“Come on,” Nate says against my ear. I can barely hear him over the crowd, which is maybe two dozen people now. He takes my hand, and we head for the exit.

We barely make it past the threshold of his apartment before our hands are pulling at each other, clothes and shoes on the floor behind us as we slam into walls, knock over stacks of books, picture frames, tripping over ourselves and laughing as we back into doors, moving from corner to corner as if the place isn’t big enough to hold the both of us. The AC isn’t running and it is at least ninety degrees in this place, but neither of us stops to adjust it, and by the time we finally make it to the bed, we’ve both dissolved into a liquid state, nothing but sweat and soft moans between us. I’m panting before he’s even inside me, and when he finally pushes through, slow and sure, it feels new and familiar at the same time.

Like finally coming home after being away for too long.

Like discovering your favorite song all over again.

“Hey,” I say, rolling onto my side, and all I see is delectable brown skin. “You deleted those pics I sent you, right?”

Nate is on his back, sweat glistening down his broad chest and lean stomach, looking as if all the life has been drained from him. He’d sleep and fuck and football, football, fuck and sleep on repeat if it was up to him.

“Not yet,” he mumbles with a lopsided smirk.

“Don’t forget,” I say as gently as I can.

I don’t even know why this is on my mind right now. It’s not like I haven’t sent him nudes before. We weren’t even together a full three months yet, that solid span of time after which you know if you can really trust a guy or not, when he sent me pics of himself in all his glory, face included, like a Mapplethorpe portrait. They were so beautiful, so uniquely vulnerable, and since we were coming up on six weeks of zero physical contact because his campus is in the middle of West Bumblefuck, USA, I felt obligated to send something of equal immodesty back. I made him delete them that weekend. And then last week I was at the laundromat, scrolling through Twitter, waiting for my clothes to dry, when I want to see your pussy popped up on my screen. Then: Send me a pic. It was so unexpected, so completely out of nowhere, that I felt like a slave to my own body, like embarrassingly, pubescent-level horny, so desperate to fuck I sent a few pictures as soon as I got home without even considering not sending them.