She was the type of girl that made you believe for one night that you were in love.  It was in the way she smiled when she took your hand as she led you to the bedroom, and the way she let you take over her body as if she trusted you completely.  She let you feel like you knew her, like you knew the exact right way to touch her.  It was the way she held you afterwards, close against her body as if she never wanted you to leave.  The way she curled up against you and slept heavy, like a child.  When she woke, she’d reach up and pull your lips to hers, your eyes still cloudy from sleep, because she couldn’t wait for you to kiss her again.  Her hands would wander lazily under the blankets, gentle and only subtly arousing, because all she wanted was to feel your skin.  The way she could stare into your eyes unflinchingly and unabashedly, as if what you’d just done wasn’t horrible or immoral or disgusting.  Always she was smiling, as if she were satisfied and content just to lie there with you forever.

                I was especially enchanted because I knew that all of this was completely unintentional.  She’d nearly broken the spell when she whispered carefully into my ear, “I’m a virgin.”  Then she’d pressed her hips up against mine and let her fingers wander down my spine.  She’s a virgin, I repeated to myself over and over, you have no right to take this from her.

                I had a weird feeling of something splintering inside me as my mind, body, and soul each made its own plans for the rest of the night.  My head was saying no.  Who was I to take her virginity?  She was nobody to me; I was nothing to her.  She’d hate me in the morning; I’d hate myself.

                Then she’d look up at me with that look that was all fierce desire and utmost trust and my heart would beat faster.  I felt like I could see the way her heart beat, I saw a whole universe in her eyes.  When you’re in bed with someone, when you’re that close, and when she looks up at you like that, it’s so easy to think that you’re in love.  She loved me, I loved her, and that made all of this valid.

                And then there was my body, and it was telling me to get on with it if she’d let me.  I was quivering from head to toe and I wanted her so badly I could barely see straight.  My body didn’t feel romance; it felt rage.  It egged me on that she was teasing me and should put out.  If I got the chance, I was ready to take her and show her a beautiful night with a man.  Or simply ruin her.

                Not very much later she had her hands on my neck and her lips against mine when she whispered, “Do it.  Just do it.”

                Anticipation whipped through my body, making all my extremities tingle.  “Are you sure?”  My lips still on hers, our bodies still pressed together, her scent mingling in the air.  She nodded and I reached for a condom.

                I gave her the benefit of a moment’s hesitation before I took her.

                We woke up sometime just after dawn, our hands blindly searching for each other.  My hand found her hip and she smiled with her eyes still closed.  Her hair was sprayed across the pillow, curling in every direction and making her look wild.  She opened her eyes and I immediately saw the same spark I’d seen the night before.  I couldn’t help but grin and pull her lips to mine, my hands tangling in her soft hair.  We made love again and fell asleep as the sun climbed higher into the sky.

                We were in bed all morning and slept well into the afternoon.  We catnapped mostly, waking every few hours to rearrange, always careful to keep our bodies as close as possible.  We held hands and caressed every inch of skin we could reach.  The spell she’d woven the night before, the illusion of love, drifted over us all morning, glimmering over her smooth, bare shoulders and invading my senses.  I didn’t think of getting out of bed, I didn’t think of leaving her.  I didn’t even think about where she’d come from or how she’d ended up in my bed.  All I knew or cared about were those moments spent wrapped in my comforter with this strange nymph-like girl.

                By the time the afternoon and hunger started to set in, the dream in which we’d been entwined together began to fade.  The pit of my stomach groaned for food and we were forced to get up and find a box of cereal, which we poured into a bowl and ate cross-legged on my bed.  She’d dressed herself in a pair of my boxers and a sweatshirt that practically drowned her petite figure.

                Despite the late hour, the morning after had just begun for us.  Suddenly the perfect comfort we’d had with each other was gone.  She had covered her nakedness, and the cereal only just sated our appetites.  We would have to leave the room for real food, and both of us were ravenous.  Our minutes were numbered together and seemed suddenly far less precious.

                The cereal decimated, she got up and put on her own clothes, folding mine and placing them on the corner of my bed.  We chatted idly about Picasso’s Blue Period, about the Chuck Palahniuk novel I was reading.  Finally she sighed and began to wrap her hair up into a bun.

                “I should probably get going, it’s after three.”

