After giving the paper one last reread, then e-mailing it to his professor, Harry wrapped a scarf around his neck and walked across campus to Kim’s single in Hubbard Hall. It was cold, the sky filled with stars. He checked his watch before knocking on her door—it was just past midnight—but he knew she’d still be up. She opened the door, her eyes bright and nervous. Harry walked into a room entirely plastered in cutout snowflakes—it must have been hundreds—taped on the walls, the ceiling, even scattered on the floor.

“Ta-da,” she said, her voice quavering, and Harry knew instantly that the waiting had been a mistake. He felt it in his stomach, and put a smile on his face that he hoped looked genuine.

Kim threw him onto the bed—also covered in snowflakes—and told him to “make love” to her, and Harry felt all desire leave his body. Whether it was the gimmickry of the moment, or the fact that he’d never had intense feelings for Kim in the first place, he knew it wasn’t going to work. Still, he tried, and by dawn, when it was clear that nothing was going to happen, he pretended to fall asleep, listening to Kim quietly cry into the pillow next to him.

The following semester, Harry and Kim agreed to just be friends. It was awkward for a while, but eventually they went back to the way they’d been before. Harry told himself that their failed consummation had been a product of a mismatch—that they never should have tried—but secretly he worried about it. Was he only sexually attracted to the girls who didn’t want him, or to the women he could never have, like his stepmother?

Toward the end of senior year, Harry and Kim had begun to occasionally fool around again, and one night, Kim, as drunk as he’d ever seen her, told him that he was the only boy she’d ever loved. Harry responded with silence. The following day Kim claimed she’d blacked out the night before, but Harry wasn’t so sure. He told himself he needed to stop misleading her, and he had, for the most part. But now it didn’t matter. She was doing Teach for America for a year in Baton Rouge, and Harry was in Maine.

“Same again?” the bartender asked.

“Uh, sure,” Harry said, checking the time on his watch. It was exactly the time that Grace and he had agreed on. He turned and there she was, walking into the bar, wearing a dark blue dress, the hemline over her knees.

“Fancy,” she said, looking around as she slid onto the stool next to Harry.

The bartender placed his drink in front of him, and asked Grace what she wanted. She glanced toward the small selection of draft beers, and ordered a Shock Top.

“Any luck on the job front?”