Marcus ambles up to the new girl, lingers behind her locker door. No real plan other than to say hello.

When she looks at him, she almost has that expression he's too used to—the look the smart girls always have: This guy is hot and he knows he's hot, so he's not even worth my time. But then she seems to really see him. She gives him some shit about his t-shirt. Fair enough, so he teases her back. Or he thinks he's teasing her. He thought they were joking around. But he must have gone too far somewhere; she suddenly looks embarrassed, then annoyed. She starts to write him off as an obnoxious jerk with good hair. He can see it happening, right before his eyes.

So he quickly changes the subject—to his encounter with Ginny's mom the night before.

That gets some stronger, very conflicted reactions from Ginny. It's interesting to watch the different expressions chase themselves across her face. He's struck some sort of nerve, but at least it's not about him. And she's talking to him again, not just looking through him. Or past him.

And then Max interrupts them.

Of course she does.

Later on, at home, he's surprised to walk into Max's bedroom and see Ginny sitting there. By herself. And, coincidentally, blocking his hidden stash.

He moves towards her.

He doesn't start out meaning to get into her personal space, or at least not to stay there so long. He's just going to reach around her real quick. But she stares at him, and it feels like some sort of weird gravity pulling him in and holding him there. Ginny looks—beautiful. And confused. And intrigued. And intimidated.

He has the upper hand, and he knows it. He's being a bit of a jerk, and he knows that too. He gives her an easy, disarming grin, and reaches around her to grab the baggie hidden in the cushions behind her.

But suddenly he's not in control anymore. Their faces are still too close. He grins wider to cover his confusion, the feeling of losing his grip on the situation. He'd only been pretending he was going to kiss her, but her eyes are suddenly daring him to do it.

Or not. He's not sure.

He never should have pushed in on her like this. But the tension between them changes every time he blinks. She wants him there, in her space. She doesn't want him there. No, she does.

It all flashes by in the space of about two seconds.

And then Max walks in.

Of course she does.

Marcus straightens up. He slips back into his armor, into his mask. And gets the hell out of there.

Not much later, Ginny is suddenly charging down the front walkway towards Marcus. She doesn't look nervous or awkward at all. She looks confident. Which catches him off guard, yet again.

So, kind of lamely, he teases her some more about believing his t-shirt was a real band.

"You don't have to be a jerk," she observes, in a bored sort of way.

He frowns. "No, I don't have to be." It's obviously something he's considered before, but again: it's just easier.

But she's not outright dismissing him—just refusing to play along. Marcus kind of likes this feeling. It's something new.

And now she's messing around with his bike. At least he knows this routine, the one with girls and the motorcycle. It's a reflex: "Maybe I'll give you a ride sometime …"

Ginny scoffs. "When? December?"

He wasn't expecting that. Dammit, Max. And he's also not expecting her to toss her bag on the ground, and to climb onto his bike with such ease and confidence. Like she knows what she's doing. Like she knows his bike better than he does. And now she's putting on his helmet.

To cover his unease, he pretends Ginny wants a picture of herself on his bike.

Something tells him she doesn't care about a picture of herself on the damn bike, but what else is he going to

do?

And the next thing Marcus knows, Ginny Miller is riding away on his motorcycle. And now he's running after her, like a fool, until she and his bike disappear down the street.

Marcus is definitely feeling some stuff. Some of it familiar, like anger. Some not so much, like humiliation.

And he's feeling … turned on? He'd nearly forgotten what that was like, during the months he'd been drugged to the gills.

He decides to focus on angry. That's simplest. It's easiest.

When Ginny roars back into his driveway a few minutes later, he leans hard into that anger: "That was seriously not cool."

But Ginny is off the bike. She's off the bike and has tossed the helmet aside. She grabs him and kisses him.

She's just kissing him, out of nowhere. She's calling his bluff, his bluff from Max's bedroom. Flipping the script on him. Or something. It's hard to think, in this exact moment.

It's like she's daring him to stop her. He doesn't stop her.

But suddenly, she stops herself. She does that lightning-fast switch again; she looks embarrassed. Awkward. All that confidence drains away from her, just gone again.

Which leaves them both standing there, an aching empty space between them, when Padma pulls up.

Marcus had completely forgotten about Padma. He quickly puts more space between himself and Ginny. He turns to go.

"Just one of Maxine's dumb friends ..." he mutters towards Padma, on the way to her car, mostly to cover how shaky and breathless he feels.

Padma barely hears him.

But he realizes, belatedly, that Ginny probably did.

Dammit.

