About halfway through, I pry myself from the hormonal ride of paranormal teenage angst to look at Jack. He’s studying the movie intently, watchfully, like it’s a documentary on unparticle physics. “I promise I’m not going to quiz you afterwards,” I tell him. “You can scroll on your phone. Fall asleep. Roll your eyes.”

“Is that what people do when you watch Twilight with them?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t . . . ?”

“Watch it with anyone.” I never spend time with people doing something I unabashedly enjoy. “I usually stream a cam version on my laptop and give off a dense, guilty aura. Once Cece came in in the middle of Eclipse. I turned off the monitor and swore I was masturbating to stepbrother hentai.”

His mouth curves. “Not Bill Nye?”

“Didn’t think of it.” He looks back at the screen, but something’s blossoming in my stomach, something heavy and uncomfortable, and when I say, “Hey,” he turns to me again. “Thank you.”

“For suggesting Bill Nye porn?”

“No. For . . .” I cannot put it in words. Until I can. “For wanting to know me enough to watch my favorite movie with me.”

I lean forward, fully planning to kiss him on the cheek. But something happens once I’m inside his space, and . . .

Plans change. I linger.

Jack is warm. He smells nice and feels familiar, real like very little in my life does. So I stay. Just because it’s that good. And I stay even when he turns toward me, and his mouth is so close to mine, I’m almost sure this is going to turn into something else. Into a kiss.

He exhales.

I inhale.

His hand rises. Grips the back of my head to hold me still. My eyes flutter closed. A tight flush spreads all over my stomach, skin on fire, heart pumping.

Finally, a kiss that I want. And oh, do I want this kiss. I want to—

“No,” he says. His lips nearly move against mine. “No.”

He lets go abruptly. I open my eyes and he’s on the edge of the couch, feet away from me, facing away. “Jack?” His back is rigid.

He rubs his eyes, mumbling something that sounds a lot like “Too soon,” and I’m suddenly cold and full of dread.

“I didn’t mean to . . .” I reach out and lay my hand on his shoulder blade. He instantly moves away, and I realize it’s the wrong way to ask for forgiveness for invading his personal space.

“Elsie, I need you to not touch me for a minute.” He goes to stand by the window, rubbing his fingers over his mouth. On the TV, Bella is crying. I feel like crying, too. Mortified to the core. My embarrassment could power a midsized European country.

“I’m sorry,” I say to his taut shoulders. “Maybe I . . .” Honesty. When is honesty too much? “I think I may be attracted to you.”

“Fuck,” he breathes out. He turns around, running a hand through his hair. I’ve never seen him openly show distress before. “Fuck,” he repeats softly, and I’m lost. What did I do? I didn’t mean to—

He takes a deep breath. Suddenly he’s even more imposing. “I’m not going to fuck you,” he promises me quietly, almost talking to himself.

“I . . .” Have no idea what to say to that. “I am . . .” Confused? Rejected, maybe? But I didn’t ask him for that. He’s assuming a lot based on a couple of seconds of proximity, and I’m tempted to point it out, which is why I shock myself when what I say is vaguely resentful. “Right. You mentioned before that you’re not interested.”

He lets out a laugh. “I never said that.”

“At the restaurant, you said that you didn’t want to have sex with me.”

“I said that I wasn’t going to have sex with you.”

I frown. “That’s the same thing.”

“It’s not.”

My mind rushes to catch up. Then it does, and my entire body flushes with heat.

“Is that how you interpreted what I said?” He sounds incredulous. “Lack of interest?”

I shrug, like it doesn’t matter. Like it didn’t cut deep.

“You think I don’t want to fuck you,” he says, blunt as always.

“Why else?”

“Why else.”

I clear my throat. “Why else won’t you?”

Jack shakes his head. His jaw has a stubborn set, like this is a rule he’s made for himself, something he’s thought a great deal about. “It’s what’s best for you. For us. Right now.”

“I’m sorry, did you . . .” I clear my throat. “Did you just inform me that we’re not going to have sex, because it’s what best for us?”

He nods once, like he would to a known, undisputed fact. Water molecules slow down light. And that’s when I stand, indignant. “You understand that this should be the product of a dialogue between two people, right?” I’m barefoot. He’s so much taller than me, my neck protests the unnatural angle. “You can’t just hand out decisions without explanation—”

“I can, actually.” The way he bends down can’t be comfortable, either. We’re sharing about two square feet of space. Cross-armed. Unsmiling. A second ago we were joking on the couch. What the hell?

“This is incredibly patronizing. You can’t assume that you know what’s best for—”

“Okay, then.” He shifts forward, and I can feel every millimeter. “How do I make you come?”

I . . . must have misunderstood. “What?”

“What do you like when having sex? What do you want? What are your needs?” His eyes are pools of black in the dim lights. “How do I make you come?”

I shake my head. Edward is moving at light speed to save his love, and my mind is as slow as a slug. “Sorry?”

“You said it was patronizing of me not to discuss sex. So let’s talk.” This is the Jack from our first meeting: challenging, uncompromising, demanding. “Unless it makes you feel uncomfortable. A good sign that maybe it’s best for you not to have it, either, but—”

“That’s not it,” I hurry to say. But maybe it is, a little. I don’t talk about sex very much with people. Just Cece, and mostly in terms of what fourteenth-century nuns were supposedly up to when they should have been tending to the herb garden. But it has nothing to do with comfort. We don’t talk about sex for the same reason we don’t talk about stock dividends: we have very little of it.

“Then tell me,” he repeats. His look shifts to something that’s not quite daring. Like for once this is not a power play of his, and he genuinely wants to know. “How do I make you come?”

“This is such a weird thing to ask. I—” Light bulb: on. “Oh my God. You think I’m inexperienced.” I laugh right in his face. “I’m not. I’ve had sex with J.J., like, a million times, in a million ways!” I add, just to get a reaction out of him. But Jack’s reaction is infuriatingly nonexistent. “You think I’m lying?”

“I don’t. If you told me you’re a card-carrying member of the Orgy of the Month Club, I’d believe you. But since you have all that experience, you’ll have no problem telling me: How do I make you come?”

I open my mouth and . . . immediately close it.

“I’m waiting, Elsie.”

I hate him when he’s like this. Just—smug and merciless and all-seeing and—

“Still waiting.”

I look down at my feet, the stockings sheer around my toes, and all of a sudden I’m feeling just . . .

I’m embarrassed. I have no idea what to tell him, and for a second I consider lying. Pretending that I’m a fucking sex goddess. Twenty orgasms in a trench coat. But Jack is lie-repellant, and he’d know, and it’d be even more mortifying than the truth: I have no idea how he can make me come.

My mind turns to J.J., and here’s a truth I’m not going to admit out loud in this fancy open-plan apartment: I don’t even know if I have the capacity to like sex. I never wondered, because me enjoying something was never a priority.

“Is this something you do with every girl you sleep with?” I ask bitterly. “An entrance exam?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Other times it’s more trial and error.”