The parking lot is empty and Tristan parks right up front near the handicapped sign.

“I’ll walk you inside,” he says as I get out.

“No need,” I say, but he ignores me. I don’t stop him. We walk together into the train station. It’s small and deserted. There are only a few chairs arranged in a circle along the walls. There’s no one at the ticket counter. I check the large electronic schedule board behind the counter. A train going back to the city will come in twenty-five minutes.

I go to the ticket machine and buy a one-way ticket.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me?” he asks as I press ‘buy.’ I shake my head, no.

“I’ll just meet you there,” I say. “Thanks for coming out, though. Really. I really appreciate it.”

Tristan stares down at his shoes. They’re an old pair of sneakers with no shoelaces that he has had for years. He doesn’t wear them often. I know that they’re his go-to shoe when he needs to be comfortable.

“How long have you had those shoes?” I smile. “Since tenth grade, at least.”

“Ninth.” He nods his head. When our eyes meet, his sparkle under the harsh fluorescence in the room.

“Are you ever going to get rid of them?” I ask.

“Are you ever going to get rid of Bear?”

My breath gets lodged in my throat and I cough. Bear is an old teddy bear that I’ve had since I was a little girl. I don’t play with him anymore. He’s too old and fragile, but he sits on top of my dresser and I hold him whenever I feel lost or confused or lonely.

“No, of course not!” I gasp.

“Ever hear that a pot shouldn’t be calling a kettle black?” he jokes.

“Fair enough,” I smile.

I’m suddenly at ease. I know that Tristan and I are going to be okay. Friends. For real this time. I know that he wasn’t lying when he said that he loved me. And I definitely wasn’t. What happens to love after love? I wonder. Maybe this. This friendship that’s a little bit more than just friendship. Something a little bit deeper. Closer. More unusual.

“Oh hey, you said that you wanted to talk to me about something. Back in the car. What did you want to talk to me about?” I ask.

“Just about us. About how I miss you.”

“You miss me?”

He nods. I feel his gaze on my lips. He takes a step closer to me. I feel his soft breath on my cheek. We’re standing so close to one another that it would require more energy to pull away than to pull closer together. Suddenly, he catches himself.

“You know, I miss being friends. I’m sorry about the masquerade ball. I should’ve told you the truth. I was an asshole for not wanting to take her. That’s why I’m not rushing the frat. I don’t want to be that guy.”

I nod.

The moment passes. I take a step back. The magnetic force pulling us close together, into a kiss, vanishes.

“Okay, I’ll see you at home,” I say and turn to walk to the ticket counter.

Tristan grabs my hand. He pulls me close to him.

His eyes search mine.

He pushes my hair out of my face and kisses me.

Tristan presses his lips onto mine. Softly at first. As if he’s asking permission. It takes me a moment to realize what’s going on. When I do, I kiss him back.

The fire between us gets stronger.

He runs his tongue across mine.

I bury my hands in his hair.

He wraps his arms around my waist. He searches for the place where my shirt ends and then grabs my back with his hand. The touch of his skin on mine exhilarating. Shivers run down my whole body. I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I kiss him harder and he breathes air into my lungs.

“Please don’t take the train,” he whispers. “Come home with me.”

We kiss for a few more moments. It isn’t awkward like most first kisses. Tristan knows just how to kiss me. He knows that I love feeling his breath on my neck. He knows that I love when he nibbles at my earlobes. He knows that I love it when he buries his hands in my hair and pulls on it lightly. And he knows a lot more things than this. A lot more than what we can do in a public train station, even if it is deserted.

We hold hands and kiss all the way back to the car. I don’t remember agreeing to not take the train, but that hardly matters. He opens the car door for me and continues to kiss me as I get into the seat. I watch him run around the car and hop in the driver’s side.

“I forgot how good you smell,” he says, inhaling the air.

I laugh. He hasn’t spoken to me like this in a long time. I look at him. It’s as if he’s enchanted.

“It’s probably just my shampoo.” I shrug and touch my hair instinctively.

Tristan looks me over up and down, as if he’s performing some sort of complicated analysis in his head. Then he grabs my head and pulls me toward his nose. Gently.

“Hey!” I pull away, but not before he inhales me.

“Your hair smells nice; raspberry, right?”

I nod.

“But no, that’s not it.” Tristan shakes his head.

“There’s this powerful smell of vanilla and something else,” he adds.

