“As long as I can watch those boys play volleyball while we do it.”

I follow his gaze and see miles of male college flesh a bit down the beach, knocking a ball over the net with drunken laughter. Yeah. They have abs. Goddammit.

“I need to work out more,” I mutter.

“You don’t work out at all,” Corey says.

“I’m vegetarian. It makes me naturally lithe.”

“Do people still use the word ‘lithe’ in conversation?”

“I just did.”

“You’re not people. You’re Tyson. That’s worlds apart. I’d take the one on the end.”

Of course he would. The guy is bigger than all the rest, and his chest hair looks like an out-of-control afro.

“My God,” I mutter. “How on earth did we ever date? I’m the shortest guy you know and I had a single chest hair once that turned out to be a string from my shirt.”

“You were what I needed,” he says. “At the time. Who knew it’d get so much better after?”

“I suppose.” It really had, though it took me time to see it. But he won’t hear that from me right now. It’s too easy.

He hands me the sunblock. “Do me.” He turns his back to me so he can get lathered and still watch the volleyball players getting all sweaty and smacking each other in the ass. One reaches out and tweaks his friend’s nipple, and they all laugh uproariously. Sometimes there’s nothing gayer than a straight guy.

“This feels like we’re about to star in a porno,” I say as I rub the lotion onto his back.

“Weirder things have happened. Though, I don’t know if you want to lose your virginity in a gang bang.”

“I’m not a virgin.”

“Tyson, you’ve never fucked anyone. You’ve never been fucked. You’re a virgin.”

“What about that one thing we did on the floor in your apartment?”

He laughs quietly. “That was good. But that wasn’t sex.”

“What? Then what was it?”

“That was you rubbing on top of me and then coming in your jeans.”

Wow. It’s always good to know the hottest moment in your life can be reduced to rubbing and squirting. I wish I had no morals or scruples so I could have had sex with like at least thirty-six people by now in my lifetime. That’s what college is supposed to be for! Drinking and fucking and doing large piles of cocaine and waking up in someone’s bed with a condom still on your dick, unable to remember what exactly happened the night before. Well, sort of. Maybe not the cocaine part. Or the thirty-six people part. Or the drinking part. That all sounds exhausting. And also, I’d feel bad for not remembering who I just fornicated with. That seems like a jerk move. I suppose I’d have to ask him his name, and he’d probably want to go get bagels or coffee, and then I would feel bad again and agree. He would take me out and never stop talking about football or cricket or whatever it is red-blooded American boys play these days, and eventually, it’d be fifty years later and I’d look across the table at him as he slurps his soup in that way that I hate and he’d ask me if I’d pass the pepper and I’d scream at him that I want the last fifty years of my life back! And he would look at me with dull eyes and then start reminiscing about the one year the Atlanta Seahawks (or whatever the football/cricket team is called) won the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup or whatever and I would realize then that this was it. This was my life.