Bonfire

Even after he was married and had a family, he still, once in a while, revisited the night of extraordinary lust. But now he remembered only what he’d already remembered – it was like shuffling through the same small batch of Polaroids kept in the back of a drawer. Worse, the sweetness hadn’t just faded, it had morphed into a form of unease . . . which was maybe on account of working with teenagers all day, but he was riddled with questions: How could she have been so open? Trusted him? It was insane. And no condoms, no mention of condoms? But possibly the most unsettling: How could it have struck them both as reasonable to walk away, to go blithely into separate lives . . . as if the world’s largesse had no limit? ■

From ‘Bonfire’ by David Long in Granta 118: Exit Strategies. You can now buy the issue or subscribe and receive four issues a year of the best new writing.

Illustration by Owen Freeman.