"Hey, no… no… absolutely not!"

"Ha!" Jack made a face.

"Sometimes I just think about kissing women," Ned said. He couldn't resist rubbing it in a little. He knew that Jack and Marcie hadn't made it yet. Jack had confessed as much to him one night over a few beers. It drove him Marcie apparently kissed like a nuclear reactor melting down, but always drew the line at having sex. Jack claimed it was one of the things he really like about her. Ned remembered brought up short by that particular moment.

"Now wait a minute," he had said, "Let me get this straight. It's driving you crazy she won't sleep with you and at the same time the fact that she won't have sex with you is one of the things you like about her?"

Jack had taken a long swig of beer and grinned. "Yeah, I guess it does sound sort of weird, doesn't it? But think about it… if a guy wants to get laid, there are a lot of girls around who wouldn't mind at all but I don't want to pressure Marcie. If you love somebody, you don't pressure them. Love is about trust, not lust."

"Yeah… but it sounds to me as if you're suffering from a bad case of both." Ned said, "Love AND lust."

"Look, I love Marcie, alright?" said Jack, "And if you love somebody I mean if you really love them, and you're not just bullshitting yourself, you don't try to jump their bones just because you're horny. If that's the bottom line, then you're not making love, man. You're just using someone else to get your rocks off. If you're that cheap and sleazy, you might as well whack off. At least you don't have to buy your right hand dinner. If you're doing that to someone else, you're lying to them, man. And chances are that if it's that easy, they're probably doing it to you. That's not being in love; that's just being selfish."

"Goddamn, Jack," Ned said, grinning, "You're a romantic."

"So? You think that's funny? What the hell is wrong with being romantic? Maybe if more people were romantic, they'd stay together longer."

"Well, that's what you say," said Ned, "But is it what you truly believe? This is going to be your last summer together, man. It's gotta be now or never."

"I know," said Jack, staring miserably into his beer. "I know… you don't have to tell me."

The pulled off onto the dirt road, marked with a new sign that read "Camp Crystal Lake." Ned slowed down and followed the winding dirt road through the trees until they came to a larger sign saying "Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake: established 1935." A lean, shirtless man with eyeglasses and a moustache was swinging an axe, leaning into it as he chopped at the roots of a large tree stump. Ned pulled over and parked.