In the light of day, she and I had never spoken about our nights. The closest we came to talking about it was the morning after the first time we hooked up. We’d gone out for her birthday the night before, to the bar where I worked. She wore a Billabong hoodie that hugged her torso. Over drinks I’d given her a present: David Gray’s White Ladder. After opening her gift, she leaned across the table and kissed me on the cheek. I could smell Blue Moon on her breath. We ordered stuffed oysters, a questionable choice at a college dive. A pre-set eighties mix blared through the speakers; we got up to dance when “Take On Me” came on, moving our bodies closer and shimmying our way to the floor, then grabbing on to each other to pull ourselves back up. I could feel people watching, and I liked it. Once home we put on the CD—it was whiny, brooding, melodramatic—and we lay side by side to listen. Nothing out of the ordinary until she began caressing my face; tracing my eyebrows, my nose, my lips. Then she kissed me. Nervous, I stopped her. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship,” I said. It was a line from movies, what the girl always said when a guy friend made a move.

Kate tilted her head back a little too far and laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re just, you know, ‘experimenting.’”

So I didn’t worry. Besides, I wasn’t attracted to Kate, so maybe it was safe to let her “experiment” with me. But when I woke up the next morning and glanced at her beside me, still asleep, the danger was apparent. She looked different than she had the day before. How had I never noticed her long brown lashes? Her strict, elegant nose? Her pink pastel lips? I slid out of bed and tiptoed to my side of the room. I had no desire to leave her, but was afraid that waking up beside each other would be too jarring.

It was the first day of spring break. We were spending the week road-tripping along the Florida coast with her friends. It was a thirteen-hour drive south to Fort Lauderdale, our first stop. After about thirty minutes I heard Kate shifting in her bed. “What time is it?” she called out from under the covers, her voice muffled by the comforter.

“Still early,” I said. After that we said nothing to each other as we packed on opposite sides of the room. I filled the silence with paranoid speculation. Was she ashamed by what we’d done? Had it been awful for her? Or had she been too drunk to remember? For a moment I worried that I had somehow taken advantage of her, or worse, imagined it. But, no, she had made the first move. And it had happened. I could still smell her on my pajamas.