Ellen wasn’t a virgin because she had ideals about it: it was just that boys seemed gross to her. And cowards. It was a settled opinion. Ellen had a Figure—she’d developed early, one way at least she was her mother’s daughter—and she knew all too well the Mount Everest look they’d get in their eyes whenever one of the guys from school thought about trying her. Just like older men did with her mom. But all she had to do was look unapproachable, and mostly they knew better than approach.

Besides, she liked Tracy. Not like liked,— but they’d been best friends since junior high, and Ellen had this secret fear it’d split them up somehow once either of them started having sex. Tracy was free with boys in a way Ellen couldn’t let herself be. She was way the prettier of them both, Ellen always thought, but it was a pretty that boys didn’t seem to set much store by. When they got handsy with her at parties it had the air of all being just for fun, just practice. She never said it, but Ellen kind of wished Tracy would stick up for herself a little more. Even if it was 90% talk, it made her jealous sometimes how much she’d let them get away with.

Tommy was one of the ones who’d approached anyhow, and that Ellen had even thought of letting, at least for a minute. So when Tracy popped out with his name all of a sudden, she got a prophetic knot in her stomach. “Who’ve you kissed?” the guy asked them. “Who floats your boat?” And right away Tommy, with an inflection, one she’d never heard Tracy use before.

“And what was his deal? What’s so special about Tommy?”

They weren’t doing it how he wanted. He was their kissing instructor now, apparently. But Ellen had never made out with anyone before, much less another girl, much less Tracy,— she didn’t know the ropes. She hadn’t been ready.

“I don’t know,” Tracy said. She was blushing furiously and looking anywhere but at her friend. “He just,— it just goes more slow.”

It was chilly in the alcove, on that stone bench. She’d been in the library a ton already and never even knew the place existed. Ellen willed herself not to notice how pointy Tracy’s nipples were under her blouse.

“More slow.” He sighed and looked up to the ceiling. “Welp, whatever the magic is, whyn’t you pretend you’re Tommy. Try that on.”

It was this whole weird circumstance. They were in Commons working on their English project, up comes this guy to their table, nondescript middle-aged white guy; stands there looking at them for a minute, not a word, then he just sits down. Makes himself right at home. Tracy gave him a hard glare right off, but then the girls mutually silently agreed to ignore him and get on with their homework. He sat so quiet Ellen almost forgot he was there, till he all of a sudden pipes up about this alcove he’d found and how interesting it was and private and how they had to check it out. So they left their stuff at the table and went with him to see.

Tracy leaned into her, her gaze still averted. “Close your eyes,” she murmured. “Open your mouth a little, just let me do the work. Think about making your lips soft.”

Ellen wondered if that was her channeling Tommy. But then that left Ellen to be Tracy, and Tracy was always game for things. Tracy knew how to be in the moment. Ellen parted her lips and felt her friend’s breath on them, neither one of them moved, they breathed together and their lips found each other by gravity, and the kiss just was. Like it had been there waiting for them. She kept her lips pouty while Tracy sucked on them, top lip bottom lip, over and over, brushing ever so lightly now and then with her tongue, and the kiss bore them along with it like it was a wave.

“Okay,” he said, and they broke it off. Ellen thought of asking him if they’d passed the audition “That it? I hope for your sake that’s not your boyfriend’s whole repertoire.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Tracy shot back. She flicked a glance sidelong at Ellen. “Anyway we were laying down.”

“Ah-hah,” the dude said. “Good note.” The idea that “laying down” maybe meant sex turned Ellen’s whole body to stone.

“You guys do your makeout exercise, you need to be doing it in bed.”

The days were getting shorter. The declining sun cut a swath across Ellen’s legs and down the edge of the coverlet they were stretched out on. Another twenty minutes, it’d be right on top of her pillow. It always did that this time of year.

Ellen uncrossed her ankles and crossed them back the other way. She wasn’t thinking about Tommy. Tracy was just late. Her yearbook meeting went long. She forgot she had a phone.

Three times a week they both had English for their last class, deliberately so they could carpool together those days, and they’d arranged to piggyback their makeout schedule on that. Thirty minutes at a minimum, lying in bed together, MWF. They picked Ellen’s because it was just her and her mom since the divorce and Joyce liked a happy hour, so they never had to stress about getting caught.

Ellen leaned her head back and gazed up at the ceiling. Just a week now, more or less. The further the sun crept up the bed the more anxious she got. Was it always going to be like this? What if he never came back? Just goes around giving people assignments and turning their lives inside out and then he leaves them to deal with it. Unless it expired somehow. Maybe one day they’d just feel like it was time for them to stop and that’d be it.

