Things in life went along normally for a while. I went to work, goofed off on the internet, and went out with friends. We went to brunches or stayed out too late and got drunk. It was an easy, lazy existence. In a lot of ways, I was perfectly happy, except when I wasn’t. Sometimes, late at night, I would feel this overwhelming sense of grief, pointlessness, and loneliness. It was despair. I couldn’t help it. I tried to think my way out of it, to compare my life with that of someone in Somalia or other places where despair seemed more legit than my own. Nothing helped. Sometimes I was overwhelmed with misery. Then it would pass, and I would be happy again. So far I could always push it aside or deeper. I wasn’t sure if it was gone or if I was just repressing it.

I didn’t think it was unusual or unique. I went along and played along. There wasn’t anything else for it. There wasn’t an end in sight. My life had settled into a routine. Go to work, go out drinking, wake up hungover, go to work. Repeat until I died. It wasn’t as depressing as it sounded. I had a good time. I had my knitting and my reading to keep me busy. It didn’t seem like the end of the world or the end of anything, but one night when the loneliness was getting me down, I scrolled around on Cinder again. This time, I was looking for NSA, DTF, and up for anything. Most of the posts came off creepy, but one post stood out. The man had a thin face with scruffy black stubble in the shape of a beard, black hair with some streaks of gray, and glasses with thick black plastic frames. He wasn’t handsome, but he was appealing.

In his post, he said he was a wizard looking for help with sexual experiments. He promised good times and no commitment. I wasn’t even sure what he was looking for really, but it sounded like a way to break up the boredom, a way to make things interesting and exciting again. I sat there staring at his picture for a while. It didn’t change. He was cute enough, but I was doubting myself again. I wanted to get laid and connect with someone on a personal level. It wasn’t enough to go out with my friends and talk. I wanted someone to hold me even if it didn’t mean anything. I wanted to feel someone touching my face and holding my hand. That was what I missed the most about not being in a relationship. I missed having someone with me. Having someone near me who loved me and was interested in what I was doing and how I was feeling. I wanted someone to sleep next to, but since I didn’t want to get hurt again, I didn’t want to go looking for that. I just wanted to pretend I had it for a while.

Even still, I didn’t send him a Cin. I couldn’t think of what to say. My insecurities and self-doubt kept me from reaching out to him. I sat there alone in the dark and stared at the phone while drinking a beer. My mind wandered to my ex, and I wondered what he was doing. How did he feel? Was he holding her but thinking of me? I thought about the lyrics from an old song wondering if an ex could feel it when she scratched her nails down a new lover’s back. He couldn’t, of course, feel any of it. If he hadn’t felt my despair when he left, then he wasn’t going to feel my orgasm with another man.

Hell, I wasn’t sure he had felt my love when we were together, or if he had, it hadn’t been enough. As best as I could figure out, it wasn’t so much that the relationship went wrong as I was in the relationship and he—for some reason—wasn’t. I had been planning the future, and he had just been waiting for his real life to begin. I couldn’t even figure out why I hadn't made the real life cut. Why I had been regulated to girlfriend instead of wife? I had even gotten on okay with his mother. In my mind, it was a good relationship. It had its flaws, but they all would have been fixed with a little effort and time. Whatever the final test was, whatever it had been that he had been looking for, I hadn’t been it.

This thing with Xavious had been an error in judgment. Even if he hadn’t been a supernatural creature with a rape-ie history, there had been a lot of red flags there. He had clearly been a creep. I hadn’t been that into it, but I had let loneliness cloud my judgment. It had seemed preferable to go home with him than to face my empty apartment. This wizard, did I really want to play his sex games or did I just not want to be alone? I couldn’t tell.

In the dark, I wallowed about in self-doubt for a while longer. Just before I shut my eyes for the night, I finally got up the nerve to message the wizard. Once the message was out there, it seemed I had freed up my brain to go back to obsessing about my ex. Nothing good came of it, and I fell asleep.

