He also made a mental note to tell Taylor he didn't want to participate in their ugly date contest any more. He and his old buddies from high school still managed to get together annually for what they called Testosterfest. Four days of hard playing, hard drinking, and hard loving. They alternated each year between bringing an attractive girl and an ugly girl to see who could win the secret prize for bringing the ugliest or the prettiest date. The girls never had any idea what they were up to, so it never dawned on him it was cruel.

She amazed him, once again. Rhees had given him yet another reason to be ashamed, and he didn't know what to say. He just stared at her, wondering if it was really possible for anyone to be so . . . good.

"I'll walk you home." It would give him a chance to spend more time with her, to watch her facial expressions, to listen to her stories and her laughter, if only for the few minutes it would take to get her home.

"No. Go back and finish the movie. I'm just being silly."

He scowled at her. He thought he might be getting used to being rejected, but he didn't like it. "I don't want to finish the movie. I want to walk you home." He grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her until she finally gave in. They walked by the local ice cream shop, an excuse to extend the time he could spend in her company.

"I want ice cream. Come on." He took her hand and pulled her up the steps of the shop, and they ordered cones. They found a table on the small deck in front of the store and started eating. The warm night made eating them more like keeping up with the melting drips and Paul watched, enthralled, for several seconds as her tongue swirled around the cone before he had to stop watching and think about something else.

"Why haven't you slept with anyone?" The question had been on his mind, a lot, but he surprised himself by asking so bluntly.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I just decided to wait until I get married."

"That's what Tracy said, but . . ."

"It's a long story and very boring."

He looked down. "I'm sure it's not surprising that I, of all people, would have trouble comprehending why anyone would put it off." He didn't doubt she knew about his life choices. He'd purposely flaunted it in her face, but for some reason, he felt ashamed to admit it to her right now. His gaze slowly rose to meet hers. He wanted to know.

"Oh gosh." She sighed. "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you." She smiled and gave him a look, giving him the opportunity to change his mind. He didn't.

"When I was sixteen, my parents finally allowed me to date."

"Sixteen?" He leaned back in his chair, trying to imagine. "My parents never had a say in the matter. I was eleven."

"Eleven?" That shocked her. He shrugged like it wasn't a big deal.

"Yeah, I'll tell you the story someday if you'll continue with yours." He believed he was lying to her. He'd never told anyone about his first time.

"All right. I was sixteen, and there was this boy, Roney. I knew he had a reputation, but he was cute, and he asked me out. We . . . you know, started out slow, holding hands, a good night kiss, the usual stuff." She blushed.

She's actually embarrassed? He had to bite the inside of his cheek to hide his amusement.

"Um, eventually, he tried to get me to make out with him after our dates, in his car . . . and I tried, but the more I tried-the more he wanted. He started wanting to . . . you know . . . but I didn't feel right about it. I felt like things were going too fast, and I wasn't ready. He'd ridicule me and call me a baby-"

"Hi Paul!" a group of girls called from the street as they walked by. He flashed them a quick, annoyed acknowledgement and turned his attention back to Rhees, encouraging her to continue. She frowned and jumped ahead in the story.

"My parents were out one night, and he talked me into showing him my bedroom." She looked guilty and embarrassed again. "He started kissing me, pawing at me-he said he loved me and that if I loved him, I would do it. He pushed me down on the bed and . . ." She went blank for several seconds, completely blank.

"Rhees? You okay?"

She finally snapped out of it, mostly.

"I just couldn't."

She looked sad or bothered about something. She closed her eyes, a noticeably painful memory. "Roney became so angry. He called me frigid, and a few more names before he stormed out, leaving me to hate myself, to cry. I was only sixteen." She tried to smile, but didn't quite manage. "He'd said he loved me and in return, I rejected him. I felt bad about hurting him. I was so confused. I ran after him-I wanted to apologize. I was going to ask him to give me another chance . . . tell him that I'd let him.