Finally, I give in. I smile and admit that it’s my perfume. Victoria Secret’s Noir Tease.

“Noir Tease? Really? Alice Summer, oh my!” he jokes.

I point to the source of the scent. My wrists. He picks up my hands with his and brings them to his mouth. Carefully, he kisses one wrist and then the other.

“And when did you start wearing perfume?” he asks.

“About a month ago.” I shrug. “It smelled nice. Plus, it comes with this little pump. I hate to admit it, but I feel like a real woman using the little pump to put on perfume.”

“I love it,” he says.

He kisses me on the mouth again, parting my lips with his tongue. At first, the kiss is reserved. Chaste. Nice. But it quickly starts morphing into something else. A fire starts to build somewhere deep within me. I want to rip off his clothes and press his body against mine. Tristan’s breathing quickens. When my hand brushes against his leg, I can tell that he’s getting really excited.

His hands run down my shirt and then go underneath. Flesh to flesh. My breaths speed up along with my heartbeat. With one quick motion, he unfastens my bra and my breasts are freed. His hand brushes along my belly button and then goes up. Higher and higher.

“Wait,” I whisper. He doesn’t stop immediately.

“Wait, wait,” I say louder and pull away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked with a deeply disappointed look on his face.

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Not a thing. Except that I don’t want to do it here. We’re not in high school anymore. We have our own place.”

I wait for him to get mad, but he just shrugs. Nods.

“Are you sure? How about for old times’ sake?” he asks.

I shake my head no, trying to fit the clasps of my bra back together.

In high school, we used to do it all the time in cars. His car. My car. Our friends’ cars. There were many discreet places where teenagers had sex late at night, in cars. Our high school’s parking lot. Other high schools’ parking lots. Elementary and middle school parking lots. The library parking lot. Empty office buildings’ parking lot.

We’ve spent many hours in empty parking lots. Sometimes with friends. Drinking if one of us was able to score some beer or wine. Sometimes with our significant others.

“Hey do you remember that library parking lot near my house?” Tristan asks.

“Which time?” I ask.

We spent many long evenings there. Unlike the office and the school parking lots, the library was almost never patrolled. It was Tristan’s and mine little secret, too. We didn’t dare share it with any of our friends out of fear that word would get out and our private spot would become public knowledge.

“Hey, remember what happened to Rachel Prince?” he asks.

“How could I forget?” I laugh. “Whenever I think about having sex in a car, I think about her.”

“Really?” he scrunches up his face in disgust. “And how often do you think about having sex in cars?”

“Okay, that came out wrong.” I smile. “You know what I mean.”

Rachel Prince was in our grade and we were all close friends in 11^th grade. A cop caught her and her boyfriend at the time having sex in an empty office park. But instead of just letting them go with a warning or giving them a citation, he made them get out of the car and stand next to it completely naked while he looked through their identification. When it was 20 degrees outside!

“At least they were still wearing their shoes,” Tristan jokes.

Rachel’s incident went around school like a scary story intended only for teenagers. Almost everyone, it seemed, stopped messing around for a couple of weeks. Long enough for the shock to wear off and the hormones to kick in, I guess.

“I can’t believe that he actually took them to the station and made them wait there for their parents to pick them up. What an asshole.” Tristan shakes his head.

“At least they got to put their clothes back on,” I say.

“I didn’t give it much thought at the time. But I think what that cop did was probably illegal. I mean, he can’t just make a 16-year-old girl stand naked outside and look at her without breaking some sort of law. Right?”

I have no idea. It does sound like it should be illegal.

“Don’t you think we were lucky?” I ask. “That nothing like that ever happened to us?”

He nods. “Really lucky. We didn’t even have any close calls!”

“Oh my God.” Tristan takes his eyes off the road and turns to me.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh my God, I want to have you right now, Alice. It’s been way too long.”

“Watch the road!” I say turning his face back away from me.

“Are you sure we can’t pull over somewhere? It’ll be fun,” he pleads.

I want him too. I want to kiss again. I want to bury my hands in his hair. Kiss his belly button. And more. But I stay firm.

“No.” I shake my head. “It’s cold. We have two great beds to choose from. And I want to take a shower. Wash Simon and this whole night off me.”

Then I give it another thought. That’s not right. The night has actually ended way better than I’d expected.

“Well, not the whole night,” I add.

“Fine.” He shrugs. “You’re right. It’ll be more special at home.”