Marek received a three-point ticket on Monday morning, nine minutes before the daily meeting — the one that two colleagues had already touched and postponed again. You’re doing better anyway, Fero wrote, adding a winking smiley. Marek started to write that he wouldn’t be able to fit it in this week. Then he deleted it. Then he wrote that it was fine.

He was twenty-nine years old, worked as a developer for a Munich company, and lived comfortably on his salary in an apartment in a small town, where weeks passed since Covid without him talking to anyone except the grocery clerk and the couriers. Košice was a twenty-minute train ride away. He rarely took it.

He hadn’t been with a woman in twenty-nine years. Not out of principle, nor out of trauma — the moment when he would decide to do it simply never came. Imagination slowly took the place left by the missing experience, and in the summer, when the turn-of-the-century brick walls still reflected the heat of the day at midnight, this arrangement became physically unbearable.

Desperation drove him to the dating site.

After weeks of dull matchmaking, he came across a loud, twenty-one-year-old girl who, after the second exchange of messages, suggested a meeting at a dimly lit cocktail bar on Hlavná.

The girl arrived in a short, low-cut dress and went straight to him from the first minute. As the cocktails wore on, she moved closer and closer; she placed her hand on Marek’s knee and didn’t take it off while they talked. The blood pounded in his ears. His body had never been this close to finally experiencing something it had only imagined.

— I’ll be right back, I’ll just get ready — the girl whispered, standing up and leaving her purse on the chair. — And then we’re going to my place. No one’s home.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Thirty.

Marek went to the toilets. The corridor was empty. When he returned to the table, he noticed that his purse had also disappeared. The back emergency exit was open to a side alley.

The waiter came with the bill a second time.

But he didn’t do one thing: he didn’t delete the app.

Klára had only one photo on her profile, and even that one showed her half-turned away.

She was the deputy principal at the local elementary school, she was thirty-six, and everyone in town knew her — the dark blue suits, the neat bun, the voice that made the children in the corridor fall silent. She had been divorced three years ago. Her marriage ended without anything remarkable happening: she existed as a trophy for her husband, and sex was one of the things that had to be done, somewhere between shopping and having the car inspected.

Local men her age were either afraid of talking or so full of themselves that Klara knew by the second dinner how it would end.

Marek didn’t try to come across as a guy. One evening, when the topic of disappointments came up, he described what had happened in the bar with the precision of a developer and the honesty of a person with nothing left to lose.

Klara read the message twice. Then she got up, poured herself a glass of water, and only then sat down to write it down.

— Come to my place on Friday night. We’re not going to a bar, no roles needed, and no one will disappear.

Marek spent hours thinking about what he would bring to Klara’s door.

He was sure about the bouquet. The bottle was less so. In the end, he chose Baileys — sweet, creamy, and somewhere deep down he hoped that a few sips would do what he himself could not: dissolve anxiety before it could ruin anything.

When Klara opened the door, her face immediately lit up at the sight of the bouquet.

— Marek, this is beautiful — she said, taking a deep breath of the scent of the flowers before she walked over to the vase.

Then Marek pulled Baileys out of his bag and placed it on the kitchen island. Klara’s movement stopped for a moment. She slowly turned around, examined the bottle, and smiled.

— Baileys? — she asked. — Tell me, why this one?

Marek rubbed his neck.

— I thought… that maybe a glass would be good. To relieve tension. In case we were overthinking something too much in our heads.

Klára walked closer. Her heel tapped softly on the parquet. She was wearing a burgundy silk bathrobe, under which perfectly smooth black nylon stockings were visible. She placed both palms on his chest.

— Marek. You don’t need alcohol to relax.

Then she turned to the counter and poured two small glasses.

— But let’s drink. Not for courage. Just because it’s good, and because you’re here.

They drank slowly. The sweet, warm taste of Baileys spilled over them, but the relaxation wasn’t brought by drinking—it was brought by the nonjudgmental silence that reigned in the room.

Klara put down the glass, grabbed Marek’s hand, and pulled him toward the sofa.

— Take a deep breath — she said. — No one is testing you in this room right now.