"I didn't have a car of my own so I headed to his house on foot. Roney lived about a mile away, and my best friend lived between us." Rhees' expression grew dark. "When I came up on her house, I saw his car parked out front. I thought, 'Oh, poor Roney. I hurt him and now he's begging Kylee to talk to me about it-help him'. I even thought that if I told him in front of Kylee, that I would let him have . . . sex . . . with me-"

She can't even say the word. Paul wondered how anyone her age could still be so awkward with it.

"I thought it would help me. Kylee would be a witness, so I'd have to. I knew she'd be a little shocked. She was religious, but she'd told me several times I was crazy not to do it with Roney-that she would-if she was me, because I already wasn't going to the Celestial Kingdom, that's what they call Mormons' heaven. And she said if I ever did get baptized, my sins would be washed away, anyway.

"She always told me how lucky I was that I could have all the sex I wanted and she wished she was a non-member so she could too and just get baptized later." Rhees smiled again, but Paul watched quietly. He already knew how the story would end.

"It was late, so I sneaked around to her bedroom window-I should have known, but it just shows how stupid I am. I reached to tap on the window, but there they were." She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. They stayed shut for too long.

"That kind of thing happens every day. You can't let it ruin your life."

"You think my life is ruined?" She laughed. He stared at her blankly. He thought his life, without sex, would be.

"Yeah, well. My stupidity was too big and obnoxious for me to ignore." Rhees started speaking faster, like she was racing to finish and be done with the story. "I thought he loved me, and I thought I could let him do that to me, and it horrified me to think that I almost did. I mean, I can only give that away once and whoever I give it to is going to be the one I have to remember giving it to for the rest of my life.

"I want it to mean something, not only to me, but I think it should mean something to him too. Like I said, it's a once in a lifetime experience for me-it should mean something to him." Her voice was quiet by the time she repeated her point. They both sat quiet for a while.

"But then, I had to ask, 'How do you know?' How do you know the man you give it to is worth it? Roney said he loved me, and I believed him. The only way I'll ever be able to trust that a man appreciates . . . He's just going to have to say he loves me in front of a preacher." She did the unconvincing laugh thing again. "Apparently, I'm not a good judge of character, so that piece of paper is all I have to go on-to trust."

Her comment about being a poor judge of character made him wince. "I actually get it, I think," Paul said. Her logic was unrealistic, but he understood. They'd finished their ice cream long before, and it had been driving Rhees crazy to have the dirty, sticky napkins on the table. She grabbed them and took them over to the trash receptacle.

By the time she turned back, three girls had run up the stairs, squealing Paul's name enthusiastically. One of the girls, a redhead, sat down on Paul's lap and put her arms around his neck while the other two watched. The redhead said something in his ear. Rhees watched his eyes grow wide, and he smiled at her. He said something back.

Rhees moved closer but felt awkward, not wanting to interfere with any plans he might be making to take this girl into the bathroom, back alley, Frock, or his apartment. She decided to leave him to his friends and started down the steps of the ice cream shop.

"Thanks for the ice cream, Paul. See you tomorrow."

"Danarya, wait!" He said something else to the girl on his lap and stood, abruptly, before the girl had her feet firmly on the ground. She held on to his neck and pressed her body against his while pretending to steady herself, and then she giggled at him.

"I'll see you guys around," he said and ran after Rhees.

"Where're you going? I said I'd walk you home," he called to her.

"I thought you'd rather hang out with your friends."

"Seriously?" His expression matched his tone. He grabbed her hand brusquely and led her into the street, where they turned and headed toward Oceanside. She glanced back at the girls, trying to figure out how she'd misread the situation.

The girls gaped at her, discussing how they hoped Paul would get back to normal, now that he was finally going to get her out of his system.

He stopped at one of the little street-side markets, bought two beers and handed her one without asking if she wanted it. She didn't really want it, but she took it anyway. It seemed easier than turning him down. He grabbed her hand again and they turned the corner and headed east.

"What if you never get married?"