A few nights later, he's out in the cooling night air, smoking the remnants of a joint, standing under the streetlight. Staring at Ginny's house like a creeper, remembering the way it felt when she kissed him. And the way it felt when she stole his motorcycle.

He notices the drainpipe that runs right up to her window.

Jesus, he thinks. It's like they want us to sneak in and out.

He has a dumb idea. It is, he considers, possibly a criminal idea. But it's also kind of romantic. Right?

It's not as easy as his own trellis, but it's still no challenge at all to climb up to her window. He glances in, long enough to see that she's in there, she's alone, and she's dressed. He's starting to feel pretty stupid, honestly, but he shoves that feeling aside the same way he shoves aside the loose curtains. Then he hops into her room like he owns the place.

The same way she hopped onto his motorcycle and drove away, like she owned it.

"So this is your room?" he says, just so he has something to say. Grabs a random book that's lying around, just so he has something to do with his hands.

Ginny is … mad. She's saying angry stuff. Some of it's even funny. Mostly the words go past him, because of what she isn't saying: 'Get out.'

Then he turns and asks the question he really doesn't want to ask, because he has to slip out of his mask to do it: "Do you like him?"

"Hunter? Why do you care?"

Marcus repeats the question.

"Yeah, I do," Ginny says.

Marcus wonders if she even knows she's lying. He remembers watching from his window as Hunter hugged Ginny after their 'date'. It was the most bloodless hug he'd ever seen. He'd been low-key embarrassed for both of them. Pure cringe. Like two Mormon missionaries.

But he can't tell her he was watching them, and he doesn't feel good about straight up calling her a liar. So he says: "Ok, then. That's that."

Ginny looks incredulous. "That's what? I'm just Maxine's dumb friend, remember?"

Marcus winces internally. Yep, she'd heard him. But he hadn't really thought or felt that way about her. Which means they're both liars, so maybe that makes them even?

Ginny is talking at him again. Gesturing wildly. Making a joke about John Hughes movies. She's beautiful. Her eyes are pulling him in again.

Marcus doesn't realize she's said the word rapey until his lips are already on hers. Then she's pulling away from him.

She looks absolutely bewildered. "Who kisses someone after they use the word rapey?"

That, he thinks, is an interesting point. He wonders if what he just did qualifies as sexual assault. Especially since he broke into her house. He wonders, further, whether he's maybe just ruined his whole life.

Can you get on a sex offender registry for kissing someone without asking first?

But wait—she did the same thing to me the other day.

He clings to that fact. She kissed me first. She didn't ask for my damned permission ahead of time.

"Sorry," he says anyway. "I know you were on that date …" He's rambling. "I can't stop thinking about you." Then, going for broke: "The other day, when you grabbed me …"

Suddenly her lips are on his again, her hands are on the sides of his neck, on his arms, in his hair.

They move onto her bed, and before he knows what's happening, they're both undressing.

A part of him knows damned well that this is a mistake. He ignores that feeling because he wants her so badly.

He also ignores the fact that he knows they should be using protection, because he doesn't want to admit that he has no fucking clue what he's doing. He doesn't have a condom anyway. But Ginny doesn't object, so she must be on the pill. Right? Girls his age are always on the pill, and they get that vaccine that means no HPV, right? Unless their mothers are weird anti-vaxxers, or really religious—and Ginny's mom doesn't strike Marcus as either of those things.

Besides … the way she kissed him before, the way she's kissing him now—she has to be more experienced than he is.

None of it really matters, because he's a little high and he's ... not going to be able to stop himself, not if she doesn't say stop. And she doesn't. She says yes. She says yes to his fingers. She says yes to the rest. In a way. Maybe it's not the enthusiastic consent Maxine is always ranting about, but it's as close as Marcus knows how to recognize.

But once they're under the covers, and they're both naked, it's suddenly not a game anymore. It becomes way less fun and way more intense. He tries to sort of … fake his way through the motions. He's seen porn. Some, anyway. He understands the basics. The basics are easy. In theory. But now, in the moment, in the real world, Ginny has to help him sort things out. It's awkward.

And then … something clicks, things just start to go right, and it's amazing. Way beyond anything he ever would have guessed.

Like, really amazing.

Briefly amazing.

Like, really briefly.

And all those feelings from before—the rush, the touch of her lips, her skin against his—they're all just gone. Burst like a soap bubble. Nothing left but instant regret, embarrassment, and wondering exactly how fast he can get himself back out of that window.

Ginny is saying something to him. But he needs some way to hide his burning humiliation, so as he slides his clothes on, he also slides right back into his easy, default mode: apathetic jerk.

