“No,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
“We’re both drunk,” she said. “I don’t want to go to sleep.” She sighed deeply. “But we’re drunk. We need to be good.”
“I know,” I said.
“We’re good people, aren’t we, Will?”
I agreed that we were.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said.
“I just remembered something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You never told me your secret.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I did.”
My heartbeat quickened, and I lay there in silence, fighting the urge to say: Passion isn’t always bad, you know. Finally, I said, “Can I make one more observation?”
“I don’t know. Okay.”
“I’m sure you already know this, but there’s no better place in the world for publishing than New York City.”
Her hand, against my back, pulled away.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just meant …”
She shushed me. “Good night, Will,” she whispered.
“Really?”
“Really.” Another sigh. “Good night.”
“Spell it.”
She waited a moment, then spelled it on my back, thirteen perfect letters.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
One of the songs we’d played tonight was in my head. It was called “Renegade” and had a ska rhythm that I’d worked all week trying to master. But I had, in the end, mastered it, and the song had gone over well. It was the song that’d gotten Sara and others up and dancing. I listened to it in my head for a while.
“Will?” she whispered.
Once again, I’d assumed she had fallen asleep. “Hmm?”
“Thanks.”
She shifted in bed, pulling covers, resettling. Four stories below, a motorcycle went by. A few cars. I looked over at Sara, at her beautiful form, and in that instant I felt a deep longing and yet, simultaneously, an overwhelming sense of peace. Like I was exactly where I belonged. This, I thought, is how it could be. But I knew it couldn’t. And so I turned my pillow over to the cool side, closed my eyes, and dreamed this night again.
Sometime after sunrise, only a few hours after we’d gone to sleep, there were church bells and a bright slant of sunlight filling the room from the large east-facing window. Only a sheet covered us. The blanket had been kicked to the foot of the bed. I got up, shut the shades, pulled up the blanket a little, and went back to bed. I awoke again sometime later to the steady stream of traffic sounds four stories below.
I looked at the clock on the nightstand: 8:15. Sara lay on her stomach. Her shoulders were exposed, and part of her back. I put on my clothes and then touched her lightly on the shoulder, waking her, and went into the bathroom so she could get dressed in private. We carried my drums out of the quiet apartment and downstairs to the car. Three endless trips. Then we drove home, saying little to each other, listening to the sound of the New Jersey Turnpike rushing underneath my tires. When we arrived at the dorm at ten o’clock, it felt as if we’d been away longer than a single night. We found street parking by the dorm, and she helped me unload the car.
Standing in my doorway, wearing yesterday’s clothes, she said, “That was fun.” She said it sadly.
I nodded. “Listen, Sara—”
“Don’t. I mean it.”
“But you don’t know what—”
“Just don’t say anything. Say good night.”
“It’s morning.”
“Then say good morning.”
“Good morning, Sara,” I said.
“Good morning, Will,” she said, and left me alone with my drums.
I sat on the bed a minute, then changed into shorts and a T-shirt. Went down the hall to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I was behind in my senior thesis. There was plenty to do, here at Princeton, in the few weeks until graduation. The gig was done, my night with Sara was now in the past. Shake it off. A couple more hours of sleep in my own bed, so the day wouldn’t be wasted. Then I’d get to work.
When I returned from the bathroom, she was sitting in the hallway, on the carpet outside my door.
“This’ll all be okay, you know,” she said. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”
Her smile was a question.
I opened the door, my answer.
We went inside and spent the next two days there.