Not today, though. Ellen shut her eyes, and all her anxiety and all her impatience shimmered together and gathered into a single bright point, and she let it go and let herself drift away with it. When she felt an undulation on the bed she came back, and opened her eyes. The clouds had come in. The skin on Tracy’s cheeks glowed like pearl.

“God, Logan would just. not. shut. up.” Tracy slung her backpack off, bouncing on her knees. “I mean, read the room, you know? I was seeth—”

“Shut up,” Ellen said. She reached for Tracy, and their mouths locked together in a way they never had before. She fell back onto the pillow, and Tracy fell with her.

Tracy’s tongue was in her mouth like it belonged there, because it did belong there, it always had: and Ellen’s last thought for a while was that she wasn’t going to have to worry about stupid Tommy ever again.

They lay quiet, side by side on their backs. Both of them had their shoes off. Ellen watched Tracy flex her feet down, her pink-painted toes dipping into the wan swath of sunlight struggling to climb the end of the bed. So she wasn’t asleep.

They’d got done early today. But Tracy always got so wrapped up in herself after they made out. Just their shoulders touched. Any closer, Ellen was afraid she’d spook. Jump off like a cat, or slither away from her and off the bed like she did, regretting how dark it was getting and how she better head home.

Tracy sighed up to the ceiling and folded her arms over her chest, and Ellen tensed. She tried to think of something to say that might keep her.

The silence lingered. Tracy sighed again, heavier. “So what do you think about all this?” she asked.

Her tone was even, and gave nothing away. Ellen propped herself up on her elbow, heart going a mile a minute. In all this time they’d never talked about it yet, not since the alcove. She realized, a little guiltily, that she’d been waiting on Tracy to start. She always did. And now there was too much to say, and no idea if Tracy actually wanted it said. But she couldn’t see any way out of it. “Maybe it’s not—”

“I mean like, can you imagine being like forty and married and we’re still doing this?” Tracy put on a Katharine Hepburn accent. “Forgive me, Reginald, but my friend and I are linked by an obscure curse and so we have to french each other for the next half an hour, frightfully sorry.”

“You don’t think it’s actually a curse,” Ellen said through laughter.

“I don’t know man.” Ellen dropped down onto her side. She threw caution to the winds and rested her arm across Tracy’s belly. Tracy looked at her earnestly. “When I was late the other day? I mean, I was lowkey freaking out about it. Like, I’m in that stupid long-ass meeting and alls I can think is, how am I gonna sneak into your bedroom without Joyce hearing.”

She was shaking her head. “It’s just, it’s weird, right? It’s too freakin’ weird.”

Ellen put her brow against Tracy’s shoulder. “I thought my head was gonna explode,” she said softly.

Tracy stroked her hair. Then they were making out again, Ellen half on top of her. That was a first, too: the again. The light diminished in the room. Ellen felt Tracy’s hand fumbling in the space between them.

She didn’t work it out till she looked down that Tracy was unbuttoning her own blouse. Her cross necklace was draped at an angle across her clavicle, Jesus facing into her armpit. She caught Ellen’s hand. “Just this once,” she whispered. She glanced smokily into Ellen’s eyes, and as quickly glanced away again. “I know you wanna.”

They held hands, and Ellen held her breath. She hung there, waiting for Tracy to concede those last couple inches. Then the handle turned in the bedroom door, and Ellen had just enough time to spin around and bury herself under the pillow before Joyce popped her head in.

“Hey girls!” Joyce said, cheery.

“MAAAAAaaaahm!” Ellen screamed. She was torn between throwing the pillow at Joyce and burrowing even deeper under it till she was through the bed and beneath the floor.

“Hey Trace,” Joyce said. “Hey Mrs M,” Trace answered. Her voice was a tiny shellshocked monotone.

“Joyce, sweetheart. Honey I’m sorry I’m late,” she said to Ellen’s rear. “I got Indian. I’m gonna go warm it all up, say ten minutes?

“Oh and you too, Tracy, stay and eat with us. I bought way too much food.” Tracy made some inarticulate demurring noise, but Joyce wasn’t having it. “Absolutely not, I’m gonna call your mom, you’re staying to dinner. She’ll be fine with it,” Joyce called, out the door already and on her way back to the kitchen.

Ellen peeked her head out of the pillow. Tracy, unbuttoned almost to the navel, was sitting bolt upright, staring at the half open door. “Dude,” she rasped.

Ellen got up on her knees. “How on earth did we— Did she not—” she stammered. It made no sense that they’d be off the hook for this.

Tracy turned, a wild light in her eye. “Dude,” she said breathlessly, “your mom was naked.”