They used a rubber, the first time, and then they ate hash brownies he had made, and were so amazingly stoned that she couldn’t deal with the whole condom thing, only his skin in her, soft, hard, furry, smooth, slow-motion eternity. After that she thought about him every minute, every hour all day every day. In chemistry she thought about the soft yellow streaks in his hair, the downy blond fuzz right below his belly button, his large hand on her hip bone. Thoughts floated like fish through her mind as she tried to concentrate on what Robert was saying. Now she thought of Robert only when she was in class, even when he bent over her to look at her calculations. Fenn had saved her. The smell of Robert’s aftershave now made her sick, the smell of someone in decay. She and Fenn were the beauty of youth being adults together. He smelled like the ocean, like a carpenter, like nails and wood, like the field of hot grasses where they lay after school. She knew the smell of his warm brown thighs.
