Nancy stirred in the seat beside him, raising a hand to rub at her dim eyes. "Ned?"

"Yeah," he sighed, lifting the styrofoam cup of coffee from the last gas station and shaking it. A few drops struck the sides, cold and terrible, and he slipped the cup back into the holder without tasting it.

Nancy glanced at her watch. "Man, I didn't realize it was this late," she said, pushing herself up straight. "How are you doing?"

"I think maybe some cocaine would be good," he said. "The coffee isn't even touching me anymore."

"Then let's stop," she said quietly. "You look as tired as I feel. We can catch a few hours, we're ahead of schedule."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she said, reaching over to trace her fingertips over his forehead. "Next place you see with a vacancy sign up."

Nancy was already drifting off again when Ned caught the sight of a cheap motel sign, still lit. The hotel looked clean enough, but he doubted even crime scene tape and loitering gang members could have stopped him. Nancy made a faint noise when the bright lights under the carport woke her.

"Here," she said, digging through her purse for her wallet. She handed him a gold card with her father's name on it. "Two rooms and a wake-up call, and I really hope they have a coffee maker."

She had her head pillowed on her bent elbow, leaning against the car's window, as Ned took one last glance back at her. The lobby was deserted, lit by the slow drone of fluorescent lights. Ned cleared his throat. Even the shabby armchair in the corner looked comfortable, orange bits of foam showing through rips in the upholstery.

"A room?"

A sleepy-eyed man with a black mustache and beard had appeared behind the desk. Ned wondered how long he had been staring at the chair, then shook his head. "Two rooms," he replied.

The man took the gold card Ned handed over easily enough, not bothering to ask for additional identification, while Ned propped his elbow on the counter and resisted the urge to let his head fall forward to cradle against his arm. The clerk handed over a printout, which Ned signed, illegibly, noticing that the receipt was for one room, one night. He started digging in his wallet as the man handed over the credit slip.

"What's this for?"

Ned pushed his own credit card across the counter with his fingers. "For the other room."

"You don't have to pay for the other bed, that comes standard," the clerk said, slowly, patronizing. Ned fought the urge to throw a lazy punch at him.

"No, the other room."

"There are no other rooms. You wanted two beds, right?"

"Two rooms." Ned's head was starting to pound.

"Look, you got our last room for the night. Two beds. Now I'm full up, and I'm going to bed, and you really look like you need to do the same."

The lobby went dark as Ned stepped out through the front door, a keyring dangling from his hand, still not sure exactly what had just happened. Except that he and Nancy were in room forty-seven.

Which, by any stretch of the imagination, was... impossible. He and Nancy did not split hotel rooms. He and Nancy generally occupied hotel rooms which, by accident or design, were housed in opposite wings or at least floors of the buildings. Definitely not across the hall, adjoining, or in a suite. Definitely not.

He found the room easily enough, on the ground floor. Room forty-seven. The door was pitted and much abused, directly on the sidewalk. On the other side, presumably a moderately clean bed.

He'd thought he'd fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, but he almost didn't want to wake his girlfriend. Exhaustion won.

"Nan?"

She smiled, vaguely, blinking awake again. "Here?"

"Yeah, we're here," he said, pushing her hair off her forehead. "Come on."

She kept an overnight bag in the trunk of her car, which he shouldered, keying open the door. Nancy stepped in behind him and went immediately to the bathroom, while Ned put her bag down on one of the beds and sat down at the small table. She could have the room. He would just...

He stared at the other bed and tried to imagine folding himself into the back seat of her Mustang, and being able to sleep at all.

Nancy came out of the bathroom, running the tip of her tongue over her newly cleaned teeth. "I thought you'd already be in your room by now," she said, unzipping her bag. "You wanted to say goodnight?"

Something like that. "Um... actually, I'll just... I'll be in the car."

"Why?" Nancy stopped and stared at him. "Something wrong with your room?"

He made a wide gesture. "This is it."

"Oh. I'm in your room. You should have told me." She had been pale with exhaustion, but her cheeks bloomed under his gaze. "Where's mine?"

"This was the last one they had," Ned explained. He felt infinitely tired, drained, but he grew nervous at the dawning comprehension in her eyes. "Which is why, you're going to sleep in here and I'm going to sleep in the car."

Her hand dropped from her bag as Ned pulled himself wearily to his feet and walked the two feet to the door.

"Ned..." she began, and shook her head. "This was the only room they had?"

He nodded. "He didn't bother to tell me until I'd already paid for it. Or, I don't think he did. I'm not at a hundred percent right now..."

