“I didn’t,” Laurence said. “I merely speculated about—ooh.” And then he lost all train of thought because his already-quite-sensitive left nipple had developed a few million new nerve endings, and she was blowing on it. He damn near passed out from the sensation, and his brain shut down, and then he was pouring out of himself into the condom inside the woman he loved.

He hadn’t quite let himself think that before, but now he realized it was true. He found himself saying it aloud, sort of by accident, before his brain’s normal functioning could quite be restored: “I love you.”

“Oh.” Patricia was staring down at him, from where he’d fallen into a puddle on the bed. “Wow.”

She was obviously processing this. Like, a non sequitur.

“I can take it back,” Laurence babbled. “I’m taking it back. I never said that.”

He looked up at her green eyes (wide with surprise), her glistening eyelashes, her half-open mouth.

“No, don’t take it back.” She shivered, but not in a bad way. “It’s just. Wow.” And then she looked at him straight on and said, “I love you, too.”

Even as Patricia said it back to him, she felt like her whole history was taking on a whole new focus, the landscape of her past rearranging so that the stuff with Laurence became major geographical features and some other, lonelier, events shrank proportionately. Historical revisionism was like a sugar rush, flooding her head. Her mind flashed on Laurence saying she had saved him, Laurence promising he would never run away from her again. It felt like something she had known a long time.

“Oh my god, I love you. I love you so much,” she started chattering, and soon they were pressed together and kissing the tears out of each other’s eyes and laughing. She touched his cock and even she couldn’t tell if she used magic to lift it up again or if it was just her mere touch, but soon he was inside her again. This time, they were fucking and talking at the same time, and caressing each other’s faces. They kept rolling over and over so neither of them was on top.

“I don’t even know how I lucked out so damn much, you’re the most beautiful ever,” Laurence was saying.

“Let’s just never stop holding each other.” Patricia was laughing and crying. “Let’s just hold on like this forever and people can come and ask us questions through the door or bug us on the phone or—”

Patricia’s phone rang, having switched itself back on.

She pulled away from Laurence long enough to see that it was her parents calling. She hadn’t spoken to them in ages. She knew at once what this was about—Roberta had finally gone off the deep end, in spite of all her straight-edge resolutions.

“What’s wrong with Roberta?” Patricia blurted.