I was embarrassed of the bra draped over my chair. I tended to just drop it there as soon as I got home. It was silly to be ashamed of it, since he had touched my bra on my body before, but I still wished I could make it disappear.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to. It isn’t easy for you to come to me. I know that. I’ll always come to you, always. It’s not a problem. You’re place is nicer than mine, and you got more toilet paper.” I was rambling. “But I do. I mean, I see how hard this is for you. The world isn’t built for you, but I appreciate the gesture. I see what you’re trying to do here if that makes any sense at all.”

I stood there holding the pizza, wondering what to do next. There wasn’t anywhere for him to sit in my apartment. I was a little afraid that if I offered him the bed, he would break it. “Please stay. I know it’s not comfortable for you. I don’t want you to have traveled all this way for nothing.”

He lowered himself to my floor. I went into the kitchen to grab some dish towels and plates. With all the dignity I could muster, I laid the dish towels on the floor and set the plates on them. I finished off the place setting with a neatly folded napkin. It was sad looking. When I ran back into the kitchen, moving the table so I could get into the fridge, I grabbed two ciders to set next to the plates and solemnly put a pizza slice on each plate. It somehow started to look more like a picnic and less like an awkward attempt to join our two worlds. I sat cross-legged across from him and started drinking. The cider hit my empty stomach hard, the first few sips spreading a pleasant warmth through me.

“This stuff is awful. How do you drink it all the time?” Mike asked sipping his cider and looking down at it in horror.

“IPA is awful, how do you drink it all the time?” I asked in return.

“No IPA is good. It’s bitter, like my soul. This shit, though, it’s so sweet,” he said before taking another tiny, tentative sip.

“You’re not bitter. Sad yes, but not bitter.”

“I’d rather be bitter than sad. Sad sounds so pitiful. Bitter sounds closer to mad. It’s always better to be mad than sad,” he said and ate some of his pizza.

I watched him eat. “Does a steady diet of pizza provide everything your body needs?” I asked. “I mean, you’re so big I would think you would need more than just pizza.”

“It’s probably not very healthy for me. I’m sure I should eat more veggies, but I eat more than pizza. I also eat frozen burritos and ramen. I have a very refined palette. I enjoy the junk foods of many nations,” he said in mock earnestness.

“Doesn’t your body need a massive amount of food? How many stomachs do you have?” I asked.

“Horses just have one stomach and my bottom is based on the design of theirs. For my top, I have a human stomach. I don’t use my second stomach right now. If I lived somewhere where food was scarce, I could survive on, like grass and other horse food, but I really try to avoid that. Alfalfa is terrible.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the stomach thing.”

“It’s okay. It’s a common mistake. But to answer your question, no, I don’t seem to need more food than a norm. If I were in a situation where I was fighting a battle every day, then I would. We have a history of being warriors, although not recently. My body is good at adapting. Right now I’m a slob who works from home. I don’t extend a huge amount of energy. I’m an efficient machine.”

He was wearing a gray T-shirt with the cover of On the Road printed on it, and his hair was getting longer. I wondered if he cut it himself. Even there on my floor, eating pizza with his forelegs folded in front of him, his tail twitching nervously from time to time, he looked like ancient god filled with waiting power, as if he could leap up at any moment and swing a bronze sword and shield. Even though norms had existed for as long as centaurs and he seemed more likely to wield an Xbox controller than a sword, he still seemed more connected to history. It was like he galloped off a vase and into my living room.

We finished the pizza, and I put the plates up. Before Mike could offer to go, I brought out my laptop and turned on a science fiction show. There was nothing like a little cowboys in space to set the mood, although I wasn’t sure what mood I wanted to set. I got myself another cider, and Mike asked for one, although he complained about it the whole time. I wondered if it would be worth keeping an emergency stash of beer around for him. I couldn’t imagine him coming back, but if he did, I wanted to be welcoming. I crawled up between his legs to lay with my back against his belly. The way he sat I couldn’t see his penis, which was a relief. I wasn’t sure I could have ignored it. His body was warm against my back. I draped my arms around to his back, and I could feel his fur under my fingers. He put his hand on my shoulder, and a thrill ran through my body. He was close, and he was touching me. We sat on the floor watching the tiny screen. I pressed my cheek against his hand, for a moment, just long enough to let him know I wanted his hand there.

We watched two episodes that way, sitting on my floor in the dark, watching the little laptop screen. Finally, Mike broke the silence. “I hate to leave, but I’ve got to go.”

