I knelt before him carefully, and pulled down his sweats and the long underwear he’d pulled on before his excursion to the Hamiltons’. Somehow, him still having clothes on seemed to make what I was doing even naughtier.

I looked up to make sure he was looking as I made good on my promise. Oh, yeah. He watched my every move as if I’d hypnotized him.

“Oh, my God,” he said. He reacted in a very gratifying way.

In my limited experience, men were always so glad to get sex, they were pleased with it no matter how inexperienced their partner was. They weren’t there to run a critique group. They were there to have an orgasm. Provided you put their penis in the correct hole and made enthusiastic noises, they went away happy. It was like signing up for basic cable. That was what you’d sign up for if you were getting it for a person you didn’t know well.

“For you, baby, HBO,” I said, and made him moan.

I woke the next morning to brilliant clear light coming through the bare windows. I blinked and shuddered. I burrowed deeper under the covers, closer to the other body in the bed. Tolliver! I was in bed with Tolliver and we were naked. I sighed with bliss and kissed his neck, which was the easiest thing to reach.

“I guess I have to stop calling you ‘sis’ now,” he said, his voice heavy with sleep.

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess Manfred is shit out of luck.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess the chainsaws we hear mean that there are people outside the cabin cutting up the tree, and we don’t have any clothes on.”

“Oh…no.”

“Yeah, hear ’em?”

I did. Wouldn’t you know that even though there were fifty empty cabins and houses around this lake, we’d be in the one that had neighbors? And I was going to have to get out of the warm bed to go to the bathroom, and I’d have to flush it by pouring water in. Yuck. And I definitely needed a sponge bath, for which I’d have to stand naked in the freezing bathroom, since there weren’t any curtains on the windows and the stupid Hamiltons were out there trying to free their car from the clutches of the tree.

“I hope their car is a pancake,” I said.

“You don’t mean it.”

“No. Yes. Sort of.” I laughed. “I just don’t want to get out of the bed.”

“Do you think they’ll stomp up the steps and look in?”

“Oh, yes, any minute.” His hand found mine under the huge pile of blankets and he gripped my fingers tightly.

“I don’t want to leave this bed, either,” he said and kissed me. His hand released mine to skim across my ribs. “But I’m exhausted, too.”

“Oh, poor thing. Did I wear you out?”