"Are you making fun of me? I know I'm a disappointment to my gender. Every breath I take puts women back years with my old-fashioned ideas, but I can't help it, and as much as I'd like to marry, the sad thing is . . . I probably won't. I'll be twenty-five in a few months."

He stopped in the middle of the road and stared at her, waiting for the punch line.

She laughed and jumped to her own defense. "Where I come from, there's some unwritten rule that the men marry right after their missions, something about unmarried men over twenty-five being a menace to society or something." She raised her eyebrow at him.

"Are you calling me a menace?" He did his one-sided smirk.

"Well, the girls on this island don't seem to think so . . . or maybe they do." She giggled.

He smirked again, considering her comment. "You're still a baby, Rhees."

"I know I am." She meant it differently than he did. "More than half of my high school girlfriends were married by the end of their freshman year of college. The rest all dropped like flies over the next few years. I'm pretty much the last woman standing."

"You must be exaggerating. If it were really true, you'd have been snatched up by now."

She took a long swig of her beer and started walking again and he knew he'd hit a nerve.

"Obviously I've said something wrong."

She shook her head but kept walking. He grabbed her arm and forced her to stop and look at him.

"What?"

She rolled her eyes and tried to make light of it, but he could tell he'd upset her. "Tell me. Please?"

"Where I grew up-it's hard for someone like me. I don't belong."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not Mormon. Almost everyone else is. When I was a kid, it didn't seem to matter as much, but as I got older-my best friend in sixth grade made me take the lessons because her parents found out and wouldn't let her play with me. When I got to the lesson on baptism, I said I wanted to, but my parents wouldn't give their permission. They wanted me to wait until I turned eighteen.

"With that decided, that I wasn't getting baptized, she couldn't associate with me anymore. Since she couldn't be around me, all my other friends slowly drifted away. I guess having to juggle the two of us-'If we invite Rhees, we can't invite Jamie'-they stopped inviting me.

"In eighth grade, one of my teachers brought up the restoration of the priesthood and temple work in class, and the next thing I knew, one of my old friends, Penny, called me the anti-Christ because I wasn't a member, right in front of everyone."

"Private school?" Paul interrupted her.

"No. Public."

"Why the hell are they discussing religion in public school?"

"I don't know." Rhees laughed. It'd happened so often, she'd never thought of it as strange. "I guess since it is mostly Mormon, they kind of forget that the whole world isn't. My mom would often tell my dad and me how her morning staff meetings always seemed to turn into a religious discussion. She'd pretend like she knew what everyone was talking about because she'd learned long before that it wasn't worth it to say anything. My mom was a really nice person. I can picture her sitting through meeting after meeting, squirming, but keeping her mouth shut so she wouldn't offend anyone, even though they were inadvertently offending her."

"Sounds like someone I'm getting to know," Paul said under his breath. His eyes darted to her, briefly.

"I'm not saying everyone was like that-like Penny or Jamie's parents. Most kids were really nice, treated me very kindly. They were polite, but I was an outsider."

"Wow! That's rough."

"We moved to the other side of town just before high school, and I decided to be smarter about it. As long as I went to a few activities and church with them once in a while, they let me feel like I was part of their circle.

"My freshman year of college, I met Sean. He was such a nice guy, not the kind of guy I usually found myself attracted to." Rhees paused, as if she was putting her foot in her mouth. She glanced at Paul suddenly and then down. She blushed. "Not that any of the guys I ever crushed on returned the favor . . . but Sean was so sweet.

"I worked at a little snack bar at the university. I worked the boring shift so I didn't have much to do. He'd stop in and hang out with me, keep me company. After forever, he finally asked me out, and we dated a few times. He had this goal, he wanted to wait. He'd never kissed a girl and didn't plan to until it was 'over the altar' at his wedding. So we never had any physical contact . . . I thought it was so refreshing-sweet, I mean it was sweet."