"It's... it's okay," she said. "But... really, you don't have to sleep in the car." She laughed, and even though his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, thin pulsing cotton, he caught the nervousness in her voice. "There are two beds in here, and I'd feel bad to think of you trying to get any sleep out there."

Ned smiled. "I really can't..."

"It's fine," she said. "I'm just gonna go put on my PJs, and you can... whatever, but... yeah. It's fine."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. Just make sure you're under the covers when I come back out." She gave him the smallest smile before shutting herself into the bathroom again.

Ned walked with slow, halting steps to the door, bolted and chained it, before kicking his shoes off, unfastening his belt, and pulling his shirt over his head. He divested himself of all but his boxers, laid his clothes across a chair and crept under the covers, unable to close his eyes.

Nancy came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, self-consciously tugging her shirt down over the tops of her thighs. She crawled under the covers of the other bed, and he caught a glimpse of whisper-pink panties before she was covered all the way to her chin.

"So," Ned said. "Okay. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Ned," Nancy said, reaching over to turn off the lamp between them.

--

At three o'clock Ned's eyes popped open. He glanced over at the clock and rubbed his palms over his face, his brain thick and slow with sleep.

Someone very loud and very drunk, laughing, a key scraping over metal.

Ned shot an irritated glance in the direction of their door. Their neighbors had been mercifully silent until now. Ned pulled the pillow over his head, in an attempt to block out their all too audible conversation.

Then he remembered that his girlfriend was sleeping half-naked three feet away from him.

Most of his classroom mental wandering began with a scenario not unlike this one, a scenario which quickly escalated to a realm Nancy had forbidden during one awkward conversation. But Nancy was asleep and Ned let himself fall back into the haze of exhaustion, trying to think of anything else.

Until he heard a loud thump against the wall behind his head. Then another.

He groaned wordlessly into his pillow, quiet, to keep from waking her, but as the headboard of the bed on the other side of the wall slammed into it again, he was sure he'd be the last thing waking her. He pressed the pillow against his ears. The frame of his own bed creaked in protest.

And then Nancy chuckled, softly, from the other bed.

Ned propped the pillow behind his head again and turned toward her, but the curtains were drawn and the room was pitch black around them. He couldn't see her, and he was glad. As the din on the other side of the wall gained fervor, then fell, Ned turned onto his side and slipped his folded arm under his head.

"Nan?"

"Hmm?"

Ned felt his heart beating very clearly in his chest, but the words came out anyway. "Why don't you want to have sex?"

She didn't reply, and Ned at first imagined that perhaps he hadn't heard her laugh or respond, and then that maybe she was angry at him for asking and would just feign sleep until he rolled over and drifted off again, and they would wake in the morning and go on as though he hadn't brought up the one topic which seemed nearly taboo between them.

Then she clicked on the lamp between their beds and propped her face up to look at him. Ned could feel the soft warmth lighting his cheeks. Saying it was so much easier in the dark, but with her cool blue eyes on him, her lips turned up gently, the exhaustion began to creep back. Surely he hadn't broached the topic in a shabby hotel room in the middle of nowhere. If she was pissed, it was the back seat of the Mustang for him, and no more sleep, he was sure.

"You mean, why am I not ready?"

"Yeah," he said, quietly, relaxing, propping his head up to match her stance, facing her across the gulf between them.

Her gaze shifted from his eyes, to his chest, to the dim shadows at the other end of the room. "Because I'm not on the pill and condoms can break and I'm not ready to be a mother at eighteen."

He nodded, easily, almost too quickly. "You don't want to get pregnant."

"Not yet." Her gaze shifted back to his face. "I do want to have children someday, but... we're practically kids ourselves, and there's so much I want to do before I'm settled down with a husband and a couple kids and a station wagon."

"What if that wasn't the issue," he found himself asking, words that would have been impossible to even think in daylight and complete awareness. "If it wasn't about the chance of getting pregnant."

"You got something to tell me, Nickerson?" She was grinning.

He laughed, suddenly. "No," he said. "I'm just wondering."

"You're wondering if it's something else," she said, and pushed herself up to sitting, her face serious. "You know, I've been told my entire life, nice girls don't. Nice girls don't want to have sex before they're married, nice girls don't let themselves be alone with boys, not college boys, not frat boys, not... not like we're alone right now. So I guess maybe I'm not a nice girl."

"Oh, you are," Ned said. "You are a nice girl."

"Maybe too nice?"

Ned grabbed the other pillow off his bed and tossed it at her, and she laughed when she caught it. "You know what I mean, Nan."

