The Pettigrew isn’t really in Lakewood; it’s just the other side of the Lakewood-Southbury border, but it’s the most luxurious hotel in a forty mile radius, so yeah. Of course James would stay there. Room six-thirteen is at the end of the hall on the sixth floor, a corner room, probably huge. I knock.

            James answers after a beat. “Hello.”

            “Hi,” I say, my voice cracking. I haven’t seen him in almost a month; his almost inhuman gorgeousness catches me by surprise, barely disturbed by the tension in his muscles or the redness in his eyes. “I don’t know if you remember me. We met at the wedding? My name’s—”

            “Alex. I remember. Can I help you?” he asks.

            I hold out his jacket. “You left this at the hosptial. Travis told me where you were saying and asked me to bring it to you.”

            “Thanks,” he says, and as he reaches for it, I catch sight of his torn and bloody knuckles.

            “What happened to your hand?” I ask, clenching my fist around the jacket so that he can’t snatch it away.

            He blinks down at his skin, like he’s already forgotten. “Oh. I punched a wall. The side of the hospital, actually. Apparently, that’s not such a good idea, if the building is made of concrete. I’m fine, though, don’t worry about it.”

            It’s a reflex, really; I see blood, I try to fix it. Ben has stumbled into my house with sliced-up arms too many times for me to be able to ignore even the most minor of injuries. I step around James, shutting the door behind myself. The room is even bigger than I’d expected, more than large enough for a California King bed with an ornately carved headboard and rumpled sheets, a desk and armchair by the window, and a sitting area with a large velvet-covered couch, a squashy chaise lounge, another pair of armchairs, even a fireplace. Everything is colored in shades of gold, cream, and white. I feel poor just standing here. I drag him by his good hand into the bathroom. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

            James snorts. “I have a couple days’ worth of clothes, a cell phone, and my toothbrush. That’s pretty much it.”

            “Alright. Can you just run your hand under the faucet for a few seconds?” I tug my wallet out of my back pocket and empty out the stash of band-aids behind my driver’s license. That’s another habit I can thank Ben for; when he started showing up at school, dripping in blood, I started keeping band-aids everywhere. Wallet, glove compartment, backpack, bag of drumsticks.

            James lets me wipe his hand clean and bandage it up as best I can. When I have finished and am sweeping the wrappers into the trash, James steps forward so that he is standing directly in front of me, his palms flat on the bathroom counter on either side of my hips. “Thank you.”

            He is almost pressed against me now. I clear my throat. “No problem. I should probably get going.”

            “No, I think you should stay,” he replies, giving me a small smile. It doesn’t show his teeth, which is good. I’d never be able to think straight if he was blinding me with a flawlessly white smile, too.

            “Why?” I ask. He lifts one hand, runs his thumb across my bottom lip until I’m practically vibrating.

            “Because if I’m here alone, I’m going to be thinking about him. No one has any idea what it’s like for me, to see my  best friend lying in some hospital bed with tubes in his veins. I don’t want to think about it anymore. And I imagine you could prove to be a very good distraction,” he says. “May I please kiss you now?”

            For a moment, I try to picture this extra line on the incestuous little pentagon that is my group of friends. James slept with Garen; Garen, Travis, and Ben have all slept with each other; I’ve been with Travis; I’ve been in love with Ben. This will add a whole new dimension of disaster to my life.

            “I’ve never kissed anyone while sober before,” I whisper, and James laughs, a breathy little sound that fires a bolt of electricity straight through my gut.

            “I find that both disturbing and erotic,” he says. “But my questions still stands. May I kiss you?”

            Despite my better judgment, I find myself nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”

            He doesn’t move immediately, and I get impatient; I lace my fingers together at the nape of his neck and pull him towards me. The second his mouth touches mine, my whole body catches on fire. Fuck. This is amazing. His hands shift down to grip my ass for a moment before he slides his palms down the back of my thighs and hoists me up onto the counter. I part my knees and drag him forward so that our chests are flush against each other. I want to touch every part of his body at once. In a second, I am off the counter and backing him against the bathroom wall, pressing him back against it hard enough that he makes a soft noise deep in his throat. He grabs my hips and grinds against me, and I am suddenly so, so desperate to see what he looks like without his clothes on.

