I’m not sure how it happens. One moment, we’re kissing in the center of the retention pond. The next moment, the sleds are abandoned, and we’re in his foyer. Cold and warm, numb and buzzing—I feel everything at once. He hasn’t let go of my hand. He’s still kissing me, but now he’s pulling off my coat. I push his from his shoulders to the floor, then raise his shirt over his head. His skin is red and damp from sweat and snow.

He kisses me again. “You know I’ve always wanted this,” he murmurs.

“I did too,” I tell him, because I have to say something in answer.

“You did?”

What? Was that the wrong thing to say?

He pulls away and inspects me, looking for a trace of irony. “Because last time, I mean, I thought…”

Oh, enough with the talking! There was a time, long ago, when I was dying to know what he’d thought about that day, if he’d even remembered it. But now I silence him with an open-mouth kiss, hard, demanding. When his fingers dance noncommittally at the hem of my shirt, I push him off me and yank my thermal shirt over my head, much to his astonishment. Words bubble on my tongue. Come on, come on.

I kick aside the piles of clothes and pull him toward the staircase. I won’t look up at the bedroom at the end of the hall, even if it has been repainted and redecorated as a nursery. Instead, I go up the stairs backward, drawing him up by his belt buckle. He keeps trying to kiss me, but I don’t want to. Not until we’re in his bedroom. When we’re there, I fall down on his bed, and he’s on top of me, kissing my stomach and undoing my jeans. I reach behind my back and unclasp my bra, then toss it to the side.

He peels my jeans off my hips.

Same room. Same boy. And yet, this is nothing like my first time.

I look around the room as he fumbles around in his night table for a condom. I haven’t been in here in years, I think. Or have I? I can’t remember. He has so many more trophies that they’ve metastasized onto every available surface. On the walls, banners for schools he’ll never be able to attend without a baseball scholarship, but not much else. Kane wasn’t neat, but he was never sentimental. There isn’t a trace of his girlfriend here at all.

“What about Luisa?”

He’s naked, rolling on the condom. His shoulders slouch slightly. “What about her?” He kneels between my legs, and I know what’s coming next. “Maybe everything feels wrong because this is right.”