I sat down beside Steph, still clutching my towel around me. I noticed that her T-shirt was so old it had a constellation of tiny holes in it near the shoulder. The faded print on the front read SAC STATE. I wondered if it was something she normally slept in. My phone call had woken her up. It had made her climb out of bed and leave Lisa behind to come and pick me up.

“What did you tell Lisa?” I asked.

Steph looked at me. Her eyes were rimmed with red, as if she was holding back tears. “I told her Joan was in the hospital.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “She’s going to be okay,” I said. Then we moved toward one another and her arms went around me as we hugged. Her body was warm, her breath catching in her throat. I felt the dampness of the towel pressed against my skin. A shudder went through her.

When she pulled back, I felt tender toward her. I cupped her flushed cheek in my hand. I wanted to kiss her, but I hesitated. Her eyelashes were damp. For one long, silent breath, we looked at each other, motionless.

I felt the weight of that moment all the way through my body, every nerve alive. I think she felt it, too. We could have made a lot of other choices that night, but we made the only one we wanted to make.

—

She let me lead her into my room where I lay down on the bed, and she lay down beside me. All I had to do was let go of the towel, and her hands were sliding over my hips, cupping the curve of my ass, her mouth on mine. It felt as though we had abandoned all pretense and were finally acknowledging the truth.

I had never had sex with a woman before, but Steph didn’t feel like a woman to me. She felt like Steph, this person who had dominion over my daydreams, who made my body turn molten when she touched me, as if she were forging me into a new person. When we kissed, I wanted to devour her.

She did everything right. Her mouth on my nipples, the slightest graze of her teeth on my skin. Her hand sliding between my legs, her fingers stroking me. I was shocked by how liquid I was, an ocean beneath her touch. And then she moved to the end of the bed and knelt between my thighs.

The boy I first had sex with, Zachary, had gone down on me, but he often acted as if he thought of it as a precursor to intercourse—not quite the real thing. With Steph, all of it was the real thing.