She hugged the pillow to her chest. "You know I love you."

He nodded. "I guess... I just want to know if it's... if you love me but it's not enough. And that probably came out wrong."

She slipped out of her bed and walked over to his, not missing the way his eyes shifted down, to the flash of whisper-pink before she slipped on her knees onto his bed. He had moved back to give her room, but was frozen under her gaze. She ran a hand through her hair and then smiled, almost laughing to herself.

"I do want to have sex," she said. "With you. It's never been about that."

He pushed himself up on his elbows. "So it's what your father will think and that you might get pregnant and..."

"And I'm not ready," she repeated to him, gently, deliberately. "Ned, you'll be the first person who finds out when I am, but I'm just not ready yet."

She rested her palm against his cheek as he let himself collapse back to the bed. "I guess I just don't understand."

He was relieved at her smile. "Because you're a guy," she teased him softly. "I'm sure you've been ready for years."

"Not really," he said quietly. "Just since I realized that I love you this much, and I can't imagine... I just know you're the one I want. It's that simple. Maybe it's too simple."

She leaned over him, her hair swinging gently over her shoulder, cupped his face under her palms, and he wanted to slip his arms around her and pull her down to him and hold her. Being in the same room with her, when his defenses were so relaxed, was a mistake. He'd never meant to talk to her about this. She was never supposed to hear the frustration and second-guessing and doubt. She was a nice girl, like she had said, and he respected her for that, would marry her one day for that if she'd have him, and he should be curled up in a cold ball on the back seat of her car right now, not gazing up at her and wondering, idly but with a faint growing hope, if she was about to tell him that she was ready. Nice girls weren't ready and nice boys didn't have the kind of thoughts he was having right now.

"We have our whole lives in front of us, Ned," she told him softly.

He bit back the retorts his id was helpfully throwing to him and nodded, her fingers slipping over his cheeks. "We do," he said, and sighed. "I'm sorry if thatãif I made you uncomfortable."

She shook her head. "Would it help if I told you that I find you incredibly, devastatingly sexually attractive? That it's all I can do right now to keep from ripping your clothes off?"

He smiled. "Yeah, that would help. A little."

She leaned down until their noses were brushing, then tilted her face and kissed him softly. "I do. And you are. And I can't imagine being with anyone else."

He sighed at the feel of her breath on his skin. "I think that's what I needed to hear."

She smiled. "Good."

He drew in a long breath. "Having said all that..." He paused and fought with himself for a minute before continuing. "You don't have to go back to your bed."

She kissed him again, and he slipped his arm from under the covers, let his palm rest lightly on the back of her head as he returned it. "I don't?" she murmured.

"You could stay here and we could be very, very good."

"It's easier to be good across the room," she murmured, his hand sliding down to her shoulder blades. He stroked her back a few times, then let his hand drop, already cursing himself for a fool.

"I know."

And then she was kicking long slender legs under the covers, pulling herself beneath, her body warm against the length of his, his arms sliding around her as though this had been his intention all along. He could feel the press of her stomach against his, the bare warmth, between the hem of her shirt and whisper-pink cotton. She slid away from him long enough to click the lamp off, and Ned released the breath he had been holding.

"As long as we're good."

"Of course," he replied, his voice nearly strangled.

"Try to pull anything, Nickerson, and you'll be spending the rest of the night in the back seat of the car."

"Understood," he said, reaching up to trace his sightless fingertips over her cheek. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For not shooting me down when you could have," he said. "For not blowing up at me. I'm not trying to pressure you into it, or anything, I just needed to know."

"I know." He could hear her hair sliding against the pillow, the stiff sheets rustling as her legs moved. "I'm probably the only frat boy's girlfriend who won't put out."

He laughed, wondering at the sensation of her breathing. A thousand much-visited fantasies were clamoring insistently at the edge of his rapidly fading consciousness, but he pressed a kiss against her forehead. "I think most of them consider it even worse than not having a girlfriend."

"Do you lie about me to save your reputation, Ned?"

"No, I just chuckle knowingly and secretly write down what the guys say in the locker room," he teased her back. "It's all lies anyway. Which reminds me... so, when you and Bess split a hotel room, you sleep like this?"

She punched his arm. "That's one," she said, laughter under her voice.

Ned sighed. "Another urban legend, then."

"Go to sleep, Ned."

As though I could sleep, like this. "Goodnight," he whispered, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "I love you."

She nestled against him, her face pressed against his chest. "Love you too," she murmured against his skin, and he was content.