That—if her tongue in his mouth was any indication—had been exactly the right thing to say. John groaned against the wet-hot slide of her mouth pressed to his. She tasted like watermelon. He was lost in the feel of her. The warm silk of her hair. The insistent stroke of her hands against him. He heard his belt and zipper before he quite registered what she was doing. He grabbed his pants before they fell and pulled the condom out of his pocket that he’d optimistically placed there before he’d left his apartment. There were about a thousand more crammed into his backpack.

Mary took the condom from him and sheathed him with it as his hands slipped under her dress and found her underwear. Those were gone, her dress hitched up and then they were smashed against one another, him slipping and sliding against her wetness as they kissed and kissed and kissed.

When he held her still and pushed inside, they both braced and groaned and panted against the utterly exquisite rightness of it. What a strange thing it was that bodies wanted to do when in love, John mused for a moment. That more than sleeping or eating or any other basic need, at that moment John wanted to be inside of Mary. And it made sense to him. Because her body was the most sacred, most special place on earth. He wanted to be where Mary was. Exactly where she was. So close he was part of her. She bit hard at his bottom lip and clawed at his back, loving him fiercely, and he knew she wanted exactly the same thing as he did.

WHEN THE HEAT WAVE subsided back into the low nineties, John and Ruth moved back to his apartment, but Mary pretty much moved with them. They were spending almost every single night together.

It was overwhelming to her, not the speed or intensity with which they were starting their relationship, but how obvious it now was that she’d been utterly starving for this kind of love. Both she and John were gorging on one another, relishing the company, the affection, the sex.

They’d incubated together for a week and a half when Estrella invited Mary over to her house for a Sunday dinner.

John hadn’t mentioned to his mother that he and Mary were actually together now. They figured they could tell her together at the dinner.

Mary found herself unexpectedly nervous as she knocked on Estrella’s door that night. It wasn’t that she suddenly expected Estrella to disapprove of her. It was that everything in Mary’s life was changing so quickly. She’d had a hell of a summer—the blind dates, the break-in, Johnjohnjohn. And now this, her relationship with Estrella was about to change as well.