Watching Nina’s face as she takes in the view from my building’s roof terrace is almost as fulfilling as watching her take in the view of my body. You can’t fake that kind of appreciation. I don’t think. I’m so glad the hipsters aren’t up here tonight, it’s just us and the café string lights and the moon and the stars and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline and the street noise and the voices of people shouting from the building across from me.

“Wow.”

“Not bad, huh? I never get tired of it.”

“So this is what people do, huh? Ride their motorcycles around Brooklyn, have sex in their awesome lofts and then come up to their roof decks to enjoy the view?”

I grin and pull her to me, stand behind her with my arms wrapped around her. “We do. Sometimes.” I kiss her neck. “Other times we’ll stroll around Cobble Hill and go to the flea market, and then have sex in my loft.”

“I’d like that. What about other times?”

“Other times we’ll take a drive out to Connecticut and then have sex in the back seat of my car like teenagers.”

“You like Connecticut?”

“I like driving. And I’d like to have sex in the back seat of my car with you like teenagers.”

“That’s a lot of sex.”

“You’re a lot of sexy.”

She giggles, lowering her head and shaking it. She really has no idea how hot she is. I’ve met exactly zero other girls like that around here.

“Have you lived in New York all your life?”

“Changing the subject, huh? I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life.”

“Really?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No, I guess not. But most people I know here moved from somewhere else.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Did you like living in Indiana?”

“I love Bloomington.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s the perfect sized town, I think.”

“Why’d you move?”

“When you’ve been in love in a small town, and the person you thought you’d be with there for the rest of your life leaves without you, it’s pretty hard to see every place you ever went to with him every single day. I stuck it out for a couple of years, because I was too depressed to go anywhere else, but…I needed a change of scenery.”

“Well you got one.”

“I sure did.”

I hate that some kid got to love this girl and then broke her heart so many years before I met her. I don’t know what I’ll have to say or do to get her to feel whatever it is she felt back then when she wasn’t afraid of this kind of thing, but this summer I’m going to try everything. Even when it scares me.

I guess I was feeling insecure about the fact that she’s been in love before and I haven’t. But there are a lot of things that I’ve done that she hasn’t, so maybe that balances the scales somehow. I don’t know for sure what falling in love feels like, I just know that I’m starting to feel like the center of my universe is shifting in a way that it hasn’t before. With someone who isn’t family, anyway.

I ask her why she decided to move to Brooklyn, and I know the answer as soon as she blushes and covers her mouth, shaking her head as she laughs.

“It’s silly,” she says.

“Tell me.”

“Because of the HBO show Girls.”

So many young women have moved here because of that show. I’m not complaining. It’s not what I would have guessed for Nina, but it’s not disappointing either. Usually these girls live in Williamsburg or Greenpoint and work at some hipster coffee place. That she ended up in Carroll Gardens teaching first grade and dating an older principal while wondering what it would be like to be Lena Dunham just makes her uniquely adorable and awesome.

Just when I’m thinking about how there’s something about her that makes me feel like a boy who needs to dance around to impress her and like a man who wants to take care of her at the same time. If I told Dr. Glass this, she would probably shit herself. Not because it’s a good way to feel, but because it’s too soon for this feeling to be real.

Fuck that.

What’s wrong with now?

I’ve waited twenty-eight years for this.

I can’t say that I was looking for it, and maybe I was trying to avoid it, but I know I’ve found something in Nina.

I know what lust feels like. There’s something here on top of that, or beneath it or entwined with it. It’s not about closing a deal with this woman, it’s about opening things up and making something big and beautiful.

Speaking of making something big and beautiful—she turns me around so that I’m leaning back against the railing and she’s pressed up against my chest, looking past me to the view, while her hand slowly reaches down the front of my sweatpants.

I remember the first time I viewed the loft and came up to this roof deck, saw the view and it took my breath away and I instantly knew: Mine.

I have to have this.

But that was nothing compared to the view of Nina’s sweet face as she’s gently stroking me, and the feeling I have of wanting this.

Mine.