Seventeen days ago, she asked me if I was going to ask her out, or if I was only planning on thinking about it. In seventeen hours she will pass through security at San Francisco International, on her way to graduate school, and our time together will come to an end.

Jen is, I joke, the prettiest boy that I have ever met. She likes that. Barefoot she stands six feet tall, fine and strong, and she wears her hair buzzed shorter than mine. Once she picked me up over her shoulder, and she said that it was easy. She doesn’t need a bra.

I am, she says, a boy who will clean up nicely, once he decides what he wishes to become. I take no offense. I am experimenting with identity, with style and culture and ideas, trying to find a skin that feels like my own. For now I make her laugh, and that is good enough.

She flips through books, picking out a few to pack into one last box. I roll over onto my side and run my fingers up a seam in her quilt. It’s stitched together out of her old black jeans, worn soft and grey, and I tuck my hand into a Levi’s back pocket, imagining for a moment the way it used to curve. Ray Davies sings about his sister staying out late at the Palais, but Jen cuts him off mid-track, yanking the plug out of the wall so she can pack the CD player away as well.

Jen folds the box closed and reaches for the tape gun. I close my eyes tighter, bracing myself, not wanting to hear her finish packing… and she doesn’t. The gun clatters to the table, unused. She pulls something from the box and walks over. “Time to be a bad influence,” she says, dropping something into the pillow, a few inches from my head. It clinks like hard-chromed steel. Before I can react, before I can even open my eyes, she catches my wrist, holding me still as she sits behind me.

I open my eyes and find myself staring into a mess of leather straps. Even in the heat, I shiver. Maybe it’s the promise; maybe it’s the way I feel her stretching out behind me, running her fingernails down the naked groove of my spine.

“Say the word and you can spend the night,” Jen whispers, inches from my ear. It’s as much a challenge as an invitation. “But I’m leaving tomorrow and nothing’s going to change either way. You’re still going to have to say goodbye.”

I mewl despite myself, squirming in her arms as she pulls me close. She doesn’t need the straps, really. I can barely struggle as is; I can’t break loose, not against the hardness of her muscles or their millimeter sheath of soft, girly skin, not against the weight of her body rolling me into the bed or the lightness of her voice as she teases me about it. I still try, of course; she’d be disappointed if I didn’t.

“I’ll even take you to GoodVibes if you want. They’re open a while longer. I can make you pick something out. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She laughs, squeezing me tighter before I can protest. She savors the next sentence, her favorite little taunt, drawn out one syllable at a time. “It’d be hot, and you know it, uke.”

It would be, and I do.

The warmth of her body saps the rest of my strength, and I surrender to the heat, snuggling into her arms. I take her hand and lace her fingers up with mine; she squeezes back, bringing them up so I can kiss her knuckles. She knows she hasn’t asked a simple thing; I can’t even kiss a girl unless I mean it. Spending the night with Jen? I think I would mean it. I want to mean it.

But that means, tomorrow, a sadder goodbye. Already I know that I will miss her. Spending the night means, tomorrow, standing in the airport, trying not to cry; it means trusting myself not to choke as I hug her one last time.

I shake my head clear, taking off my glasses, turning in Jen’s arms to nuzzle at her jaw. She smells like plain Dove soap, and I press my cheek to her warm, soft skin. Suddenly I don’t mind the heat. A hint of fresh, clean sweat beads on her neck, and I taste her, lapping it away. That doesn’t help. I already know my answer, and I think that she does, too.