Nineteen
before
“We should have sex,” Shiloh said. She was lying in his arms, on the bed in her dorm room. They’d been kissing for hours.
They’d been kissing all day. They’d been kissing like they’d both realized that they should have been kissing all along.
Cary was feeling a little drunk from it. “What?”
“We should have sex. I’ve never done it.”
He pulled his head back. “That’s not a compelling reason.”
Shiloh lifted herself up onto her elbow, resting her head on her hand. Her lips and chin were red from kissing. “It feels
pretty compelling, from my perspective.”
“We just talked about how I’m leaving,” Cary said, “and how we don’t know when we’ll even see each other again.”
“ Exactly. This is our chance.” She touched his neck. Her eyes were big and brown. “Please, Cary. I don’t want to go on being someone
who hasn’t done this.” She looked down at her hand. “And I want to do it with you.”
Cary cleared his throat. “Why me?”
She looked up into his eyes again. “Apart from the fact that we’re currently lying in my bed? Because I know you. And I trust you. I probably trust you more than anyone else on earth. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Of course I won’t hurt you.”
She smiled. “And I like you. And you like me.” She hooked her finger in the neck of his undershirt and pulled. “You like me,
right?”
“Yes.” His voice was flat. “I like you.”
She twisted his shirt in her fingers. “I’m always going to remember the first time. And if it’s with you, I know I won’t regret
it.”
Cary tried to take that in without actually taking it in, without letting it mean too much. “You might still regret it,” he said. “You should wait and do this with someone you love.”
Shiloh sat up more. Her voice got louder. She pulled harder on his shirt. “Do you really think that’s necessary? Most of my
friends are doing it with”—she made a noise like pfft —“ whoever, honestly. And besides, sex is just a thing, right? An activity? It’s not magical. Or holy. It’s just bodies. Biology. You don’t need true love to unlock your vagina—virginity
is a construct, Cary.”
“I only agree with fifteen to twenty percent of what you’re saying,” he said. His T-shirt was cutting into the back of his
neck.
Shiloh kept going. “And if love is an important factor... well, I probably love you . Like”—she let go of his shirt to wave her arm—“I don’t know what else to call this.” She lowered her eyebrows. Her voice
dropped to a mumble. “There’s nothing you could do to get on my bad side, Cary. There’s no time that I don’t want to see you...”
She tugged at the hem of his shirt, still looking troubled. “It’s like I’ve already made a permanent home for you in my heart.”
Cary didn’t trust himself to speak.
Shiloh lifted her head suddenly. She poked his stomach. “Wait. Are you saying that you don’t want to have sex with someone unless you’re in love with them?”
Cary couldn’t look away from her face. “I’m not saying that. Exactly.”
She shrugged. “I mean, you’ve already done it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“With Angie?”
He didn’t want to hear Shiloh talk about Angie. “Yes.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I...” He didn’t even want to think about Angie. “I don’t want to talk about my previous experiences. Is this a job interview?”
“ No. I’m not expecting you to be an expert. That’s not why I want this.”
“Good, Shiloh. Because I’m not an expert.”
She made a fist in the fabric over his stomach. (She was ruining his T-shirt. He was glad he’d taken off his long-sleeved uniform shirt.) “But you know the steps,” she said, “right? You
won’t get embarrassed.”
Cary exhaled, disagreeably. “I’ll probably still get embarrassed.”
“But you won’t embarrass me .” She pushed her fist into his stomach. “Like, you won’t do anything to humiliate me. I know you wouldn’t.”
“Of course not.”
She was looking down at his stomach, biting her lip. “You won’t laugh at me or judge me or tell stories about me.”
“Shiloh...” His voice was so low, it cracked.
Her voice was low, too. “I know you wouldn’t do that, Cary.”
“Come here.” He pulled her down against his chest. He pressed his face into her hair and cupped the back of her head. “Listen
to me: You should have sex because you want to. Not as some sort of damage control.”
“I do want to.”
“You sound scared.”
She looked up at him, pushing back against his grip. “That’s the point—I don’t want to be scared. I want it to be, like, lovely. And worth remembering.”
