“Doll,” he breathed, dropping her dress to the floor, pushing her slip and bra straps down off her shoulder, kissing where they had made dents in her skin. She could smell the clean scent of his hair. “I used to think I was going to go stark raving mad. Remember?” He moved the other strap of her slip aside; the slip fell to the ground. “When I’d—The way you’d arch your back, Doll, the curve of your neck—you were so beautiful.”

“I—was?”

It seemed she had hardly drawn a breath before she was lying on the cool leather of the backseat, with Byron leaning over her. The car smelled like trips to church, drives along the river; mixed with the heat of Byron’s skin, it smelled like teenaged Saturday nights: leather and lust, perfume and sweat, hairspray, starch, Aqua Velva.

“Remember this, Doll?” he whispered. The seat stuck to her damp skin.

When it was over, he sighed her name, nuzzling her neck. He was still connected with her; how funny that part of it was, Dolly always thought, that she could almost imagine they’d fused together for good, that the heat they had made had melted their parts and their hearts all together. And then it was awful that it wasn’t true, that tomorrow they’d snipe at each other about the same stupid things they always did.

She sighed, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She was growing embarrassed; married women didn’t do such things, she was sure. “I always promised my sister I wouldn’t lose my virginity in the backseat of a car,” she said.

“You didn’t, silly.”

“Well, it felt like I did, the way you talked! I lost my car virginity, anyway!” she said. “Oh, I’m so stuck to this seat. Do you think the neighbors heard us?”

“Who cares if they did?”

“I’d better get my clothes,” she said. “What if someone sees?”

“No one’s going to see, Doll.” He sounded as content and drowsy as a summer’s day.

But something was gnawing at her. “Byron?” she ventured after a moment. “Do you still—want me? At all?”

“Wasn’t it obvious just now?”

She struggled up to her elbows, unsticking her skin from the seat, upsetting him from on top of her. “But the way you talked, Byron—it was all about how you used to feel about me. How I used to be a virgin and I used to stop you before we went all the way.”

“Sure, Doll,” he said. “Isn’t that how it was?”

“But I’m not a virgin anymore, Byron.”

“That’s even more fun,” he said, running his hand over her body.

“But why did you want to marry me? I mean, when did you first have the idea you might want to marry me?”

“The first day I saw you in that red two-piece.” He grinned.