                “Are you sure?” I asked, half wishing she would cast her spell again and we could spend another twelve hours making love.

                “I’m starving,” she answered, smiling.  It was not the seductive, loving smile from before, but an awkward one.  For a moment I sensed a fleeting sense of sadness and I felt a burst of panic as I wondered what she was thinking.  Her eyes had become unreadable to me.  She leaned in and kissed me gently, a far more timid and reserved kiss than I remembered.  Her hand trembled slightly as it brushed against mine.  And then she was gone.

                The room felt vast and empty in her absence, as if the ceiling had been elevated another twenty feet.  I laid back down in bed and felt a strange vacancy in my chest.

                Then reality hit me: What had I done?

                Lovemaking is such a savage thing for a man to do, when you really think about it.  It’s violent and shameful, especially when the girl is a stranger.  It violates her, but you don’t care.  It hurts her, but you don’t care.  It feels so good, though, and she tells you it’s alright, so you do it.  It’s satisfying.  It’s satisfying sexually and also carnally; it breaks up frustration and anger and lets you inflict it on someone else.  Sex is permissible where violence is not.  That’s one reason why I felt guilty that night.

                And then there was the fact that she was a virgin.  A god damn fucking virgin.  What was I thinking?  I wasn’t that drunk.  Fuck.  It had seemed so sexy and challenging the night before but now I felt nothing but disgusted with myself.  I worried about her—where was she now?  What was she doing?  How was she feeling?  Did she hate me?  I felt like such a bastard.  She was a virgin, so she was the innocent one; I was the one who should have stopped.  I felt like I’d stolen something from her and now all I wanted to do was give it back.  I didn’t deserve it.

                But that wasn’t the worst of it.  Because there was Terry.  Boston Terry, waiting for me.  Sure we weren’t actually together, but we really were.  We’d broken up when I moved, because we knew that long-distance relationships never worked out.  I loved her.  And she trusted me.  I told her I wouldn’t do anything serious with any girls while I was gone.  Things don’t get more serious than sex.  Shit.

                Maybe if it had just been sex, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty.  But I still remembered the warm, blurry feeling that the girl had created.  I had loved her for several hours, loved every inch of her body and every way she touched me.  Somehow the sin of the body seemed less important than the sin of the soul.  I’d loved another woman, a girl who was not Terry.  The worst part was that I hadn’t even thought of her until after the girl had left and I was alone.

                A virgin, for Christ’s sake.

                Only five hours after the girl had left, I was sullenly drowning myself in a bottle of Jack Daniels.  I kept thinking about her, wondering what would become of her, or if I’d ever see her again.  And then Terry would swim before my eyes and I’d shake my head, trying to dissipate the image.  The guilt was momentous.

                Somewhere halfway through the bottle I called Terry.  It was a Saturday night and I could hear voices in the background.  She asked me to wait a minute and obviously went to find her way to a quiet spot where she could talk to me in private.  My head swam in her absence and I wondered if I should try and throw up some of the liquor inside my stomach so I would be a little less drunk later.

                “What’s up?” she asked.

                “Are you drunk?” It seemed like a hypocritical question, but I needed at least one of us to be sober.

                “No,” she sounded confused and concerned.  “Are you?”

                “I’ve had a few.  But I have to tell you something.”

                Terry tore me a new one during the rest of the phone call.  In the end I was grateful for the Jack in my stomach—it softened the blow of the next thirty and the subsequent miserable hours.  Midnight would find me in my bed once more, alone this time, with my head spinning with alcohol and Terry’s words:  betrayal, trust, promise.

                “Call me tomorrow when you’re sober,” she’d said before she hung up. 

I nodded stupidly in the darkness, promising to do that and asking desperately, “Are we over?  Are we over?  Are we over?”

“I don’t know.  Call me tomorrow.”  She hung up.

Fuck.  Fuck my life, I thought in my head.  The only reprieve was that the alcohol had washed away thoughts of the girl.  I was focused on Terry until I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, hung over and miserable, I once again stayed in bed until the afternoon.  This time there was no contentment between my blankets.  I had to call Terry as soon as my headache subsided.  And with the sunrise had come the reminder of that girl.

The sheets still smelled subtly of that pleasant girl scent that now recalled feelings of love in my gut.  I buried my face in the blankets and let it wash over me once again. 

I reached for my phone and called her.