They put me in the guest room in the basement. The room had white wicker furniture and green-and-silver jungle wallpaper. Mold in the squishy rug. We’d packed our clothes into the same suitcase, and as I dug through it for my contact-lens holder I came across a bunch of Lynn’s underwear. I took a pair out and held them up to the light, weightless flowered cotton panties. They had a lacy edge. They were clean and cute and smelled like powder. Eleven o’clock at night I’m sitting on the bed in the dank basement, white wicker furniture and green jungle wallpaper, the underwear crumpled against my nose and mouth, tracing swirl patterns in the stucco ceiling. I really loved her. Two floors above me my girlfriend lay sleeping, down the hall from her mother and father. I never put pressure on Lynn, for I knew that would be wrong, and yet she must’ve felt safe. We’d begun to build up trust. This is the part where Lynn loses her virginity. It was the holiday season. The stage was set.

Lunchtime, Celia had made a Mexican specialty, a casserole, a savory thing, cheap cuts of fatty meat, bone chips, dog lips, and I went into the bathroom to get a stain off my pants. Lynn came in to help me, and we both ended up naked from the waist down. She got up on the sink, both of us a little self-conscious, trying to be quiet, except I was so excited my feet itched, the thing so hard it felt like it was pulling off me of its own power. Lynn’s like kicking my jeans, she was like Don’t come inside me, she was like drooling, her eyes rolled back into her head, kind of grunting, her legs around my waist. And there were her parents—Celia and Phil sitting outside the door sopping up the orange grease on their plates from their Mexican lasagna. Man, it was something. Lynn said, “I’m supposed to be a virgin, you bastard. My mother is in the next room. Stop it right now. Stop it before I faint,” laughing. “Somebody, help.” I almost fainted myself, both of us leering and hot as monkeys.

It’s terrible the way kids work off their parents.