I was sitting at the front desk the next day wishing I smoked so I could leave and take a break when the alert on my cell phone went off. Since everyone I knew was pretty much at work with me and would just email me, I took my phone out to check. It was the Cinder app telling me the wizard had replied. His name was Cory, and he was just “Thrilled!” to hear I was up for a little magical experimentation. It got even weirder when he asked me to meet him at a college baseball game that afternoon. That sounded more like a date than what I was expecting, but I agreed. It did feel safer than meeting him at his house with a blindfold and corset on. I wasn’t clear on what sex magic was. I’d googled it, and it was used to bind covens together mostly. There was a small branch that used magic to cause an orgasm. I had been sure he was just looking for a casual fling. I started to worry he was looking for a little more, but I’d already said I would do it, and once again I didn’t want to back down.

At work, I was touching up my makeup in the bathroom when my Laila came in. “Hey, girl, where you going?”

“Out. On a date thing,” I said, my face close to the mirror, my mouth open in a relaxed O, and my eyes pointing down toward the mirror as I applied my lipstick. Laila hopped up on the counter next to me, crossing her legs at the ankle and swung them in the air.

She looked at me suspiciously. “Oh yeah? A date? Who with? The guy from the other night? Not with your ex, right?”

She knew I had been with my ex since we broke up and in a drunken moment of confession I had told her about my suspicions that he had continued to date me after he met his fiancé.

“No, not with him. With a new guy. He’s taking me to a baseball game at the college,” I explained, rubbed my brush through the eyeshadow, before starting on my other eye. “This is a guy I met on Cinder.” I went back to doing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see her reaction.

Laila kept her arms crossed and said, “You’re meeting guys on Cinder? That’s crazy. What are you thinking? I thought only Lauren was that dumb.”

I kept my eyes focused on my reflection. “It’s not crazy. It’s fine. I’ve met some great guys that way. Only one has been a creep, and my odds aren’t better at a bar meeting norms. A lot of those guys are creeps, too.”

“Norms? You’re calling us norms now? The monsters have gotten to you,” she said, using an insult for magical people.

“Don’t call them that. It's not your word to use.” I was tired. I didn’t like to fight, and I didn’t want to fight with Laila.

“Don’t call us norms,” she said. “It’s not right, you know. If you kiss a vampire that’s just like kissing a dead person and screwing a werewolf is probably bestiality.” Her words made me uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. So I didn’t. How could I even explain how sad the only vampire I’d met had seemed or how regular Peter was. If she didn’t want to hear it, she wouldn’t. It wouldn’t make any sense to her anyway. To her, they weren’t people. They were monsters. She wasn't all wrong. Some of them were monsters. Maybe all of them, but they had feelings, too.

“Oh, God. Which one was it? Was it a vampire or a dog? What is wrong with you?” she asked, the disgust was easy to read on her face.

I felt ashamed, but also angry. Who was she to judge? Peter wasn’t a dog. He was a person, and it wasn’t bestiality. Maybe vampires were dead. I had to give her that. I could remember those cold hands.

Laila continued. “I just can’t believe you would do this. I didn’t think you were like that.”

“Like what?” Great comeback, I thought. Why couldn’t I ever think up something clever and biting at the time? Hours later I was sure to think of the perfect thing. “You know what? Things haven’t worked out so well for me in the romance department. If you haven’t noticed, it’s hard out there in the yard.” I sounded bitter, because I was.

“I know it’s hard. Obviously. That doesn’t mean you need to turn to dogs and dead men. You can do better than that. Have some respect for yourself.”

I wanted to say, “Fuck you.” I didn’t. Instead, I put on more powder, imagined Laila falling off the counter and hurting herself, and changed the subject. “How’s Dave?”

Dave was her current obsession. She thought he was her boyfriend. I wasn’t so sure he thought that, but there was no polite way to tell someone you’re pretty sure the dude they are boning just isn’t that into them. I stood there and listened to her ramble.