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watched the fire. Sean reached for her hand. She felt his fingers brush hers. Not looking at him, Brenda took his hand and held it lightly. She felt his callouses against the softness of her palm and sighed, a shuddering, breathy exhalation that came almost involuntarily. She took a sip of her wine, finding it unexpectedly bitter yet not unpleasant. The wine warmed on her tongue, slid down her throat, adding heat to heat—the heat of the fire, the heat in her belly and below. Brenda closed her eyes.
It’s really going to happen this time. Really. Really. It’s all been leading up to this.
    Sean put his arms around her and pulled her to him, lowering them both down on the blanket. He kissed her on the mouth, gently at first, but then with insistence. Brenda returned his kisses, clumsily at first, then with an intuitive, instinctive skill she hadn’t known she possessed. She felt his pleasing weight on top of her. He cradled her in his arms, not crushing her. She felt protected by it.
    She turned her head to the side. “Sean . . . ?”
    “Mmmmm?”
    “Sean, I’ve never . . . I mean, is it okay? You’ll be careful, right?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I will.”
    “Do you love me, Sean?”
    His voice had grown hoarse. “Yeah.”
    “Say my name. Say, ‘I love you, Brenda.’”
    “I love you, Brenda.”
    “Do you
mean
it, Sean?”
    “Yes, I mean it.”
    “Oh,
Sean
 . . .” Brenda sighed again, this time in triumph. The terms of the bargain had been fulfilled and completed, and she gave herself up to him without guilt, without trepidation.
    She’d heard about girls getting into the family way and was relieved when Sean took a French letter out of his wallet. Brenda wasn’t sure exactly how they worked, but she knew that if the boy put one on his
thing
, then the girl never got into trouble.
    Brenda closed her eyes, suddenly shy. Strange, she thought, for a girl who had made a decision to go all the way for the very first time to be shy now. But actually watching Sean put the condom on, took what was about to happen out of the realm of the romantic and into the realm of the pragmatic, not a realm she was prepared to contemplate in that moment. Instead, she listened to the sound of rubber against skin as Sean prepared himself.
    When the pain came, it was brief, and he held her tightly until it went away, then it felt like her shuddering body had been shot through with stars. She tasted his tongue, the sweat on his arms, and what she thought might have been brief tears on his cheeks. The vast sky overhead, the moonlight on the water, the feeling of his mouth on hers, the unfamiliar intrusion inside her, his body, her body, the heat of the fire—it had become a one-sided surface of sensation with only one boundary component.
    Afterwards, Sean asked her if it had been okay, and Brenda nodded shyly. They lay together in each other’s arms, not speaking; each lost in their own thoughts. Sean stroked Brenda’s hair as they stared at the fire, feeling its warmth on their skin.
    When the flames burned lower, Sean got up and walked naked over to the pile of wood and got another log. Wrapped in the blanket, Brenda studied his body with newly appreciative eyes. To her, they did not seem to be the eyes of the girl she had been only an hour ago, nor did Sean seem like the boy who had picked her up at her house in his truck a mere two hours or so before.
    Nothing is the same
.
I’m somewhere I’ve never been before, and I’m with someone I’ve never been before. It’s like witchcraft. I’ve shifted my own shape. I’m travelling through the air, above my own life.
Then, regretfully:
I’m going to have to come down soon. I’m going to have to go home. I’ve got to go back to being myself. But . . . not yet. There’s still time yet. Don’t let the magic end just yet.
    Sean lay down again on the blanket and bundled them both up in it, his arms around her, his legs pulling hers to him. She felt