“He was shorter than I expected, if that’s any consolation.”
“Shorter than me?”
“Well…maybe still taller than you, but I was expecting the oversize muscle-bound mutant. Six-five or something.”
“Did he sleep over?”
“That’s a…that’s a question that’s hard…”
“You just fucked all night.”
“We stayed up for a while.”
“Jesus,” Will said. “So what do we mean here? What are we talking?”
“Well, we just kinda kept…I dunno.”
“One after another in a hotel room on the beach,” Will said.
“There were a couple, a few,” Whitney said. “And then a shower.”
“He fucked you in the shower.”
“Then a couple more hours, I dunno.”
“Whitney. I got a bloody nose and a black eye, and you played out your all-time fantasy.”
“Look, it wasn’t anything. He’s mostly an idiot.”
“Who was nominated for an Academy Award. Who has a cock that every late-night host and male lead in Hollywood has paid homage to with envious jokes.”
“Look, it was too big, if you want to know the truth. It was gross.”
“Whit!”
“I don’t know what you want me to say!” She was laughing now. Pink in her cheeks, guilt gleaming in her teeth. “I’m telling you the truth—it was way too big, it wasn’t for me.”
“You’re saying you could barely get your mouth around it,” he said.
“Will,” she said.
“It’s so gross, but you can’t stop hopping aboard for another ride. Light comes up and it’s time to go to set, and hearts are still pouring out of your eyes as he strolls out the door and says he can’t wait to see you again.”
“It was one night. He doesn’t give a shit about me,” she said. “I never heard from him again. It was purely sexual.”
Will strained his hair through his fingers, his face practically in the gambes.
“Seriously, that’s all it was,” she said. “It’s the whole point of what this was about!”
“I hope that counted for all three. I hope that gave you the nice rounded-out experience you were looking for when you suggested three instead of one.”
“That’s not fair—we agreed on three together.”
“I’ll take that to mean it didn’t count as all three.”
“Look, I’m not exactly loving hearing about yours, either,” she said. “But I didn’t say all that to hurt you. I just, I’m telling you the truth, ’cause those are the rules, and what’s the point of lying at this stage? It was one night with this one guy.”
“The longest night with the biggest movie star with the biggest dick.”
“A movie star with a big dick.”
“It was purely sexual. Christ,” he said. “The explanation that puts everyone at ease.”
“Well, guess what?” she said. “You’re up. But I’ve got to go to the bathroom first.”
“Ask the waitress for another bottle of wine if you see her,” he said.
Earlier in the year, they turned twenty-nine within a couple weeks of one another and celebrated with an all-expenses-paid trip back down to school. Whitney had been invited to give a talk at the arts-and-media fair where she’d learned about TV jobs in the first place. But the trip also served as an anniversary of sorts. It was the overnight-blooming spring of that part of the country, during the same time of year when they’d first met. The spring of the basketball tournament. The spring of the Masters. The spring of Thomas Wolfe’s plump adjectives. This was why they’d chosen to go to school where they’d gone. They’d both visited then, and walked right into the marketing scheme—the trees plugged in like strands of neon, the students slung out half naked on the quads, classes outside, classes dismissed. And though they’d skipped previous reunions, and felt in almost all ways beyond it, they were heavily tethered still, too. They didn’t miss opportunities like this one—to feel the feeling of that place again, over and over. It was, after all, their point of origin. It was where they’d found each other during the time of year when they’d changed their lives for good.
On their first night back on campus, Will parked at the edge of the gardens, where he knew there was a break in the hedge. They were on their way to dinner, she didn’t know what he was doing. No one was allowed in the gardens after dark—same rules as ever. But it had never kept anyone out. It was one of the unofficial graduation requirements, sex in the gardens. They’d missed some of the others but had checked that one off before the last day of classes. She’d brought a blanket and worn a skirt and no underwear. Now, as then, they strolled into the gardens hand in hand. There were no lights except the bright blue emergency beacons. They found the path by squinting and consulting the yellowed map in their heads. Whitney bent at the waist to sniff the flowers. Will stared up into the royal canopy of the sky and at the stars that pierced through crisply. There was an underwater darkness. They found the clearing, the wide-open grassy hill where students liked to lie out and read or toss a baseball around. And in the vicinity of where they’d first encountered one another, Will slowed his steps and dropped to a knee.
He had a ring in his hand—the ring his mom had given Will that he kept in a shoebox in their closet, the ring Whitney had never known about. Her fingers flew to her mouth, a gesture Will had never seen Whitney make before. She started crying and she lifted Will to his feet. She hugged him and he could feel the dampness on his chest, the quake in her bones. But he couldn’t tell if she’d said yes. She was getting snotty and he held her face in his hands and asked her what she’d said. She nodded but didn’t say it and he took it to be good enough. He slid the ring onto a finger of her shaking hand, but it was too big—for her ring finger and any other. And so he pocketed the ring. They would have
