returned

The sweater was navy, expensive, and not mine. He had put it around my shoulders in October outside a bar because I had dressed like weather was a rumor. I was twenty-eight. He was forty-one, armchair confidence, the kind of face that looks better in lamplight. I never mailed it back. I wore it to sleep like a bad habit with good taste.

In January he texted: I want the sweater or an explanation. I sent: come get it. He came. He saw it on my chair and saw me in a t-shirt underneath and understood the explanation without the essay.

“You could have just said you wanted another night,” he said.

“I wanted the sweater and another night.”

He laughed, then kissed me hard enough that the joke retired. We made it to the chair first — him sitting, me in his lap — then the bed. He took his time looking at me. I am built soft and hairy and I have hidden that under other people's clothes for years. He did not want it hidden. He opened me, pushed inside, and fucked me like January was a room we could heat ourselves. I came with the sweater still on the chair, watching. He followed, deep, my name in his mouth.

He left the sweater where it was. “I'll collect it every month,” he said. “Badly.” I have not returned it. He has not asked twice. Some loans are how you keep a man in rotation without admitting you already kept him.