And then Alexa Thornhill came hurtling into his world, with her contemptuous smirk and her YouTube channel and her perfect, perfect body, and her skin that smelled like lavender, and her way of looking at him from underneath her lashes.

At Salisbury Beach the other night they had spread a blanket far back, close to the dunes. It was twilight. The sand belonged to the dog owners, the water to the whales or the sharks, if you believed the rumors. Nobody was paying them any heed. They took it easy at first, some kissing, some through-the-clothes stuff, more kissing, then it all started to heat up. Alexa was wearing one of her sundresses that fell to midthigh when she was standing, but inched up alluringly, up and up, when she was prone, offering, when the moon allowed, a glimpse of lace panties in virginal white. She pressed harder against him as they kissed, and, with his hand on the captivating protrusion of her hip bone, he thought he could die a happy man.

And then she had said, “It’s my first time, Cam.”

He couldn’t be the first. Of course she had slept with Tyler. Right? Hadn’t she?

“No,” she said, shrugging her beautiful, beautiful shoulders in answer to his questions. And into his neck she whispered, “You’re the first.”

He said, “Are you sure? Are you absolutely one hundred percent sure you want this?” Because he’d been raised by two solid parents and he’d come of age in the #metoo movement and he understood his responsibilities to retain decency in a world that didn’t always value it.

“Yes,” she said. “I want this.”

The awkward fumbling with the condom was the worst part of the whole business, especially considering the sand, but obviously necessary, and when that part was done he put one thumb on each of her perfect temples, and he asked one more time: “Okay?”

“Yes,” she said, “okay.”

And he didn’t understand anyone who thought Alexa Thornhill wasn’t nice. What people didn’t see about Alexa was that beneath her tough exterior, beneath her beauty, she was actually smart and funny and even vulnerable, tender, like a lobster that had shed its old shell and hadn’t yet grown a new one.

He paused the television to answer the phone. His heart jumped when he saw Alexa’s name on the screen.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up? Are you done babysitting? You can come over here, if you want, nobody’s here, my parents are at—”

She cut him off. “I’m not done babysitting,” she said. “I called to warn you. Tyler’s coming. To talk to you. He’s on his way now, from my house.”

Cam stood up, disturbing Sammy, who roused and looked blearily up at Cam, offended. The remote fell to the floor.

“Tyler?” said Cam. “Tyler is coming here?”