Mary Kate shook her head so vehemently her right braid began unraveling. ‘No way. He’s got a crucifix on. You can’t have a crucifix and an … erection … at the same time.’

‘Oh, you can’t?’

She seemed pretty certain. ‘It’s like how the devil bursts into flames if he walks into church.’

‘I don’t know, Mary Kate,’ I said, grinning. ‘Shall we test out your little crucifix vs erection theory?’

I turned my laptop around on my desk so the speakers were facing the open window. Then I double-clicked on one of my playlists. Mary Kate, watching over my shoulder, rolled her eyes.

‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘You have a playlist called Make-out Mix?’

Clearly, my room-mate has no idea what I got up to when she was away at that young poets’ conference last spring.

My Make-out Mix starts off slow – literally, because the first song is ‘Slow Hands’ by Niall Horan. I turned up the volume to make sure the Long Huggers could hear it outside. But as the music drifted out into the summer night – the slow, regular beat, and Niall’s throaty voice offering an erotic rubdown – the Long Huggers didn’t even look up from their hug.

Time to step it up a notch, I thought, and double-clicked the next song: ‘Truffle Butter’ by Nicki Minaj. This one was more uptempo – and the concept behind it is as filthy as hell, but luckily, since I haven’t explained it to Mary Kate, she probably thinks ‘truffle butter’ is a recipe from a celebrity lifestyle blog.

She and I were watching intently through the window, but there was no change in the Long Hug. The Long Hugging Guy didn’t slide his hand an inch lower down the girl’s back; the Long Hugging Girl didn’t press her chest against his any harder; there was not even the slightest hint of a pelvic thrust.

‘Maybe they fell asleep on each other,’ Mary Kate said, squinting into the dusk. ‘They’re not moving at all.’

‘Well then, I guess we have to wake them up.’ I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

‘Alex …’ Mary Kate said warningly. ‘I think that’s enough.’

Ignoring her, I scrolled through my playlist looking for the perfect song. That’s it! I double-clicked, and music blared out into the night: a throbbing beat and moaning vocals laid over a twangy porn-soundtrack background. It was Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back’, the dirtiest song I’ve ever illegally downloaded. ‘So lick it now, lick it good …’

‘Stop it!’ Mary Kate hissed. ‘You can’t play that!’

‘What’d you say?’ I cupped my ear, pretending I couldn’t hear her over the music. ‘Turn it up louder?’