"This is the address her roommate gave me." I double-check my text messages again to verify it.

"There are a bunch of cars here," Nate notes. "It looks like they're having a party."

"I love a good party. Let's go say hello." Angelo is out of the car before Nate or I can object.

"So, what's your plan?" Nate asks as we get to the door.

Angelo turns around and looks at me. "You have a speech, right?"

"Do I need a speech?"

"Oh my God. I already rang the doorbell, Gabe!" Angelo says. "We just did the big dramatic romantic comedy chase-down-the-girl scene. You have to have a speech!"

"I didn't know I needed a speech!"

Nate scoffs. "Seriously? Even I know that. You have to have the speech that gets the girl. Or, like, a song. Do you have a boom box? We can do a Say Anything moment."

"What?? No, I don't have a boom box. Who carries a boom box around? Who even owns a boom box anymore?"

The door swings wide open and Purity's roommate stands there clutching a handful of something in her hand. "I'm sorry, what are you holding?" I ask, distracted.

"Sage," she answers, looking down at the bundle tied with string.

"Is something on fire?" Nate asks. "I smell smoke."

"Oh, there's a bonfire in the yard," Luna explains casually. "You got here just in time for the naked dancing."

"There's naked dancing?" Angelo asks. "This totally sounds like my kind of a party."

"Purity is dancing naked?" I growl.

Angelo and Nate push past me through the doorway. "Gabe doesn’t have a speech, by the way," Angelo calls.

"They say I need to give a speech to get the girl," I explain.

Luna scowls. "You don't have a speech?"

"Damn it. You think I need one, too?"

"You're a writer," she says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "You didn't write a poem or anything? Dedicate a book to her, maybe?"

"That would have been good," Angelo says. "He decorated his house for her."

Luna furrows her brow. "Interior decorating isn't exactly a romantic gesture."

"Oh, I think interior design is very romantic," Angelo notes.

"Lunnnnnnaaaaa!" Purity's voice echoes through the house. "I don't know what it is about the whole dancing-naked-around-a-bonfire thing, but it's really freeing! We should do this all the time!"

Luna turns toward me. "I am not responsible for any of this, by the way. I told her before not to eat the brownies."

"What brownies?" I ask.

"Oh, you two might want to avert your eyes, by the way," Luna says, pointing at Nate and Angelo.

Purity appears in the front room, stark naked, her arms wide. "It's so nice outside – Hey, why is the door open? Gabe? Who are you guys??"

Angelo laughs and Nate looks at the ceiling. "I thought you were joking about the naked dancing thing," Nate mutters.

"Nope," Luna answers back. "And your girlfriend is worse than my mom and her friends, by the way. I tried to get her to wear clothes, but fabric harshes her buzz, man." She emphasizes her words with air quotes.

Angelo makes a show of covering his eyes but turns to face me, raising his eyebrows. "Well, congratulations on that…" he says, his eyes wide as he mouths the words, "She's totally hot."

Nate elbows him. "Don't be lewd."

"Just because I don't want to touch her tits, doesn't mean they're not pretty," Angelo declares. "She has, like, an early Britney Spears thing going on. Definitely the body."

"You should have seen her the day she wore the schoolgirl skirt," Luna chimes in.

"Stop looking at my girlfriend's tits," I growl, peeling off my t-shirt and crossing the room to put it on Purity.

Purity looks up at me – as much as she can open her heavy eyes, anyway. "I'm not your girlfriend," she protests.

"What the hell else should I call you?"

"Your student??" she asks impudently.

"You're not my student because I'm not your professor anymore," I tell her. "In fact, I'm not a professor at all."

"They fired you?"

"I resigned."

She pulls her lower lip between her teeth. "Shit."

"This is the worst speech ever," Angelo groans.

"You're a terrible romantic lead," Nate agrees.

"Shut up, both of you," I retort.

"Try using a line from a movie," Luna suggests. "Maybe something from When Harry Met Sally."

"Can we get a few minutes alone?" I yell.

"No," Angelo scoffs. "That's not how this works. You do the big speech in front of all of us."

"I kind of want to hear it," Nate agrees.

A group of very naked, very boisterous, very high middle-aged women materializes in the room.

"Wooooooooo, now this is just what the doctor ordered!"

"Luna Moon, did you call for strippers?? I'm not going to participate in the objectification of these poor, hot men!"

"Oh, shut up, Jezebel! I'll objectify them!" one of the naked women yells. "Take your clothes off, boys!"

"Guys, this is my mom and her friends," Luna explains. "Mom and friends, this is Purity's boyfriend and – actually, I don't know who the two of you are."

