"Were you?"
"No, but I wasn't dating intellectual women. I was trying to avoid heavy shit. And smart girls want something real. Even when it comes to casual sex. I couldn't handle real. I think that was why she hated it, because she saw that, because she knew I could do better."
"She expected a lot for you?"
"It felt like it. But now… I think she wanted me to be the best version of myself."
"She sounds like a good sister."
"She was, yeah."
"I'm sorry you lost her," I say.
"Me too." He pulls me closer. "But it feels good to do this, to just talk about her, the person she was."
"Then keep talking."
He does.
* * *
We stay up late,until we're both too tired to talk, to move.
We climb under the covers, tangled together, listening to each other's breath.
And, slowly, I fall asleep in his arms.
I wake up in his bed.
I rise, I brush my teeth and wash my face, I fix a chai.
Patrick meets me in the kitchen. "You have to go? Class?"
I nod.
"What time?"
"I have two hours."
"Should we make them count?" he asks.
"How are we going to do that?"
ChapterThirty-Three
IMOGEN
"Ihave a crazy idea," Patrick says.
"Sex in the ocean?"
He laughs. "Crazier."
"Sex under the Santa Monica Pier? Then masturbation in the Santa Monica jail?"
"Even crazier," he says.
"Trying to bribe the cop who arrests us with sex?"