She'd enjoyed their carefree relationship-free of all the physical complications that made her last relationship fall apart. "He asked me to marry him-we got along so well, like real friends, and I cared for him. I have to admit I might have been feeling a little left behind, with everyone I knew getting married. I accepted.

"As soon as I said yes, he asked me what temple I wanted to get married in. I about died. I'd become so good at impersonating one-I didn't realize he didn't know I wasn't Mormon.

"Sean freaked out. I thought it was over. I cried for days, but then he called. I thought he called to tell me he loved me, and it didn't matter, but instead, he told me I needed to let him baptize me. I heard it as more of an ultimatum."

"You know he's gay, right?" Paul glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"No! It's actually pretty common, the whole not-kissing-until-the-altar thing. A lot of the boys I knew in high school wouldn't date before their missions either."

"Being gay is pretty common too. They're all gay."

Rhees giggled at the thought. She looked up at him, sure he had to be joking, but he appeared perfectly serious.

"The religious guilt thing is just driving them to come up with creative ways to deny it to themselves. I'd bet those couples who don't kiss until they're married have pretty frustrating, even non-existent sex lives."

Rhees had never thought about it that way. "They have kids. It's important to them to have kids." She tried to decide if Paul just needed to make sense of a world he couldn't comprehend, or if she lacked the ability to comprehend reality.

"The imagination can do great things. I've been with not-so-appealing girls who've rocked my world, but only because I have a good imagination." He actually laughed but stopped when he noticed Rhees didn't laugh with him. "So why did this make you believe you're never getting married?"

"Sean thought I'd be excited about having him baptize me-the funny thing is, I would have, I'd always thought I would be baptized, eventually, but all I heard was the ultimatum. He loved the idea of baptizing me, but I want to be loved for me, not because I'm a name on a line of some membership record. I spent my whole life being accepted or not accepted, based on that." At least she'd always told herself that.

"If he really loved me, it wouldn't matter. If any of them ever really cared about me, it wouldn't matter. I'm done with it-I don't want anything to do with that anymore. I've never been accepted and now I don't want to be." She'd gone over these thoughts a million times since her parents died-the last-only-true relationships she'd ever had.

"Shoot," she said, her eyes filled with tears. She wanted to kick herself for allowing the loss of her parents to creep back to mind. She missed them so much. She cried every time she thought of them so she rarely let herself.

"Hey, don't cry . . . I really don't know what to do when women cry. Rhees, I don't know how to fix it-what am I supposed to do?" Paul started to put his arms around her but hesitated. In his experience, that always turned out to be a bad idea. Girls tended to dislike being hugged after being told, just after sex, that he didn't love them and would never love them.

When they did let him comfort them, he just ended up wanting to have sex again, but then they would cry all over again because having sex didn't change his mind about loving them.

Rhees wasn't crying because they'd just had sex. He decided to try to hug her after all, hoping she would stop. "I've never been able to figure it out, I do everything I can to avoid this."

She stiffened and pulled away as if he'd just shocked her with a cattle prod. He chalked it up to guessing wrong. A half a second later, she laughed and reeled in her emotion and tears.

"I'm sorry. I talk too much."

"I like listening. I could do without the tears though," he admonished.

"The word on the street, probably from the few girls who aren't madly in love with you, is that you're callous. I'll bet your reaction to, or your intolerance for, crying women has something to do with that," she said. "I didn't mean to give you a hernia, putting all that strain on your sympathy."

"I think you have it wrong. The girls I . . . hang out with don't love me. It would have to be the girls who do. They'd be the ones who'd call me callous because I have to make it clear that I don't love them back." He put his hands in his pockets, dropped his head, and twisted his mouth in contemplation. He didn't feel callous. He cared. It bothered him they always wanted more from him than he could give. It was just a result of who he was, a man who could never fall in love. He didn't believe in it.

She giggled, and he looked back up at her, relieved she'd stopped crying.

"That's how it works?"

"For me," Paul said, embarrassed. "Maybe not so much for them."