That night in her dorm room, he sat down on her bed and patted the space next to him. She joined him, wrapping her arms around him and planting a wet kiss on his neck.

“I read a sex manual today,” he said.

“What?” She jerked away from him. “Why?”

“Because it’s your turn tonight.” He reached for the hem of her T-shirt, but she stopped him.

“No,” she whined.

“Annie.” He held her by the shoulders. “Do this for me if not for yourself, all right?”

“What if it doesn’t work? You’ll be disappointed in me… You’ll…”

“I’m not going to be disappointed in you or stop loving you or anything else you’re worried about. It’ll be fine. But you have to relax.”

She bit her lip. “Turn off the light,” she said.

He did as he was told, and then returned to the bed where he undressed her, rather methodically, and sat behind her with his back against the wall.

“What are we doing? Aren’t you going to take off your clothes, too?” she asked.

“Nope.” He spread his legs wide and pulled her back against his chest. The illustration from the manual was burned into his brain. All day he’d thought of how it would feel to hold Annie this way, to touch her, to finally feel her respond. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her shoulder. She was shivering.

“This is nice,” she said. “You could just hold me like this. I’d rather do this than…”

“Shh. Rest your legs against mine. That’s it.”

“This is stupid. I feel ridiculous.”

He stroked her arms, her shoulders. “You have to tell me what feels good,” he said, moving his hands to her breasts. “Let me know if anything hurts.”

“That doesn’t hurt.” She giggled and seemed to relax in his arms, but she went rigid once he lowered his hands to her thighs.

“Come on, Annie, relax.”

“I’m trying. I just don’t like all the attention being on me. I don’t see why… Oh.”

His fingertips had found their mark. Annie drew in her breath and her legs suddenly opened wider, pressing hard against his own, her hands grasping the denim that covered his thighs. He slipped a finger of his left hand inside her and she shuddered.

“This feels good to me, too, Annie,” he said, encouraging her, but it was unnecessary. She was letting herself go, letting herself take. When she came, he had one sudden pulse of terror that she might be faking, but then the waves of contractions circled his finger, and he felt her go limp.

That night was a turning point for them, not just that it made sex better—she continued to refer to sex as a “by-product” of being close—but that it shifted their relationship to a different plane, one in which Annie allowed things to be done for her. The addiction, though still an addiction, was mutual now.

His family adored her. He and Annie visited Philadelphia twice that year, and Annie slipped right into that female dominated household as easily as if she’d been born into it.

“Your family’s so warm, Paul,” she told him. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

She would not take him to meet her own parents, however, even though they lived no more than a half hour’s drive from school. After much arm-twisting on his part, she finally agreed to take him home with her on her father’s fiftieth birthday. “You talk about him all the time,” he said. “I want to meet him.”

She did talk about her father a great deal, her voice often swelling with her pride in his accomplishments as a physician. She worked for a month on his birthday gift—gold cufflinks she had designed herself—showing Paul the progress she was making on them each time he came over.

Paul held the small package containing the cufflinks on his lap as he and Annie turned onto the tree-lined street leading to her house. She had been quiet during the entire trip, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel of her red convertible.

“What time is it?” she asked, as they passed one enormous mansion after another.

Paul looked at his watch. “Ten past four.”

“Oh, God. My mother will throw a fit.”

“We’re not that late.”

“You don’t understand. She has this thing about time. When I was little and she promised to take me someplace, she wouldn’t do it if I was even a minute late getting ready.”

Paul frowned at her. “You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “Let’s tell them your last name is Macy,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“Just for fun.”

He stared at her, confused. “It’s not my name,” he said.

She stopped at a stop sign and looked over at him. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Paul, but my parents are very prejudiced.” She lowered her hands to her lap and began kneading them together. “Do you understand? I mean, unless you’re just like them, they… They’ll like you better if they think you’re…”

His cheeks burned. “Do you want me to lie about what my parents do for a living, too?”

She looked down at her hands. “This is why I didn’t want you to meet them.”

“I won’t lie, Annie.” Back then he never did. She said nothing, pressing her foot once more on the gas pedal.

“I thought you loved me,” he said.

