She was making me a drink in the kitchen, something that required more than two bottles from the countertop. The party started to move up to the roof. I checked my phone and saw that Nadine had texted me something long.

I skimmed over it. Hey! left early, good to see you at this tonight . . . Lease ends September 1. . . adelaide and min are technically breaking occupancy law . . . lmk if you have any leads for roommates . . .

“Hi,” she said, handing me a red plastic cup.

She was standing close to me, smiling closemouthed, with her head turned to the side in an open question. I put my hand on her waist.

She kissed me, softly at first and then more insistently. Her hands found my waist. I murmured a little bit into her mouth and she kissed me harder, then pulled back.

“Wanna go back to my room?” she whispered.

“In a minute,” I said.

We drank our drinks and found a common topic in a writer we both knew, but every word we said after that was a veiled flirtation. It was delaying the inevitable. At some point she just started walking across the room midsentence, and I followed her.

The only decor in her room was, I swear to god, three huge canvases painted the same shade of bright green hung on the wall. Everything else was on the floor. The mattress, a few candles in old wine bottles, a small stack of paperback books, all arranged around the focal point of the window.

I sat on the mattress while she switched on a lamp in the corner.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Twenty-six,” she said. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” I said. “I was just curious.”

When she sat down on the bed we started making out sloppily, like teenagers in a car. She pulled my dress off over my head and I tugged at hers until she undid the clasp at the back that made it fall off her shoulders. She pushed me down onto my back.

I extended my arms above my head and looked up at her.

“What do you like?” she murmured.

I had no idea. So I said the first thing that came to mind:

“Can you . . . hurt me?”

She nodded, which made her hair flop in a curtain around her face.

“Okay,” she breathed.

She ran her hands up my thighs, and then when she reached my hips she sank her thumbs into some hollow space in my pelvis. It was so immediate, and so unexpected, that it felt like an electric shock to my brain. I heard myself whimper and arched my back. She dug deeper.

“Harder,” I said. It was already excruciating, but I wanted her to test my limits. When I said that, really more moaned it, she abruptly let go of my hips and straddled me. She leaned over and covered my mouth with one hand.