Cary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Every cell in his body felt divided. “I don’t know...”
“What don’t you know?”
“This is just strange, ” he said. “I feel like we’re passing a resolution. Sex is supposed to be more organic than this.”
“How do you know? You’re no expert.”
“You’re trying to manage it.”
“Cary, we’re just talking.”
“No.” He pulled his hand away from her. “You’re maneuvering. You’re always maneuvering. It’s not even chess—it’s more overt
than that. You’re always making plans.”
Shiloh frowned. “Sorry I’m not organic enough for you. Let’s just go back to kissing, and then we can accidentally have sex like everyone else in the world.”
She tried to kiss him. He caught her jaw and held it. “You want to have sex with me because I make you feel safe. That’s what
you’re saying, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s kind of an insult, Shiloh.”
She looked shocked. “Why is that an insult ? There’s nothing better than feeling safe. And probably nothing more rare.”
Cary sighed. He felt himself losing this argument—or losing the will to argue. “Sex is supposed to be exciting.”
“Look at all you have to teach me...”
He sighed again.
“You don’t think it would be exciting, Cary?”
He was so lost. “I didn’t say that.”
“You’re not saying anything!”
“That’s not true.” Cary shook his head. “Sometimes, in our history, that’s been true. But it’s not true right now.”
Shiloh let her head drop to his chest. “Do you really not want to? If you really don’t want to, I’ll stop.” She was giving
in. Sometimes Shiloh gave in as soon as she’d won.
He couldn’t see her face. He touched her cheek. He ran his fingers through her hair. “I just don’t want you to regret this.”
“Cary, honestly... I’ve never regretted anything with you.”
This was all very dumb. Shiloh didn’t have condoms—she didn’t even know anyone who might have a condom.
Cary ended up walking to a convenience store. “This is going to take at least twenty minutes,” he said. “You’ll probably be
asleep when I get back.”
“I am not going to be asleep.”
He bought condoms and Cherry Coke and Pringles and lip balm. When he got back to Shiloh’s dorm, he stopped to use the bathroom on one of the boys’ floors. He was still in uniform. The only other guy in the bathroom looked at him like he was a cop. Cary washed his face and dried it with a paper towel.
When he knocked on the door to Shiloh’s room, she was still awake. She’d taken a shower and put on an old-fashioned nightgown.
The only light was a reading lamp, and the stereo was on, turned low.
The first thing she said was, “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not going to make fun of you,” Cary said. “I’m going to kiss you.”
She held up a hand between them. “First I want to tell you that you don’t have to go through with this.”
“Neither do you, Shiloh.”
Her voice dropped. “Please, Cary. I want to.”
So did he.
Cary had had sex before—in the back seat of his mom’s car and on the couch in Angie’s basement. Never in a bed. And never
with all the time in the world.
And never with the girl he loved.
He worried about disappointing Shiloh. He knew what she didn’t: that this was going to be so much faster than she expected,
and so much quieter. It really was just bodies and biology, and Cary knew he didn’t have the hang of it yet. He wasn’t an
expert.
They did it the first time with her nightgown still on.
Cary was worried he would hurt her, but she didn’t cry or wince. The whole thing took a few minutes. Shiloh laughed when it
was over, and she wouldn’t stop kissing his face.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Are you okay?”
The answer was no. Cary felt hot inside, and messy. Like his true feelings were going to flood in and destroy everything. Being with Shiloh was always hard work—managing his emotions, managing her excesses. This was too much. His safeguards were failing.
He sat up and took care of the condom. He handed her the Cherry Coke.
She was softer, after. She’d gotten what she wanted, and she hadn’t decided what she wanted next. This was Shiloh in a rare
moment—without an agenda.
He took off her nightgown, and they kissed some more.
Shiloh’s body was different than he’d imagined. (He’d spent a lot of time on this.) She was smaller in his fantasies. More
like the girls he’d seen in magazines. More like a doll.
In life, in her bed, she was Shiloh-sized—and all skin. He couldn’t get over how long she was. Their bodies met at every angle.
He wanted to see her in the light.
The second time was better.
