But to talk about sex, now, in this context, with this girlfriend, is to rapidly lose that focus. You can be such good friends with a boy. You can know every inch of him. To be Vanessa in this moment is to be a wingman. Is that it? Is that what it feels like? He's grinning like a schoolboy, and Olivia is downing her vodka and shuddering to herself and leaning across to kiss Dan, her friend. Her best friend, her wingman. And everything is soft, and good, and a little terrifying. But they are friends. And when Olivia leans across the circle and kisses her, she tastes good, and Dan watches with the sweetest, youngest face. The sound in the room warps around it, at first, because now he is watching you kiss a girl, but by the end of the kiss the gravity is settled and you can look at them again, and smile. And when Olivia leans back, having blessed you both, and smiles permission at Dan Humphrey, and he leans nervously across and kisses you, it's both precisely the way you imagined and entirely something new, and good, and soft. And terrifying.

It's not that it was too trashy and it's not that it wasn't trashy enough. It's that it was so real. You probably had sex in high school and it was probably scary and it was probably like a dare that went too far, like that. The word is brinksmanship. One of my favorite words in the English language, because without it nothing good happens, and nothing bad happens, and nothing scary ever happens. And generally the only good things are the scary ones, but you won't know for sure until the dust has settled, and even then you can't be sure if it was really a mistake-mistake.

The unbelievable glee and luck and gratitude shifting across Dan's face, the surprise Vanessa feels when her body flows to this like water, the strength Olivia feels for finding a cliff and choosing to jump off: This is what sex should be like, every time. Like a gift you didn't even earn, in a wilderness country without any laws at all, when you realize nobody is watching. And of all the dumb reasons to have sex in college, especially for girls, this is it: All of them. Taking the implication as the idea that everybody has a threesome in college is ludicrous, but all of us do this. And spend the rest of our lives trying to get that feeling back again: When you could have whatever you like.

Shorty you're the hottest, love the way you drop it
Your brain's so good I could have sworn you went to college...