At home, the paterfamilias gives him books about strategy, about how to develop a winner’s mind-set. Lucas skims them, but they don’t help. They’re all about winning, and he is not a winner.

Saturday, August 2

Yesterday was the last day

Of the best of my life.

With dawn and the first faint hint of gray light, Tinsley leads me to the pool house, which has a small kitchen, bar, fireplace, and couches. Half a dozen long thin poles that vaguely resemble golf clubs, only with leather handles and wooden hammer ends, are piled into a corner, along with several pairs of high black leather boots with spurs. Near a back door are a number of tennis rackets, cans of balls, and tennis shoes with ochre stains around the edges.

Tinsley and I drop our towels, my formerly pathetic penis now prone for promiscuity, and descend onto a shag rug.

Sex is unhurried, every delicious sensation intensified, explosions of Day-Glo colors on the insides of eyelids. Tinsley takes charge. There is surprising strength in those slender legs and arms. When I put my lips on her and her legs go taut against my ears, the muscles of her thighs are as hard as flesh can be.

This is how Tinsley’s mother discovers us. Mrs. Stockton stands in the doorway of the pool house with her arms crossed tightly, as if to keep herself from flying apart. The clenched tightness of her face is bereft of surprise, instead filled with glowering anger. Something tells me this isn’t the first time she’s walked in on her daughter in flagrante delicto.

“Get dressed,” she snaps harshly, then backs out of the doorway.

Tinsley and I wordlessly pull on our clothes. Emptied of arousal, my brain feels sluggish, muddled, and filled with regret.

What have I just done? What am I even doing here?

It isn’t revenge for whatever Robin’s doing with Samuel. (I’ve never seen much point to that.) Did I run to Tinsley last night for comfort? If so, I’ve badly miscalculated. Now that I’m down from the acid and drained of lust, a gritty discomfort fills the void. Tinsley seems hardly aware of me.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Bitch,” she growls.

The end of a trip is never pretty. The world takes on a yellow cast. Skin feels waxy, clothes grimy and smoky. I feel hollowed out and haggard, filled only with the woe of losing Robin. Now it’s my turn to yearn for a long hot shower, a boatload of soap and shampoo — and the strongest, most reality-dulling downers available.