But alone with her, he showed a softer, romantic side, Nicole said. "Me and him were sitting in the car, the windows were getting foggy. And he wrote with his finger on the window, 'Will you go out with me?' And it was just sweet, and so I said, 'Yeah.'"

Rebecca is the assistant manager at the coffee shop where I work while I’m attending graduate school. There are rumors going around about her age, and for some reason it’s highly confidential. She has long brown hair that she always wears balled up into a baseball cap, and a birthmark down her right cheek that she refers to as a Coke stain. Her shirts are always low cut exposing her small breasts when she bends over. I know from the sight of her neck from behind, the few strands of hair loose from her cap, that I want to marry her. She is confident and authoritative and I look forward to her telling me what to do. She does charity events on the weekend and sings for her church, rocking out for Jesus. When she stands on the step ladder to reach the top shelf I see her thong rise over the waist of her jeans. I imagine being the thin fabric raised over her hip. Regardless of my indefinite certainty, every word she speaks to me discourages my pursuit. At a work-related dinner party I try to kiss her and she backs into the fridge with both hands out in front of her. When I flirt with her at work she tells me to clean the bathrooms. She tells me about her dates, when she has them, how they all try to kiss her, and she always turns her head. When she comes to my apartment she sits on the other side of the room and we talk about poetry, of which she doesn’t understand, and we talk about the bible, of which I don’t understand. She invites me to a New Year’s Eve dinner at the house of lesbian friends of the family. That night she falls asleep next to me wearing a blanket sleeper. The next day she tells me a story about a dance in junior high, where a young boy walked across the room and asked her dance. I tell her a story about how I drove 1500 miles to ask her to dance. She tells me it’s not the same. That afternoon we watch Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, laying on my futon. I kiss her left cheek, then her right cheek. Then I kiss her lips very slowly, very softly.  She tastes like strawberry. She tells me that this all I’m going to get, and then she roles on top of me straddling my waist, before grinding her vagina into my thigh.