The next morning ...

Olivia Blink opened her eyes, and immediately squinted again. The curtains were drawn, the sun was cascading into the room -- and she was alone.

"Brian already left," she said. "I know he already left because this is the 'morning after we have sex' routine." She watched her cat tiptoe into the room and leap up onto the bed. "Hello, cat."

The routine Olivia recognized started with Brian being gone. She hadn't analyzed it, but the fact was that almost every morning following a night of sex, he would get up super early and go to the gym. She didn't actually know how frequently he went to the gym otherwise, but he always seemed to go on mornings after they'd had sex.

The next piece of evidence was the curtains. Olivia almost never opened the curtains. But Brian always did. Always in the morning. As if he needed a bath of sunshine to get him started for the day.

"Maybe he does," Olivia said, commenting on her otherwise internal monologue. "Maybe he does."

She got up, stepped into her slippers (which made an interesting contrast to her sexy underwear, which she still had on from the night before). She walked slowly into the bathroom, feeling a bit of soreness on her ass.

"Mm, that's right," she said, remembering the evening's adventure. "That was nice."

After her somewhat formulaic morning, Olivia fell into her rickety old Honda Civic, and made the commute to The Sleepy Owl. It was another 10am shift, and she couldn't remember who was scheduled to be there for the morning. Her mind quickly considered Tyler, of course.

"Honestly," she said as she sat in her car. "If Tyler told me to break up with Brian so I could date him instead -- I'd probably do it." She paused for a moment, remembering the weird events of the whole TikTok thing from a few days earlier ... but maybe due to the passage of time, maybe due to Brian's hypothesis that she had read it earlier somewhere and that it was just one of those sort of weird deja vu phenomenons -- whatever the reason, it wasn't eating at her the way that it had.

Just before getting out of her car, she tapped on her phone and texted Brian.

had a great time last night

"I should say more than that ... I mean ... I want more than that, don't I?" She tapped her phone again, deleting the first message, and then writing a second.

want to do that again tonight?

She hit send, and immediately wondered if Brian would even have the sense of mind to know what she meant. "I suppose it doesn't matter. He'll either understand or he won't, and then he'll either want to or he wont." She sighed, stepped out of her car, and walked inside the café.