They sat down opposite each other. Klara watched Marek arrange his hands on his knees, as if he had nowhere to put them. She recognized this. That’s exactly how the eighth-graders stood in front of the principal’s office door.

We’re not going to complicate this. And I don’t have to please anyone now either.

She slowly took off her pumps. She stepped onto the sofa and swung one leg over Marek’s thigh. The cool surface of the smooth black stocking passed through the fabric of his trousers. Marek held his breath.

— Do you know what the most beautiful thing about intimacy is? — Klara whispered as she took off her dress. All that was left was nylon; she had nothing under the delicate lace seat.

She stripped Marek to his shorts. His skin was still cold from uncertainty, but as Klara slid down onto him, the warmth of their bodies slowly spilled over into each other.

Klara gripped him tightly with her thighs. The smooth, soft surface of the stocking took the edge of friction, and the grip gave Marek immediate support — without him having to prove anything.

— Just lean back. I set the rhythm — Klara said and slowly, with deliberation, she deepened her hips.

After the convulsive control at work, this leadership was finally liberating. She didn’t have to guess what the other wanted, she didn’t have to rush. With a circular motion of her hips, she searched through the nylon for exactly the gentle friction she needed.

For a moment, all that could be heard was the rhythm of their breathing. Marek’s eyes widened: the elasticity of the stockings and the rhythm of the rocking washed all anxiety out of him in a few seconds. Marek hesitantly placed his hands on her hips. His fingers tentatively touched the soft nylon and then slowly, almost timidly, began to stroke the smooth material on her hips. The smooth nylon and the warmth of her body completely absorbed him.

And then something changed. Klara, with her eyes closed and a muffled sigh, succumbed to the movement. The soft material of the stockings between them slowly became damp; the smooth sliding was replaced by hot, sticky, and deep warmth. Marek didn’t hesitate anymore — from time to time he grabbed her ass more tightly, his fingers digging into the taut nylon and keeping the rhythm with her.

Klara felt the tension building in her, and in the grip of her thighs, she reached her climax with a smooth rhythm: a deep, wavy tremor ran through her. She buried her head in Marek’s shoulder.

Klara’s reaction and the hot contact also released the last spasm in Marek. With the constant friction, he also reached his first climax.

The movement slowly stopped. The room fell silent, only the night breeze that leaked through the open window moved the curtain.

Klara didn’t move away immediately. She kept her head resting on Marek’s chest and listened to his still accelerating heartbeat. Marek slowly, almost cautiously, reached out and put his arm around her back.

— I… — he began, but his voice broke.

— Don’t say anything — Klara whispered, then leaned on her elbow and looked into his eyes. Her bun loosened in the meantime, a few strands falling into her face. — You know you didn’t have to rush anywhere now?

Marek sat down, leaned his back against the sofa cushion and pulled the blanket around himself.

— When I came here, I was thinking, what if I messed up again — he said, looking at his hands. — That girl in the bar… I don’t even feel bad that she took my money. But the fact that I felt like a tool that someone used and then put away. I feel it in the company too. Every single day.

Klara ran her hand over his face.

— That girl wasn’t evaluating you — she said. — She was evaluating herself.

She paused. Marek waited.

— I was scared tonight — Klara finally said and looked towards the window. — Not what you think.

— And what then?

— In this town I am a role. The deputy director, who must not make a mistake. For three years I lived next to a man in such a way that… — She shook her head. — That’s not even the point. But for years no one had touched me in a way that would have drawn attention. And I wasn’t sure if I would even notice.

She moved closer and placed her hand on his chest.

— When you wrote to me about what happened to you, I didn’t see a weak boy.

Marek took a deep breath. The tightness in his chest eased.

— Thank you — he said quietly and for the first time he looked her in the eyes with complete certainty.

Klara pulled the blanket over them both. Someone started the car outside. The engine roared in the quiet street, a yellowish streak of light crossed the ceiling, and then the sound slowly died away.

— I have to be at school at seven in the morning — said Klara. — The schoolmaster is already sweeping the yard by then.

— I know.

— No. I didn’t say you had to go home.