I sat up and turned to look at him. “It’s okay. Thank you for coming over. It was nice to have you here and know that you wanted to be here with me, enough to come all this way and put up with all that bullshit to get here. I’ll bring dinner to your place next time if there is a next time?”

“There’s always going to be a next time. I don’t want this to end,” Mike reached out to touch my hand. With his other hand, he got his phone out of the pocket of his jacket hanging on a chair. My apartment was small, and he was so big he could easily reach the kitchen chair even though it was in the kitchen, while we were in the living room. He pushed a few buttons before putting the phone back. “The truck is on the way. I’ll just get out of your way now. It takes me a moment to navigate the stairs.”

“Do you need any help? I can hold the door for you or something,” I offered. I wanted to help although I was pretty sure he didn’t want any.

“Oh, no, I’ve got it.”

I didn’t think he had it at all, but I wasn’t going to insult him by insisting he let me help. Sometimes we just need to pretend things are okay, even when they aren’t.

“I’d better get going now.” It took him a few moments to pull himself all the way up right, wincing like it hurt him. Maybe it did, he always sat on cushions at his house.

He slumped toward my door, and I walked beside him. I held the door for him. At the door, he stopped to lean forward to put a hand on my shoulder. Maybe he was going to kiss my cheek, but I turned to kiss him on the lips. They were soft against mine, and I wanted to pull him close, kiss him deeper, and never let him leave, but he was standing at such an odd angle, and I knew his Uber was waiting.

“Cora,” he said as he pulled away and just the sound of his voice was enough that my stomach clenched, and I sucked in a breath. He ran a hand down my arm and squeezed my small hand in his. “I’ll see you soon, right?”

“Right,” I said, nodding. “You’ll see me soon.”

I watched him squeeze through the door again and walk away down the hall. I didn’t go to the window to see how long it would take him to navigate his way down the emergency stairs. Instead, I went and picked up the laptop, putting my kitchen table back in its spot between the kitchen and the bed. What was I thinking kissing a centaur? I had been freaked out about dating a man who passes for human most of the time. Now I wanted to be involved with a man who would never be able to pee at my apartment. I lay on my bed looking at the ceiling.

This was a disaster. I cared about Mike. I cared about him deeply. I didn’t want to be embarrassed of him. I accepted him for what he was, and I liked it. He was huge and powerful, wild and dangerous looking, but he was also a kind, funny, neurotic man.

Still, there was no way to get around the fact he wasn’t human. It wouldn’t matter as much since he didn’t like to leave his apartment, but there would always be stuff we couldn’t do together. We would never ride a Ferris wheel or stay at my mom’s. Not that I wanted to stay at Mom’s with him, but he would never be comfortable in a norm’s homes. There would always be people who would be disgusted by me, who would assume the only reason I was with him was that I wanted to fuck a horse. When people saw us together or heard who I was dating, sex would always be the first thing they thought of.

If I wanted to be with him, I was going to have to face that. I didn’t think it was enough to get me fired from my job, but some people would never talk to me again. I wasn’t sure how my parents would take the news, either. They didn’t have any mixed dating stances that I knew about. It had never come up, and I didn’t think they had any non-norm friends, which wasn’t super unusual. They lived in a small town. Small towns tended to be pretty solidly norm or not. My parents had never said anything that made me think they were for mixed relationships, either. Perhaps their silence on the subject was the most telling thing of all. I knew how my friends would divide themselves.

I wasn’t sure I could stand up to the judgment. It made me feel weak and guilty, but it didn’t change the fact that I had never liked to stick out, and dating a centaur wasn’t exactly the path to normalcy. Centaurs always dated human women so at least we didn’t have to worry about Mike’s family. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. After all, it wasn’t like Mike had asked me to be with him. This was our first kiss since we made out the one time that ended badly. Perhaps I was building something up in my mind that would never exist in the real world.

There was no way to know where things would go or how they would end up. Just because I wanted there to be something, didn’t mean I would get my way. Mike was calling the shots here, not me. As big as my fears were about being an outcast or whatever, his fears were bigger and older.

It took me a long time to fall asleep that night. When I woke up the next morning the first thing I thought about was Mike. I wondered if he would call me or text me or even show up again. I must have checked my phone a hundred times before I managed to get on the bus. In the end, I broke first, texting him from the bus asking if he had pizza for breakfast. It was three agonizing hours of checking my phone in my pocket and feeling paranoid that I had said something wrong last night before he texted me to tell me he had coffee for breakfast and no pizza. I was almost disappointed at the lack of pizza, but when I saw his name on my phone I got that same secret thrill, and I realized I was totally and completely gone on him.