Cotton Robe in a Toronto Condo, Tuesday Morning

The coffee maker was still cycling — that last slow gurgle before it finished — when she cut the tape on the box. Kitchen counter, grey January light coming flat through the window above the sink, her robe barely tied. Six weeks in the new place and she still hadn't bought a proper knife block, so she used her keys. The cardboard gave way.

She had ordered it to the old address by accident. Of course she had. She'd spent eleven years ordering things to that address. The package had been forwarded, which meant someone at the building had handled it, had read the sender name, and she found she did not care at all. That was new. That was, she thought, the whole point.

The robe was thin — too thin for a Toronto January, even inside — and she was aware of the cold air from the window settling against the backs of her bare calves as she stood at the counter. The cotton sat light across her shoulders, barely there, the belt knotted loosely at her waist. When she leaned forward to pull the item free of its packaging, the fabric shifted and the hem lifted at the back of her thighs. She didn't adjust it.

It was exactly what she'd chosen. She'd spent forty minutes on the site, which was longer than she'd spent choosing anything for herself in recent memory. Silicone, the colour of a winter morning, a slight curve she had selected deliberately and specifically because she knew what that curve was for and she knew, with a clarity that still surprised her, that she had never once had it reliably from another person.

She held it for a moment. Turned it once in her hands. The silicone was cool from transit and smooth in a way that made her press her thumb slowly along its length, just to feel the give.

The coffee maker finished. The sound dropped into silence.

She stood in her kitchen in the grey light, the robe loose around her, and something low in her stomach contracted — not urgency, not quite, but the awareness of what was about to happen. Her left hand set the object on the counter. Her right hand stayed where it was, resting against the outside of her thigh through the thin cotton, the fabric warm from her skin beneath it.

She was in no hurry. That was also new.

She picked it up and walked toward the bedroom, the cotton robe trailing a half-second behind her, the coffee still hot on the counter, the grey light following her down the hall.