I bit my thumbnail and nodded. She reached into her night-stand and removed a half-empty bottle, uncorked.

“You already drank all that?” I didn’t want to spend another night holding her hair back.

“No, stupid. It was like this when I stole it.” She took a long pull. Her whole face screwed up against the bitterness. She exhaled. “It still tastes weird to me.”

I hesitated but followed suit. I was not particularly afraid of my mother’s ban on nonsense just then. All the barricades she’d erected to keep the world out had come tumbling down a few weeks earlier. The wine stung. But I did like the warmth filling my throat and the space behind my collarbones. Anita took only a few sips.

“Are you feeling it?” I put the back of my hand on my cheek as though to test for fever.

“Just a little,” she said.

“Uh, yeah. Me, too. Just a little,” I lied. I inched closer. I saw myself in Anita’s mirror. I was scruffy, but more substantial than I had been even months ago. I had the thought that I ought to take up more space in the world. “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were—” She stopped.

“Say it. No one will say it; just say it.”

“You want me to say it was your fault.”

“Yeah.” The heat in my face swelled; I didn’t know if it was the wine or impending tears.

“Fine, it was your fault,” she said. “Do you feel better?”

I shook my head and reached for the bottle. Through the air vent: the continued buzz of the party downstairs, Beatles songs, wooden laughter. I didn’t reply. Through the window by her bed, you could see the edge of my house. It was after eight and the sky was the color of dulling embers, the sunset polluted by smog.

There was a finger’s worth of wine left. I chugged it. Anita shoved the empty bottle in her nightstand.

“I’ll toss it later,” she said, like she’d done this before. Then she stood, and I was still sitting. She stepped near me. She was tall for a girl, but I was now taller, so she had to look up.

And then I did it. I took her face in my hands, and I kissed like I knew what I was doing. Her lips were this strange combination of gentle and assured, and when tongue arrived, it was just enough. I couldn’t say how long the first part went on for, but at some point, she was sitting on her bed and at some point later we were both lying down, and my hand was on her breast, then her stomach, then beneath her shirt. She made an mmph noise, and I didn’t immediately move my hand away.

She pushed my wrist back up to her collarbone.