He nods quickly and rolls to one side of the bed to get a packet from the bedside table. He turns his back to me briefly. I hear him take a deep breath, the kind a person takes when they’re swimming and about to go underwater. Then he’s under the covers again, and we start kissing. He’s getting much better at it. His hand, which is in my hair, smells like plastic and blueberries.

I shift to the center of the bed, where I discover that he’s laid down a towel. Because he knows I might bleed, this time. This small act of consideration brings the beginnings of tears to my eyes. The terry is rough against the skin of my back. He moves closer, kissing me again.

I pull at him so he’s hovering over me.

Nick breaks away, breathing hard. “If you want to be on top, you can. If you think that will be more comfortable.”

I can’t help it: I see a flash of the white robe in my mind’s eye. My mother straddling Billy.

“I don’t think so,” I pant. “If I’m on top, it’ll be like—I don’t know—like impaling myself. Have you ever tried to do something to yourself that you think might hurt?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess. This one time I dropped my laptop on my big toe, and it got all swollen, and my dad said we had to relieve the pressure . . .”

“The point is,” I say before he could get any further with that story, “I think you should be on top.”

“Are you sure?” His eyebrows are worried again.

Suddenly I just want it to be over with. If there’s pain, fine. I can handle being hurt.

“Just do it,” I say. “It’ll be okay. Maybe it will even be nice.”

His gaze drops to my chest, because he’s a boy, after all. “Okay,” he says softly.

I arrange my legs, and he braces himself on his arms so he won’t squash me (as if he weighs enough to squash me, but okay, he’s considerate, even now). I look up at him and try to think about how I will remember this moment, the sketch I will hold in my mind, Nick with his hair a mess again, his gray eyes still worried, his arms framing me.

But then I make the mistake of putting myself there, too, there naked under him, looking up at him, my waiting face.