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KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

I de-suctioned myself from Marcus, to whom I was so forcefully vacuum-attached that I swear we made a lovely, lid-off-the-Tupperware air-sucking belch.

“Is there someone in there?”

Bethany!

“Holy shit!” I whispered.

“Jessie, is that you in there?” my sister asked.

Marcus had my lip gloss all over his chin, as though he’d spent the morning sucking on a greasy pork chop.

“It’s not nice to keep a woman who’s nine months pregnant and has a full bladder waiting!”

I looked in the mirror.

“Holy shit!” I whispered again.

My face was all red and raw with razor burn. And was that . . . ?

“Oh, shit! Shit! Shit! You gave me a hickey!” I mouthed, pointing to the grape-colored map of Florida he’d left behind on my neck.

He shrugged, smiling, still holding my hand.

Pound pound pound.

“Jessie! I am going to explode if you don’t get out of there this instant!”

“Just a second!” I called out nervously to my sister.

“I don’t have a second!” whined Bethany.

“What are we going to do?” I mouthed to Marcus.

“We are going to walk out that door,” he said out loud, so anyone on the other side of the door could hear him.

“Jessie . . . is there someone in there with you?”

“No!”

And before I could stop him, before I could devise a plan that involved him busting a hole in the ceiling and crawling through the air-conditioning shaft to safety, before I could even turn up the collar on my shirt eighties-style to hide my goddamn hickey, Marcus opened the door and said, “She’s a terrible liar, isn’t she?”

My sister was so stunned that she temporarily forgot that her bladder was about to burst.

“She thinks she’s such a great liar,” Marcus continued, “but she’s really terrible at it.”

I swear, I don’t know why Bethany’s water didn’t break right then and there with the shock of it all.

“We’ve occupied the lavatory long enough,” Marcus said. “Please, let us get out of your way.”

And Marcus, leading me by the hand, cleared a path to the toilet.

And Bethany—still unable to confront the fact that her little sister was getting it on with this lanky stranger in the bathroom of the funeral home that was hosting her dead grandmother’s wake—lumbered past us and shut the door.

“That went well,” Marcus said, smiling so bright that his eyes twinkled and crinkled in the corners.

I don’t know what made me angrier, the fact that he had tricked me into hooking up with him, or that he was being so blasé about it after the fact. I mean, I usually don’t believe in God and the devil, but at that moment, my agnosticism was replaced by the certainty that when my time came, I should be buried in flame-retardant underwear, because I was surely spending all eternity in hell.

“Go.”

“Jessica . . .”

“Just go,” I growled.

He blinked once. Twice. Three times.

“I mean it!” I snapped. “GO!”

His smile fell, his eyes got murky, and very un-Marcus-like, he slunk away without another word.

Did I mention that his mouth was as soft, succulent, and sweet as a slice of mango? And that I can’t stop licking my lips, hoping for one last taste?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

the fourth

I am a skank.”

I had shown up unannounced at Bridget’s house at nine A.M. to spill the whole sordid story. And this is the conclusion I had come to.

“How are you a skank?”

“I made out with someone I’m supposed to hate at my grandmother’s wake. That makes me a heartless skank.”

I was laying facedown on her flowery bedspread, my arms shielding the morning sunlight, in agony.

“You were, like, under emotional duress,” she said. “You weren’t thinking straight.”

My eyes were shut so tight that I could see psychedelic floral patterns swirling across the retinal blackness.

“I don’t even know his middle name.”

Bridget didn’t respond.

“Did you hear me? I don’t even know his middle name.”

This seemed very significant to me.

“So? Like, what does that matter?”

“I made out with him at my grandmother’s wake,” I replied. “I should at least know his middle name.”

“Ask him the next