            “Oh Lord,” James murmurs against my mouth. “You’re much, much too good at this to only do it drunk.”

            He has no idea. I hook two fingers over the waistband of his jeans and drag him towards the giant bed. We fall onto the bed together, touching and shaking and gasping. It’s better than the night I got drunk and hooked up with Travis; it’s better than any of the nights I got drunk and hooked up with Ben. Everything seems so much more real and intoxicating, now that I’m actually sober, now that I know I’ll remember this in the morning. Every touch sends shockwaves through my body. Somehow, we end up tangled up in the blankets, him completely naked, me still in my boxers. It’s only when he retrieves a condom and a small bottle of lube from the duffel bag at the side of the bed that I start to panic.

            “Are you a top or a bottom?” he murmurs against the curve of my throat.

            “I-I don’t know,” I stammer. “I uh… I’ve never done either.”

            Suddenly, he leans back, searching my face. “You’re a virgin?”

            “Yeah,” I say. I’ve never been embarrassed about being a virgin before, and I pray he’s not about to make me feel otherwise.

            He shifts away slightly. “Do you want me to stop?”

            “No,” I say quickly. “I wanna sleep with you. I’m just uh, a little new to it. Is that a problem?”

            If he asks me to leave, if he laughs in my face, if he doesn’t put his hands back on me, I’m sure I’m going to die.

            “No, it’s fine. As long as you’re sure,” he finally says. He ducks down to suck gently on my neck, then murmurs against my skin, “I want you to fuck me.”

            So, I do. It’s even more mind-blowing than I expected it would be. James suddenly no longer seems to care about keeping his cool; he groans and shudders and gasps my name, all the while digging his nails into my back or knotting his fingers in my hair. Every so often, he pushes my hips back until I’m all the way out of him, directs me into a new position, and it starts all over again. When we finally collapse, boneless and breathless, he only lets me lie there for a short time before he’s pulling me closer and whispering, “Again.” This man is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

            It seems like it must be days later when his cell phone chimes from the nightstand. He barely spares it a glance at first, but then suddenly scrambles for it. I peek over his shoulder at the display screen, which is flashing Garen’s name. Travis still has Garen’s phone, though, so it must be him. Either way, James answers it.

            “Hello?” he says, his breath still a little short. I watch as his face practically melts. “Are you serious? Alright. Alright, I’ll be right there. Thanks.”

            “Garen’s awake?” I say as he ends the call, and he nods, seeming a little wary. I wonder if he expects me to be upset that he’s abandoning sex with me to go see his best friend in the hospital. “I can give you a ride back to the hospital, if you’d like. My car’s in the parking lot.”

            “That would be wonderful,” he says. We dress quickly and hurry out to the car. The drive to Lakewood General is short, but comfortable. I pull up in front and put the car into park, though I don’t cut the engine.

            “I have to go to work, actually,” I say. “But tell Garen I say hi. Have him call me later, if he can. Or I’ll try to stop by later, assuming I get out before visiting hours are over.”

            “Of course,” James says. He reaches for the door handle, but freezes in mid-motion, surveying me with his head cocked to the side. A few beats pass, and I am about to ask him what’s wrong, when he grabs a pen out of my cupholder and scrawls something across one  of the Starbucks receipts on the floor. “Here’s my number. You should give me a call sometime.”

            “Seriously?” I say. It seems so out of order. Meeting, sex, then the exchange of phone numbers. He holds out the receipt, and I tear off the bottom half to write my own number on it. James tucks it into his pocket and smiles.

            “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be in town. I sent out a mass email to my teachers before I left, telling them that Garen was in the hospital, so I might not be in class for a while. Most of them had him as a student before, and enough of them liked him that I’m sure it won’t be much of an issue. I’ll probably be in Lakewood for at least a week. If you’re free one night, I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

            I blink. Drunkenly making out with a few of my friends isn’t a big deal. Neither is spending the better part of an afternoon having sex with a guy I barely know. But an actual, honest-to-God date? James’ smile is so warm and easy, though, and I can’t help but find myself saying, “Yeah, of course. I’ll give you a call later tonight.”

            “Good,” he replies, leaning over to kiss me again, right there in the parking lot. “It was a pleasure, Alex.”

            Yeah. Yeah, it really was.