They sat on a bench kissing. He bit her lip.
"Want to go back to my place?"
He bit too hard to be sexy. 8 hours at work had brought them to the bar & 2 hours at the bar had lead them to the park. Now from the park they would go to his apartment. Really, it was his friend's apartment. He had been staying there for two months. She was curious if he paid rent. She did not ask. He slept on a fold out couch with no sheets. There was a book of CDs under the pillow, a discovery she made while he went to the bathroom. They kissed all night & into the morning & it was awful. She slipped out at 8:30 a.m. & rode her bike to a bookstore & then through that same park, then to her house. Her hair was windblown when she got through the front door & she realized she had left her hairclip next to the makeshift bed. At work three days after she asked him for it. Weeks later he still had not returned it. It was a black ellipse with pink & blue flowers on it. She imagined how it would be when they made the subtle exchange at work. She imagined it must feel strange for a man, to have a ladies' hairclip in his pocket.