All Dan Henderson really wanted was to go to sleep at something resembling a reasonable hour.

As he tossed and turned for the umpteenth time in his expansive bed, he tried his best to figure out why he couldn't seem to fall asleep when he wanted to. When he had work the next day, it was no problem. It wasn't like he was an actual insomniac who was unable to get any sleep whatsoever. It was only on the weekends. Even when he just wanted to have a quiet night in after a long unbearable Friday, he found himself tossing and turning into the early hours of the morning.

Dan laid on his back and fumed. He silently slammed his fists against the smooth sheets and fought back the urge to scream. How long, he wondered, how long had his weekends been plagued like this?

Of course, Dan knew the answer. It wasn't a very difficult one for him to figure out.

His weekends had been like this for exactly one year, ten months, one week, and four days. It was that long ago that he and his wife had divorced. Not to say that it was a traumatic or even particularly surprising split. Both of them had realized at least three months before hand that it was over between them. There was no cheating, or horrible shouting matches. There wasn't anything, which was the whole problem.

One day, at the breakfast table no less, she had merely said, “I think we should just get divorced at this point.”

And Dan had said, “Ok.”

Ok! He screamed in his own brain. That had been his response to his wife divorcing him? After three years of marriage, a nearly year long engagement, and about two and a half years of dating before that, and all he had managed was ok? It was the only thing he could think of at the moment when she had said it and he was so happy that she had been the one to say it in the first place.

They had the papers signed within two weeks.

A pre-nup that had been her idea made the transition from married to divorced so easy.

If only the rest of it had all been that easy.

Dan was the one left holding on to their apartment in Brooklyn. He had never wanted to move to Brooklyn, and certainly not the waterfront in Williamsburg but when he was engaged it had all seemed so attractive; the nice shops, the restaurants, the people, and of course, the easy access to Manhattan. It was far better than the suburbs, not that either of them were interested in moving out of the city anyway. It certainly felt better than being like every other married thirty something; restoring brownstones in downtown Brooklyn or revitalizing old turn of the century buildings in Harlem. No, they chose the other route for people with too much money, a former factory that had been converted into condos with views of the Manhattan skyline.

It had all been so nice when they had moved in. So perfect when he could look at his beautiful wife with one eye and the best city in the world with the other.

A little over a year after she had moved out though and the mortgage payments were starting to become too much for him. Not that Dan was doing poorly for himself, he was a software engineer who could actually code. If anything could be said about the money he was making, it was that he could be doing better. He just wasn't the type to go about demanding promotions from his bosses, and while head hunters called all the time, those jobs were either terrible or their descriptions so filled with buzzwords it wasn't clear what he'd actually do. The thing was that his wife had been pulling in more money than he had been, not that he was counting on her salary to cover the bulk of it but he had been expecting some distinct contributions.

She had no interest in paying for it though. After the divorce they had kept in touch. Hell, they still talked fairly regularly but that didn't mean she was going to cough up money for the place. As far as she was concerned it should just be sold off. She even knew a realtor to handle everything because she always knew somebody. A smooth and easy transaction.

Dan couldn't part with it though. It wasn't just that it was the first land he had ever owned. The fact that it was actually a space that measured less than one thousand square feet contained in another building didn't make him think of it as any less. It was his, and more importantly it had once been theirs.

So, he did the only thing he could think to do in that situation.

He got a roommate.

It was far from abnormal for someone to have a roommate at his age, especially in this city. For him though, having lived alone since his mid-20s and then with his wife-to-be after that, the idea of letting someone else into his space was not exactly thrilling. Worse, most of the people who had replied to his ad had all sorts of baggage or other nonsense with them. Or maybe they hadn't. He really hadn't wanted a roommate but eventually his finances forced him to take the next person who wasn't clearly an asshole.

She was young though and definitely living beyond her means.

She was twenty four and worked in marketing or... public relations? Something like that. Advertising maybe? He had recognized the firm but couldn't for the life of him actually recall what they did. She had been fleeing a terrible apartment that had all sorts of problems, and needed a place as soon as possible. She had promised she was quiet, and clean, and all the wonderful things that someone would want from a roommate. Even though Dan knew that she probably wasn't any of those things, he had let her move in anyway.

In all honesty, he didn't care if she was loud or dirty or anything like that.

He would let her be all of those things if she just hadn't been physically attractive.

It was winter when they had first met, and even though he had offered to take her coat, she had stayed wrapped up in the thing. With her scarves, hat, and other winter gear she had looked downright frumpy. He couldn't believe that he would have a nice younger female roommate that he would have no unwanted attraction to, and far more importantly, no unwanted assumptions from other people. Particularly his ex-wife.

All of that hope had died the day she had moved in though. He opened his door to find her wearing merely two layers of clingy Under Armor, running shorts, bulky gloves, and a hat. She was positively stunning. The cute but positively frumpy girl he had met had been replaced by some kind of fire haired sex demon who traveled with a cabal of equally good looking young people. Of course, she had had friends to help her move. And of course, they were all equally young, and attractive, and tremendously strong. Worse, they were all happy to do it in exchange for some pizza and beer.

As the months grew warmer, Katelyn's (or Kat as she preferred) clothes seemed to become scarcer and flimsier. Now, in the worst of the summer heat, he swore she barely wore clothes at all. She always moved about the apartment in barely anything and worse it wasn't to taunt him. That's just the way she was. Everyone she knew dressed like her, even the guys she hung around with barely seemed to wear anything.

Dan hated it, but he hated it the most on Friday nights when he couldn't sleep.

The front door opened wide and closed with a soft thud. Dan rolled over in bed and stared at his clock. It was past four a.m. and she was just getting home. She didn't even sound uproariously drunk. He knew because when she was, she would sing N'Sync songs off-key. Kat hummed as she pranced about their apartment. He could hear her bare feet slap against the hard wood and then the tile as she moved into the kitchen.

The microwave hummed as she heated up a slice of pizza she had left in the fridge earlier that afternoon. The appliance dinged and she danced out of the kitchen and into her room whilst softly serenading her pizza. Dan could briefly hear the antics of the Bluth Family before she switched over to headphones, so as not to disturb him..

He couldn't help himself as he imagined her, shedding clothes and laying naked across her bed while fiddling with her laptop. The curve of her body, the perkiness of her breasts, and the fiery red color of her hair all ran through his mind as he started pumping furiously beneath the sheets. Sleep finally came for Dan as he released his load.

As he drifted off to sleep, Dan Henderson was filled with shame.

That night, his ex-wife featured prominently in his dreams. Her gaze disapproving and filled with pity as she looked down at him from on high.