—Are you for real?

Dallas pulled him off the bed and turned up the radio. Without all his layers of clothing, Peter had a strange body. His shoulders were big and wide and the rest of him was bony and narrow.

—C’mon. Please.

Dallas tugged at Peter’s hands that were clammy and cold. The music was hard rock, while she was thinking bachata. Peter grabbed her waist. He’d had a shot of whiskey before meeting Dallas and was wishing he had some left. He grabbed her hand and placed it over his heart. He pulled her in tighter so she could feel his erection come through his pants, against her pelvis. He hated to dance, but girls were complicated. They needed lots of foreplay.

—You do this with all the girls, don’t you? Dallas accused him. He smelled like a blend of underarm odor and detergent.

—Never.

—You want to trick me into sleeping with you.

—You’re bugging, he said and jumped back on the bed thinking Dallas wasn’t going to put out like he’d hoped. He grabbed a lighter from among his father’s things. —The problem with you girls is that you watch all that TV and you expect life to be one romantic thing after another. But you don’t realize that in the movie, they pack a two-year relationship into two hours and edit out all the dead time.

—Lay with me. Peter extended his arm toward Dallas. She tried not to touch the pillows.

—Your father needs to clean in here, she said.

—He works a lot. He just crashes and showers here and then leaves. It gets worse sometimes.

Peter put Dallas’s hand on his erection.

—I like when you touch me, he said.

She placed her hand over his pants and rubbed.

He unzipped his pants.

—Don’t! Dallas jumped.

—What’s the big deal? If you don’t want to be with me, say it.

Peter sat up and looked down at her.

—I do want to be with you. It’s just that…She didn’t know how to explain to him that she wasn’t ready to fool around with him all alone like that. And his place was a mess. It smelled bad.

And if he would at least throw out that used condom. Couldn’t he see any of that? And what if he couldn’t control himself? What if he didn’t know when to stop? What if she screamed for help, who would hear her?

—I took the day off and everything to be with you.

—I’m sorry, Peter, I have to go. Maybe we can meet next week or something.

Dallas gathered her things, looked into the mirror and fixed her hair. He walked her over to the door and waited until she was outside the apartment.

—Hey, Dallas.

—What, Peter?

—Don’t call me anymore, he said.

—But I thought you were going to hook me up with a job at Tower Records.

—Don’t count on it.