Sarah thought of these generally positive traits as she listened to him. She realized that what he seemed to like about the group (that is, what aspects he chose to emphasize about a group that clearly did not exist) was ultimately quite basic—camaraderie, shared sexual enthusiasm, a boyish fascination with the macabre, a dense set of rules, trade secrets. If there ever was such a group, she thought, David would be the ideal member, it would be good for him. Sarah further realized that while she understood now what had first attracted her to him, his readability and easy-to-satisfy desires—even the hand-on-crotch thing, maybe that was a mark for him as well, that he acted the same in public as he did in private—David was definitely not dating material, and never had been. He was not unique among boys. If his speech was supposed to be an entreaty to her, to have sex with him or get back together or scare her or make her jealous, if it was supposed to make her leap to him—oh, David—then it was a ham-fisted attempt at best. By the end of their conversation the sexual tension on Sarah’s end had dissolved completely and left in its wake a puddle of tender feeling, as one has for a stray or cutely deformed animal. She pivoted from his awkward speech and asked David a series of generic, basic-competency questions about the group—how long had he been going? how many people were there? where did they meet?—which David was unable to answer effectively. She told him—feeling a bit like his mother as she said it—that if he truly enjoyed it, as long as no one was getting hurt and everything was consensual and safe (she was referring to STDs and protected sex here but at this point it didn’t matter if he understood), then it was probably fine to keep going. “I’m glad you felt you could talk to me about it,” she said, standing up.

Surprised, he stood as well, and Sarah noticed again the height advantage she had on him, how his Cavaliers T-shirt was a size too big, and his hair flopped down heavily over his left eye unsupervised, in want of cutting. He really was like a little boy. “I’m glad that we can still be friends,” she said. She awkwardly hugged him and clearly felt his erection, which he had talked himself into and which she gamely pretended not to notice. She wore her masks better than he did.