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the porch smiling with such warmth that I couldn’t help but feel I’d gotten an A+ on my big book report, and as the two of them wheeled our bikes away, Bob’s brothers handed us beers and bright blue golf-chucks, which we tossed for one game, then two, then many more. Somewhere in there the night just kind of sped up, as nights do, away from sun-dappled trees and potholed pavement, toward comfort food and conversation, and soon it was pushing eleven, and I was half-drunk and bloated, my cheeks sore from laughter, my mind racing from cozy kitchen to county highway to moments whose meaning I was already questioning, doubting, forgetting. Just before midnight, Rachel and I tiptoed to the lake, set up the tent, and walked to the end of the dock. I closed my eyes and took a deep pull of Wisconsin summer and listened to the feral howl of a distant loon. And I remembered.

CHAPTER 4
Where Everything Happens
    W e were on the move at the crack of ten, riding quiet county roads through classic Wisconsin. The sun was low, the wind a whisper, water everywhere. Here were Big Lake and Clear Lake, Rest Lake and a dozen nameless ponds and puddles, all nestled in a carpet of coniferous bog. I was feeling proud of the landscape, as if I’d designed it myself, but also sad, because I was leaving it behind, and so when we came upon the little boat landing at North Bass Lake, and Rachel suggested we stop for some snacks, I said yes, because snacks, and also because I just wanted to sit and stare and soak this all up one last time.
    We pulled into the lot and dropped the bikes in the gravel. Rachel dug up a tub of yogurt, and I grabbed some cookies, and we walked to the end of the small, sun-bleached dock. The lot behind us was empty of cars, the water untouched but for a bright orange canoe skirting reeds on the opposite shore. It was all ours.
    I pulled off my shoes and socks, dipped my toes in the water, and looked at Rachel looking across the lake. I followed her gaze, hoped she was noticing the right things. How the canoe’s Day-Glo orange played off cattail brown. The way the lily pads and reeds, the tamarack and pine, the maple and oak formed a spectral ring of green around the water, and how the wispy clouds sat so perfectly on its glassy surface. And maybe she did notice all that. Maybe that’s exactly what she was thinking about as she sat there, in silence.
    Just like that I wanted her. Yogurt-stained spoon in my hand, cookie crumbs on my lap.
    I leaned in, brushed her hair back, and kissed her. And when she kissed back, it wasn’t the being-a-good-sport kiss I’d been expecting. It was a yes-I-notice-the-Day-Glo-and-cattails-now-get-this-fucking-Lycra-off-me kind of kiss.
    If you think putting on a condom can kill the moment, try helping your partner, who is straddling you, peel away a second skin of Lycra. I pulled off her hide-the-stupid-Lycra shorts with a snap of the wrist, but the Lycra . . . the
fucking
Lycra. Rachel hovered over me and buried her face in my neck while I fought the fabric. After a few seconds, she called it in favor of the fabric and rolled off. Lying on her back and squirming around, she managed to get the shorts past her knees, then pulled herself back on top. I wrapped an arm up the curve of her back, and with the other I braced my weight against the dock. My fingers slipped over a jagged ridge in the wood, and for an instant I found myself worrying about taking a splinter in the ass. Or worse.
    Then Rachel pulled me inside, and I forgot about splinters, real or imagined. Her hands found the steel pipes supporting the dock, shaking it beneath us, and my hands clawed for her hair, her hips, anything I could hold on to. My vision tunneled, and I burrowed my face into her chest, and still the world followed, closing in on itself, on me. I felt the breeze curling up my neck, the sun hot on my cheek. Shimmering diamonds jumped from the lake and sunk into the soles of my feet. The blues and browns and