“You called me Mary again,” Maria says.
He’d been hoping she wouldn’t mention it. “Did I?”
“I’d appreciate it,” Maria says, buttoning up her blouse, “if we could make it through sex without her name coming up.” She looks him straight in the eye. “Just once.”
It’s the eyes that make it hardest. Exactly the same shape, exactly the same colour. He tries to avoid looking at them. Every time, for a moment, it’s like none of it ever happened.
And then he’s slammed into the present again, and Mary is still dead.
“It’s not like I do it on purpose,” he says.
It’s a lie, of course, but lying is the least of his sins.
leave