“We’ll be back pretty soon,” Malcolm began, but I grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him out the door. We went down the hall to the elevator and pressed the button a dozen times and when it came we got aboard and began to kiss as hard as we could kiss. When the elevator doors opened in the lobby we were still kissing and the desk clerk and a couple checking in got a whiff of twenty-year-old, not-fucked-up-yet desire and they smiled as though the sun had just come out after a rain. We found the car and drove out to the deserted Tech campus and went into the empty KA house and broke into the manager’s room and moved a dresser against the door and then we did it. We did it with him on top and with me on top and standing up and then we did it some more on our sides and then lying down some more. That was the day we discovered doing it on a chair. He would sit on the chair with his fabulous desire which was endless and terrible and painful and impossible to satisfy or conquer. He could not conquer it and I could not end or satisfy it. Then I would sit across his legs and we would laugh and talk while we drove each other crazier and crazier. We were so sheltered we did not even know what to say but we made things up. Anything we said seemed evil and sinful and made us crazier. That feels so good. Don’t do that. I can’t stand it. It hurts. I especially loved to say it hurts, although it didn’t hurt at all. Nothing hurt, we were tree and roots and earth and bird and song and music and water and divine young bodies in love with ourselves and maybe even each other. Oh, God, that’s so good. Over there. Over here, do it some more, make it last, make it last forever. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It may have been that day that I finally learned to come. It had happened before once or twice, but without warning. Now I began to understand that I could make it happen. Most wonderful of all, that I could think it up.

“Will you go home with us?” I asked. “Will you go back to Dunleith and stay with me until school starts?”

“I don’t know if I can. You stay with us. Go home with me. You’ve never even seen Martinsville. You’ve never seen where I live.”

“You haven’t seen where I live either. I don’t have any clothes to go with you.”

“I just have the things I’m wearing.”