The earth moved sixty seconds after I grabbed the Australian surf god’s cock.

I mean, I was expecting it to be good. You don’t drag a twenty-five-year-old Australian surf god back to your shitty hostel room expecting the experience to suck, right? Shane had everything I was looking for on the last night of my New Zealand escape: abs flatter than his surfboard; a naughty glint in his eye; and a slow, deep drawl that made my toes curl. He was perfect.

We’d both been at the hostel in Christchurch for three days. On the first night, we chatted in the kitchen while our ramen noodles simmered. On the second night, we went out with a bunch of British students and ended up drunk and dirty dancing in a bar. I would have hooked up with him then, but he walked me back to the hostel at four a.m. and took off with his friends to surf. Waves before babes, I guess. Plus, we were both sleeping in the group dorm room and silent bunk-bed sex, while it can be kind of kinky, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

For my last night I upgraded to a double room (still had the bunk beds, but at least we’d be the only ones in there), dumped our cheap-ass noodles into the same pot, and we ate outside under the stars. I brought the wine and he brought the condoms. It was backpacker romance at its finest. We laughed, we drank, we stumbled back to my room in a lip lock, and at exactly 9:47 p.m. I snaked my hand down the front of his pants to find out what Shane the Australian surfer was packing down there.

The good news? It was like a sea serpent on steroids. (In a good way.)

The bad news? At 9:48 a massive earthquake rocked Christchurch. The earth moved, all right, but his dick never even made it out of his pants.

The sound came first. A deep rumbling, like a train passing by, which was weird since I knew damn well there were no trains anywhere near this hostel. So I noticed it, sort of, but then my fingers brushed the tip of Shane’s dick and he groaned in my ear, pushing out all other noises and thoughts.

Then the shaking started, just a little rocking at first, nothing serious. The cheap metal bunk bed hopped, like someone was bouncing on the top bunk, and scooted an inch or two across the floor.

“What the fuck?” Shane removed his lips from my neck and glanced up at me, his mouth hanging open. “Is that…?”

Then shit got serious. The bed jumped into the air, crashed down, and jumped again. The metal frame vibrated, and the rumbling noise was drowned out by glass smashing as the TV rocked off the table across the room and hit the floor. I tried to sit up, but Shane lost his balance and fell across me, trapping me on the bed as it bucked up and down. The windows shattered, sending slivers of glass flying, and he swore in my ear as they bit into his bare back. My face stung and I buried it in his shoulder, then screamed and grabbed onto the first thing I could find.

Which happened to be his rapidly shrinking penis.

“Fuck!” he screamed. “FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

He tried to roll off me, but the bed was rocking so hard it skidded all the way across the room, before slamming into the door, trapping us inside. The lights flickered a few times and went out, leaving us in total darkness. I let go of Shane’s mangled love stick and grabbed onto his shoulder instead, pulling him into me, needing to feel something solid, even if it was 220 pounds of surfer crushing the breath out of my lungs.

His back and shoulders were slippery, and it was too dark to tell if it was sweat or blood from the shattered windows. My hands slid over his skin, desperately searching for purchase, desperately hoping for at least the illusion of safety.

The ratty wooden dresser crashed to the floor, sending my books and toiletries flying. Shane grunted and tried to roll off me again, maybe to avoid squashing me, maybe to save what was left of his manhood, but the earth bucked underneath us, and he ended up right back where he started.

It was hopeless. We were totally helpless. We couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t control anything at all.

Adrenaline flooded through me, hitting my system so fast I felt nauseous. My heart tried to punch its way out of my chest, and I swear I could hear the blood racing through me, swooshing in time with my insane heartbeat and drowning out the “shit shit shit” that Shane was chanting in my ear.

The building creaked and plaster from the ceiling crashed down around us. The bed slid back across the room, metal legs squealing across the floor, and we hit the wall so hard I heard a crack.

I was going to die. The building was ancient and neglected and there was no way it would hold up. It would collapse, crushing the flimsy bunk bed like a tin can, and I would die. They’d find me, half-naked and entwined with an Australian surfer. We’d probably be so flattened and deeply fused together they’d have to cut us apart and wouldn’t be able to tell which parts were his and which were mine. My parents would bury his arm in Boston and my legs would turn to dust in the Australian outback, or wherever the fuck he was from.

I was going to die, and all I had to show for my life was a long line of fuck-ups. Classes I failed because I was too hungover to get my ass out of bed. Guys I dumped after one semester and then promptly erased from my phone and my mind. A closet full of half-finished craft projects at my parents’ house.

Hell, I was supposed to be on a plane home tomorrow to start the fall semester at the University of Colorado, but I’d decided sometime between the first pot of ramen noodles and Shane feeling me up in the bar that I was going to change my ticket at the airport and fly to Bali instead. I had enough money in my bank account to last another few months, and there wasn’t anything waiting for me at home except my roommate, Piper, and her psycho cat.

I was a college dropout on the fast track to sad cat lady, and it wasn’t even my fucking cat. And now I was going to die.

I closed my eyes, clutched Shane as hard as I could, and tried to block out the noise and the rocking and the fear. I tried to focus on something good: summer at the Cape with my sister when we were little, staying up way too late and laughing with Piper in the dorms our freshman year, sitting on a rooftop deck with a cold beer and watching the sun set over the Flatirons in Boulder. I held onto the vision, praying to whoever was listening that I’d be back there soon. That I’d get another chance to do things better.

And then, suddenly, there was silence. The earth stopped moving. One last clump of plaster hit the floor, and Shane stopped swearing in my ear. He lifted his head and looked around, still holding onto me, neither of us quite able to believe we might actually be back in control of our own bodies.

We listened hard for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Nothing.

Shane groaned and pushed himself off me. He sat and put his head in his hands, rubbing his face like he was trying to wake himself. I pulled myself up, hands shaking as I fumbled with the zipper on my hoody, and peered through the gloom. Our room was trashed. The floor was covered in plaster, splintered pieces of the dresser, and glittering pieces of glass. Shane started to get up.

“Careful of your feet,” I said.

He grunted and grabbed a blanket that was hanging off the top bunk, folding it a few times and putting it on the ground so he had something to stand on.

“You okay?” he asked. His voice was hoarse and distant.

I cleared my throat. “I think so.”

“Cool.” He surveyed the room and shook his head. “Fuck, man. I should go check on my boys. You’ll be all right?”

I fought the panic clawing its way through my chest and the urge to beg him to stay, because what did I expect? That a guy I’d known three days was going to stick around and take care of me, just because we’d almost made each other come?

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“Nice,” he said. “You’re a cool girl, Natasha. Maybe see you later.”

“It’s Natalie,” I whispered, but he was too busy shuffling across the room on his blanket to hear me. And then he was gone.

I huddled on the bunk, waiting and hoping the lights would come back on, and I made myself a promise. I was going to be on that plane when it left tomorrow. I was going back to Boulder, back to school, and I was going to kick life in the ass. No more hangovers, no more hook-ups, and no more unfinished business. It was time to figure out my purpose in life and get my shit together.

I’d been given a second chance, and I was going to make it count.