I'm Emma, a 22-year-old college student who just graduated. I never thought of having a one-night stand, but this happened.

We met on Instagram. When I visited LA, we kept trying to meet up, but it wasn’t working out, so I wrote it off.

But then she called me after her shift ended at 10 p.m. We met up at a bar lined with wooden planks à la a ship from 1900s; it was filled with rainbow Christmas lights and locals, the scent of the close-by Santa Monica Pier strong.

When she walked in, I noticed that her eyes were yellow. Two Pacificos with lime later, we took a cab to another bar, our shoulders close to, but not touching — in the way they do when two people are interested, but unsure.

We picked songs from the juke box while she touched my back. I leaned forward off of my stool and kissed her while John Martyn sang into an empty Venice bar. We made our way to her house, a classic bungalow like the ones in Eve Babitz’s books; spent 15 drunk minutes on the floor of her living room trying to calm her dog from this 2 a.m. intruder. I don’t remember how we got to her room. How I got undressed. If my bra stayed on. Hers did not. She called me ‘baby’ while we had passionate, overdue sex. Afterwards, her dog slept between our legs.

Two hours later, I called a car from her bed, watching through hungover eyelids as her chest rose and fell. I took the car to the airport and flew home to Utah.