It lasted longer. Shiloh looked in his eyes more. She made more noise.
It felt so good that he lost track of himself. Shiloh must have lost track, too. “I love you,” she said to him, while he was
still inside of her. “I love you, Cary. I love you.”
They were the best two days of his life.
Holed up in Shiloh’s dorm room, between boot camp and whatever came next.
They ordered pizza and ate it in her bed. They watched Star Trek reruns.
Cary got glimpses of Shiloh’s body in the sunlight. Her shoulders, her knees. Her bare feet.
She was less self-conscious at night—they had two nights together. Cary tried to catalog and file away every minute.
They’d said that this was...
What had they said? Exactly? What had Shiloh said?
That their timing was bad. That they couldn’t be together if they weren’t going to be together.
But she was so happy. She was clearly happy. And affectionate. She kept touching him and kissing him. Everything was so easy.
There were moments— hours —when it felt like they’d finally arrived, like they’d finally made their way to each other. Like all their previous interactions
had finally clicked together in a sensible way. Wasn’t this where Shiloh and Cary had been heading all along?
And even though they’d said—Shiloh had said—that this wouldn’t work and couldn’t happen, it clearly was working. It was happening.
They couldn’t undo it now.
They couldn’t know how good they were together and pretend otherwise.
“I love you,” Shiloh kept saying between kisses. “I love you, Cary.”
An hour before Cary had to get on a bus, he went down to the men’s floor to take a shower.
When he got back, Shiloh had showered and changed, and she was making her bed.
“I found one of your socks,” she said, “and now I’m worried that something else might be missing. You only have six socks,
right? Total?”
“I have six pairs. I’ll be fine.”
She kept cleaning and straightening. She seemed upset.
Cary was upset, too. He sat on her roommate’s bed, watching her. Not sure what to say. He didn’t know how he was supposed
to walk away from her.
“I can get phone calls now,” he said.
Shiloh laughed harshly. That hurt for a second, but then he saw that she was trying not to cry.
She wanted to walk to the bus stop with him. It was a couple of blocks away.
“I never gave you that tour of campus,” she said.
“I saw what I came to see,” Cary said.
Shiloh laughed again, less horribly.
When they got to the bus stop, they turned to each other. There was no telling how much time they had left before the bus
would get there.
“Shiloh,” he said, “I need you to be serious for a minute.”
“I know.” She couldn’t look at him.
“This weekend...”
She lifted her chin. “Cary,” she said. “This doesn’t have to be... anything .”
“It’s already something .”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be. It could just be an island of good. For us.”
“An island?”
“I know how you are, about honor and obligation. And I’m just— I’m setting you free, okay? You don’t owe me anything. This
was just one great weekend between friends. You know what I mean?”
Cary felt very cold. His peacoat was in his seabag. “I think I know what you mean.”
“Nobody’s coming after you with a shotgun, Cary. You didn’t sign a mystic contract with your penis.” She pushed on his upper
arm. “Go start your new life, it’s okay.”
“Is that still what you want?”
“Do I want you to start your new life, free of obligation and regret? Yes.” She turned her head toward the road. “There’s
a bus coming—is this your bus?”
“I don’t know.”
She grabbed on to his arms. “I’ll write you, okay? Will you write me back?”
“Yeah.”
It was his bus. Shiloh didn’t kiss him goodbye or make it easy for him to kiss her. She touched his shoulders and elbows and patted
his bag.
The last thing he felt was her hand on the small of his back.
She did write to him. The same sort of letters that she’d written before. About her classes and the plays she was in.
Her letters made Cary feel insane.
He sent postcards back.
He called her a few times. It was hard to catch her in her room. She couldn’t afford long-distance calls, so he told her to
call him collect—but he wasn’t always around to take her calls.
When they did talk, it was strange. He was never alone in his barracks.
He wrote her a letter once, saying how he felt—trying to say what he really felt.
Her next letter was exactly the same as all the others.
Nine or ten months after Cary saw Shiloh in Des Moines, Mikey told him that she had a boyfriend.
Cary stopped writing to her.
He realized that she’d already stopped writing to him.