"Oh, we didn't introduce ourselves!" Angelo exclaims. "This is Nate. He's Gabe's brother – and I'm Angelo, Nate's husband."

"So you're not strippers?" one of the ladies asks.

Nate snorts. "Angelo has been dying to dance naked around a fire. I'm sure he'll be perfectly happy to take everything off for you."

"Enough!" I bellow. "I came here to say something, damn it!"

"Is he normally this aggressive?" one of the ladies asks.

"Meditation would really help with that," another agrees.

"He does get kind of tightly wound sometimes," Purity notes.

I raise my eyebrows. "I get tightly wound?"

Purity shrugs. "You kind of need to chill out. Just a little, I mean. It's not good for your heart to get all upset like that. Your blood pressure rises, and –"

Nate chortles. "At your age, you really should be careful."

"So no one is going to give me five minutes to talk to Purity alone?" I ask, exasperated.

"I really kind of want to see how this pans out, personally," Angelo admits.

"If she dumps your ass, I want to witness it first-hand," Nate adds.

"I don't know what's happening here, but does anyone want another brownie?" one of the naked ladies asks.

"Oh, I'll have one!" Angelo exclaims.

"That's it! I'll say what I have to say right here." I take Purity's face in my hands. "Purity, I know this hasn't been the most conventional relationship ever."

"Ohhhhh. Is this the hot professor you were talking about??" another naked woman asks. "Oh, honey, whatever he did, you should take him back. With those abs, he could sin a lot and still be forgiven."

"He didn't tell me about his ex-wife," Purity stage-whispers.

"What about the ex-wife? Did he kill her or something?"

"Are you crazy? No, I didn't kill her," I answer. "She ran off with her yoga instructor."

"Awwww," comes a chorus of voices.

"It was a long time ago," I tell them. "And I'm not broken-hearted over it."

"He's saying he's emotionally available," one of the ladies chimes in.

"If you don't want him, Purity, I'm single," another one adds.

"I mean, that's not all that happened," Purity adds. "We got caught having sex on the desk in his office – by my father and my sort-of fiancé."

"You have a fiancé?" one of the women asks.

"Did we know she had a fiancé?" Angelo asks. "I don't like this."

"He wasn't her fiancé," I snap. "Her father had an arrangement with him."

Purity snorts loudly. "Yeah, they definitely had an arrangement."

"The fiancé was fucking her father," Luna explains.

"What??" I ask, looking at Purity.

"Oh, this is good," one of the ladies says. "I feel like we need popcorn."

"Everything got so crazy," Purity says, looking up at me. "I found out about my father and Justin, and then Luna invited me home for the holidays, and I just needed some time to think because I didn't know how I felt about everything, and –"

"I love you, Purity."

"You do?"

"You're the worst fucking person in the world for me," I tell her.

"This is not how these speeches are supposed to go," Angelo groans.

"Shut up, Angelo," I warn. "I mean it, Purity. Everything about you is wrong. You're too goddamned young, and you're just starting your life. You have everything in the world to experience and a million places to see and things to do. I knew you when you were a kid, and I was your professor – I was responsible for teaching you, not taking advantage of you –"

"One of us should bail him out," Nate whispers. "He's crashing and burning. It's embarrassing."

"Nate, I will kill you," I threaten.

"The level of aggression in this room is really high," one of the women notes. "It's making me very uncomfortable."

"It's all the testosterone," another says. "And I'm more than comfortable enjoying the testosterone in this room."

"Everything about you is wrong," I say, talking over them. "You're not at all the person I should be with, not on paper anyway. But none of that matters because I love you. I know you've been sheltered – but I want to be the person to show you the world. I've been around long enough to know what I want, damn it. And what I want is you."

"Okay, he floundered in the beginning, but he pulled through in the end," Angelo notes.

"Awwww," the chorus of naked ladies adds.

"I know I'm naïve and that I haven't been anywhere or done anything, but I know what I feel for you, Gabe," Purity says. "And I know that I love you. I don't have any doubt about that."

I bring my mouth down hard on hers.

I kiss her right there in front of the people who matter to me – and in front of a bunch of naked women I don't know at all, who hoot and holler like they've never seen anyone kiss before.

When I finally pull away from Purity, she puts her fingers to her lips and giggles. "You know what else I love? Cheese. Cheese is sooooo good."

"I say I love you – and you say you love cheese?"

"I mean, I love you more than cheese, if that helps."

"Apparently you love brownies, too," I add. "And dancing naked around fires."

She pulls me against her. "You should try it sometime."

"Yeah, Hot Professor," one of the ladies quips. "You should try it."

"I'll do it! Give me a brownie and point me in the direction of the fire," Angelo declares.