And he has a sudden worry that Ginny is going tell everyone. Tell everyone how bad it had been.

How brief it had been.

So: "Can we keep this on the DL?" he asks.

He doesn't really hear her answer, except the part where she says something about Hunter. Which is his own damned fault, because he'd brought up Padma first.

He can't sleep that night. Going over and over it in his head, every touch of her fingers down his back, every good kiss, every fumbled move, every unexpected shiver, every regret. The way she'd looked at him afterward. He has to smoke a lot—and take care of some other business, in the shower—before he can finally pass out.

The next day at school, Marcus is kissing Padma. In his head, he's really kissing Ginny, even though he's pretending the thing with Ginny never really happened, so it's all a bit muddled.

And then he spots a figure moving straight towards them at a fast clip. It's Ginny. Real Ginny, not the fantasy-Ginny in his head.

He has no idea what she's going to do or say. He braces for the worst. But there are so many things that could be the worst, when it comes down to it. He tries to pull Padma away.

But it turns out Ginny is just fucking with him. She pulls a piece of imaginary lint from Padma's clothes. And along with it, he can see, she thinks she's regained the upper hand.

Maybe she doesn't realize she's had it all along.

The day after that, Marcus is feeling like himself again. More or less. The apathy is oozing back in, like a warm blanket. And he buys more weed.

He nudges Ginny in the hallway at school, just for old times' sake, but otherwise ignores her.

Until, sometime between classes, she's suddenly got him backed up against the lockers. No witnesses. What does she want? He studies her face. She's mad. It's a different kind of mad than what he's seen from her before. Maybe she's going to stab him or something. He doesn't care much. Or that's the impression he tries to project.

She points out that they haven't talked. Not since the event. Since you were inside me, she says finally, pointedly. Which brings up all the good/bad memories of that night, and all the embarrassment.

"You seriously wanna do this here?" he asks. His delivery is perfect. Just the right amount of disbelief and mild impatience. Any other girl would have withered under the weight of his disinterest.

But Ginny glares at him, shoots him with daggers of ice straight from her eyeballs. "I took a pill to be safe. Just wanted to let you know."

Then she's gone again.

His stomach drops. She means a morning-after pill. She wasn't on birth control. He'd assumed she was. He hadn't asked. It was breathtakingly stupid, even for him.

But why hadn't she said something? Why hadn't she objected, at the time?

Maybe she'd been too embarrassed to bring it up. The same exact way he had been.

So we're both liars, and we're both really dumb about sex.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

It's a few days before he can slip away again, before he's sure he's clear of all parents, siblings, and nosy neighbors, and he can shimmy back up the drainpipe.

Ginny's mood's about the usual: angry, funny, indignant—and still not kicking him out.

There's some back and forth. Well, mostly she's ranting. About them. About Wellsbury. He can relate. Except—what did she just say? It had almost gone right past him.

It had been her first time?

There's a lot more—something about Black kids, and shoplifting, and the environment, but it's hard to focus, because all he can think is:

It was her first time too?

And then, while he's still trying to catch up, she's sobbing, just suddenly ran out of words. Nothing else left. He knows that feeling.

He gets an arm around her. She leans into him.

He says, "I was your first time?"

"Yeah."

All of a sudden, everything is great. It wasn't his fault, their awkward first time. Not all his fault. Neither of them knew what they were doing. And even then—they had had some pretty amazing moments. Moments that he would, suddenly, like to revisit. Right now.

He kisses her.

"Wait," she says, after a moment, pulling away. "What are we doing?"

And that's when he fucks up. Instead of addressing what he's sure is the real issue, which is that they're both at least nominally dating other people, he goes for a dumb joke. "You already took plan B, right?"

He sees on her face that this was a mistake. This is not going over well. Not at all. He doubles down, mumbles something about it being good for another few days.

That's when she finally says it: Out. Now.

"Jesus, fine." Back to surly mode for him. Whatever.

He doesn't tell her that he made sure he had a condom in his pocket this time. Just in case. But never mind. He launches out of the window and snags the drainpipe.

He drops the last five or six feet to the ground, whips out his phone and Venmos her the money for the morning-after pill. So at least they're even there.

He can faintly hear her scream of rage and frustration.

He turns and heads home. This situation has officially become way too complicated for him. Girl's got issues.

But he's … frustrated, now. He still remembers the feeling of her lips on his.

He takes his phone back out. He hesitates for a moment, and then he texts Padma:

What are you doing right now?