Come In and Cover Me by Gin Phillips

her earlier concerns about getting involved with him was that they were already involved. They had hardly touched, but that had not decreased the intimacy. Instead they sat in the sand with this tight cord of anticipation strung between them, rib to rib. It thrilled her and worried her: She didn’t know when it had attached itself, and she didn’t know how to cut it, even if she wanted to. She didn’t know how quickly he might be able to cut it.
    â€œDid you sneak out?” he asked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOf your bedroom. When you were a teenager. Climb out a window, shimmy down a tree, scale a wall, have a boy throw rocks at your window. Something like that.”
    She turned her head toward him but closed her eyes against the sun. “Did you throw rocks at some girl’s window?”
    â€œNo. I’d shine a flashlight under Hannah Hightower’s window, and she’d come out the back door to meet me.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œWe sat in the garage, and I’d see how far she’d let me get my hand up her thigh.”
    â€œHow far did you get?” She pictured a bleached-blond girl with heavy makeup hiding acne.
    â€œI hadn’t exactly honed my skills then.”
    â€œGood for her,” Ren said. She allowed the girl clear skin.
    â€œHannah was a good girl.”
    She opened her eyes. “Good girls don’t let you slide your hand up their thigh?”
    â€œYes,” he said. “They do.”
    She kept silent.
    â€œI thought I would love Hannah Hightower forever,” he said. “That lasted for a few months. I think I thought the same thing about Jennifer Bixby in third grade and Kathy Wolfson in seventh grade. Which was weird—I don’t know how I got to be a romantic. Mom and Dad weren’t exactly touchy-feely about love and romance. I mean, Dad would kill the extra puppies with bricks to their heads sometimes. But I really wanted to love someone forever.”
    â€œNo luck?” she asked.
    â€œWhen Hannah and I started having sex, I felt like it was love. But we lasted long enough that I got past the hormones. I could see how I’d been crazy about sort of an imaginary Hannah. When I calmed down, I could see the real Hannah. She was good to me. But if I was honest, when she talked I had trouble listening to her. On some level I was always wondering who else was out there.”
    â€œSo you broke up?”
    â€œAfter senior year. In as friendly a way as possible. But it shifted how I thought. I let go of that teenage idea of there being ‘the one.’ You know? I think loving someone forever is probably a choice, not some meeting of souls.”
    She raised herself up on her elbows, squinting.
    â€œI wish we could rush the lab,” she said. “It’d be great to get a couple of definite dates. Do you have any favors you could call in?”
    She looked over and noticed that the wet sweat pattern on his T-shirt looked like a tulip.
    â€œYou didn’t answer my question,” he said.
    â€œWhich question?”
    â€œDid you ever sneak out?”
    She watched him watch her and took her time responding. She did not want to search her head for an answer. She wanted to enjoy the warm ground under her palms.
    â€œI never snuck out.”
    â€œWhat were you like?”
    There had been silences at home that lasted for days. Her mother and father had blank, smooth faces like masks. Sometimes her mother would tell her to do something—go pick up the shoes she’d left by the door or go put her cereal bowl in the sink—and there would be a pause at the end of the command, like a place where Ren’s name should have gone. “Go answer the phone. . . .” Pause. Nothing. Sometimes she suspected her mother had forgotten her name.
    â€œI liked Guns N’ Roses,” she said.
    He accepted it. “I lived on a ranch outside of Silver City,” he said. “We’d