“I do. I just want them to love you too.” She turned into a long driveway, and he caught a glimpse of a Tudor-style house far down the expanse of manicured lawn before it disappeared behind a row of pines. “They have my life planned out for me, Paul,” she said. “I’m supposed to be majoring in something useful—we had a terrible fight when I told them I wanted to be an artist—and I’m supposed to marry one of the eligible sons of their elite little circle of friends. Do you understand now why I didn’t want to bring you here?”

Yes, he understood, but she was a little late in telling him her reasons.

An elderly woman dressed in a dark uniform and white apron let them in. She kissed Annie’s cheek and led them into the living room. “Your mum and dad will be down shortly, dear.” The woman left the room, and Annie smiled at him nervously. He shivered. The living room was huge and cold, like a cavern.

“You get used to it,” Annie said. She was perspiring despite the chill.

Her father walked into the room first. He was a thin, good-looking man, tan and fit and stern. His thick hair was mostly gray. He bussed his daughter’s cheek.

“Daddy, this is Paul,” Annie said, avoiding the surname issue altogether.

“Paul…?” Dr. Chase shook his hand.

“Macelli,” Paul said, the name sounding suddenly dirty to his ears. He shook the man’s hand with a sense of defeat, imagining that he was already being ruled out as a serious candidate for the hand of his daughter.

Annie’s mother made more of an attempt to feign warmth, but Paul felt the coldness in her hand when she touched her fingertips to his. She was a plain-looking woman, perhaps even homely, despite the heavy use of cosmetics. Her red hair was drawn back under serious control into a bun.

He could barely eat the slab of roast beef a second servant put on his plate after they’d sat down to dinner. He didn’t balk at the probing questions about his family, however. Instead, he began to enjoy them, making it clear to Annie’s parents that they had the son of blue-collar workers eating off their fine china, perhaps even sleeping with their daughter. He talked at length about the fireworks business and he told them about the time his mother cleaned the house of the mayor of Philadelphia.

During dessert—a birthday cake in the shape of a tennis racket—Annie presented her father with the set of gold cufflinks. “Why, thank you, princess.” Dr. Chase leaned over to kiss Annie’s cheek and then set the box next to his plate. Paul had the feeling the cufflinks would find themselves in the back of a drawer somewhere, if not in the trash.

“Annie’s jewelry instructor says she’s the best student he’s ever had,” Paul said.

“Paul.” Annie blushed.

Dr. Chase looked up from his cake. “Well, Annie’s quite bright when she puts her mind to it,” he said. “She could be anything she wants to be. She has the brains to do a lot more than twist little pieces of metal into jewelry.”

Paul glanced at Annie. He saw the shine of tears in her eyes.

Dr. Chase set down his fork and looked at his watch. “I’m going to have to run, kids.”

“But Daddy,” Annie said, “it’s your birthday.” Her voice came very close to breaking. Paul heard the splintery little catch in the huskiness, but her parents didn’t seem to notice.

Her father stood up and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. He nodded toward Paul. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Macelli. I’m sure we’ll all think of you the next time we see a good show of fireworks.”

Paul and Annie left shortly after dinner, and Annie was crying by the time they reached her car.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“It’s not you,” she said. “I always leave there in tears.”

“I hate them. I’m sorry, Annie, but they’re abominable.”

“Don’t say that, Paul, please. It doesn’t make me feel any better. They’re all I’ve got. You have your sisters and everyone, and I’ve got them. Period.” She opened her car door and looked up at the house. “He never has time for me. He didn’t when I was little and he doesn’t now.”

They spent the summer after their freshman year in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Paul living with a friend he’d known from high school, Annie with two girls from Boston College. Paul worked as a waiter during the day and in the summer stock production of Carousel at night, while Annie worked in a gallery, where she learned the basics of stained glass. It was a wonderful summer, both of them doing things they loved and spending their free time together. They were just nineteen, but Paul felt a maturity in their relationship. They talked about the future, about having children, little red haired Italians they would name Guido and Rosa to torment her parents. “Guido and Rozer,” Annie would say, in her Boston accent, which sounded strange to Paul’s ears now that they were no longer in New England.