Ben and Carrie sit together in an oversized chair in Neil’s basement, watching the cast of You Can’t Take It with You bump and grind with each other.

“There’s no part of you that wants to join in?” Carrie says.

Ben crunches a handful of Doritos into his mouth. “Nope.”

“Are the Doritos that good, Ben? Seriously?”

Carrie adjusts herself in the chair so her hips aren't jammed into Ben's. He shifts a little, too, the bag of chips making a crinkle noise. The sliver of space between them closes.

“This sweaty amalgam of human beings at their most base and terrible does not turn me on.” He recites the words like a bad actor.

“Is that a quote from a movie or something?”

“Just the brilliance that is my mind,” Ben says, tapping his head. “See how smart abstinence makes you?”

Carrie rolls her eyes and sips her fifth Diet Coke. Images flash in her mind of doing her own bump and grind with the gorgeous and tempting Neil, who played her son-in-law and who she notices is also not engaged in the orgy dance.

“Want some?”

Ben's voice, coupled with a cheesy smell wafting under her nose, pulls her back into the unfortunate reality.

“Yeah,” Carrie says, gesturing at the bodies again. “I want some. Some of that—”

"That," He gestures with a pointed tip of a Dorito to a nest of bodies, where a rather dirty-looking boy is deeply kissing a freshman stagehand. "is what gets you in trouble."

That girl was her at the last cast party. The euphoria of that performance, where she was not the lead but the second lead, sent her into the arms of the dirty-looking boy—Skank—a nickname he willingly agreed to that stemmed from his affinity for dirty jeans and equally dirty hair. A fine actor but the kind of kisser who leaves residue on the mouth. She let him get into her pants, but all of it was greatly disappointing. She decided then: No more cast party hookups.

“Try,” Ben says, sticking a handful of chips in her face. “They work for me.”

She shakes her head, gently pushing his hand away. She has known Ben her whole life, and never would she have pegged him as some kind of virginity zealot. Especially when, all through middle school, he talked incessantly about kissing girls, any girls. He even tried to kiss her a few times, but she started her pledge to keep anything sexual separate from emotional back then. Since she was a little girl, she had watched, countless times, from behind the curtain of the front window of her house, each of her four older sisters come home from dates and kiss boys they spent hours talking to on the phone. Boys they really liked. Her sisters would stand there, purses dangling off their shoulders and hands coiling strands of hair as they waited for the kiss. Most of the time, it would happen, a few minutes of talking and lingering, and then the boy would move closer, and heads would bend, lips would touch. Finally, a long and deep kiss. It would send shivers through Carrie. Each one of those sisters got her heart broken by the boys. A sister holed up in her room days after a date, balling her eyes out, asking nobody and everybody, "Why?"

So, Carrie told Ben as they got older, “No kissing with us, okay?” Figuring if she kissed him, she could lose him forever.

Ben went on to kiss other girls, never really having a girlfriend, though, and ever since high school started, he'd sworn himself pure. Carrie worries about him, especially lately. It's junior year now. Ben made out with a girl a year ago, and she was really into him. He didn’t like her hands, though.

“Too many calluses, and she bites her nails.”

“Really, Ben. You won’t go out with her again because she doesn’t get a regular manicure?”

“Really.”

In the dim light of the sconces that line the walls of the finished basement, Carrie scans the crowd. Most are dressed in all black, and about two handfuls wear tacky outfits circa 1933. The heaving blob of bodies has broken out a little. The girl who played Carrie’s daughter makes out in the opposite corner with the guy who played her husband. Good ol’ Skank is on to another freshman stagehand.

Carrie turns to Ben, but he’s blissed out on Doritos, his chin and lips tinged orange.

Carrie's "sister," real name Ginny, untwines herself from the stage manager. She walks over to the cooler next to them and opens it. "Okay, guys, when are you two finally going to hook up?"

“What?” Carrie says.

Ginny grabs a bottle of water from the cooler and points it at them. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but,” Now she points the bottle towards the crowd. "We've all got bets on you. My odds are that the hookup will be tonight."

Ben looks at Carrie. She finds herself distracted for a moment by his eyes, which are the perfect mix of green and brown.

Carrie drinks from her Diet Coke, and Ben stuffs chips in his mouth.

Ginny laughs, cracks open the bottle, and says, "Denial ain’t just a river baby Moses was abandoned on. Make me some money, guys. Do me proud!" She sashays back to the stage manager, waving the bottle in the air as if it were a wine cooler. Drama club parties are as pure as Ben's pledge to virginity; no one drinks. Sex is a whole other thing. Even though Carrie overheard kids refer to their group as drama geeks, the only geeky thing about them was that they were smart and sober, but that didn't mean they didn't engage in wild, random hookups.

“Can you believe we are fodder for the gambling addicts of this school?”

“Yes. Those heathens took bets on that bio teacher with cancer who just dropped dead.”

Carrie laughs. They watch the smaller, heaving groups of bodies methodically break off into sets of two.

“Ginny doesn’t understand our system.” Carrie shifts again in the chair.

He turns, but the space is too tight for him to look directly at her. She stares at his profile. Ben is cute, she thinks.

“You mean that you use me for ‘mental sex,’” he says. “And then keep a little bevy of random guys for hooking up?”

“You make it sound so wrong.”

"It's not wrong. Our generation believes in friends with benefits and random hookups. We believe you can be bi, demi, or asexual. We are the generation of sexual freedom.” He pops more chips into his mouth. "That includes the freedom not to have sex."

“I don’t have sex. Sex is too personal.” Carrie reaches for a Dorito.

"Uh, hate to tell you this, Carrie, but oral sex is sex. And, if you ask me, that kind of sex is pretty personal."

Carrie has the chip almost to her mouth but suddenly doesn't want it. She ignores Ben. “Look at her! I think I see penetration going on.”

They watch Ginny, skirt hiked over her butt, a perfect view of her black thong bobbing up and down.

Carrie shakes her head. Ben’s jaw drops. Then he says, “Look. At. Her.” Carrie sees his eyes change. Ben wants her enormous naked ass.

“Yeah, you’re handling that abstinence thing well. Drooling over what appears to be ass cheeks that no thong would want to be between.”

“Make fun of her ass all you want but stop making fun of my abstinence. Besides, you are part of my club.”

“No,” she corrects him. “I’m just taking a break, that’s all. I’m not swearing myself a virgin until marriage.”

“Neither am I! I am waiting for The One.” Ben closes his eyes and sighs. “Although, I’m having a hard time right now. Listen, you might have to smack me or something.”

He opens his eyes. “Did I really just check out Ginny’s junk?”

“Yes, you did.”

They watch as Ginny's thong bounces up and down.

“Oh, and by the way, I want to reiterate that oral sex is still sex, Carrie.”

“No, it’s not. Sex is sex and giving or receiving—”

“Seriously,” Ben plugs his ears and shuts his eyes. “Can’t hear you say giving and receiving…right now.”

“Why?”

He unplugs his ears and looks at her, “Because while I am firmly established into my commitment to purity, I am admittedly having some trouble as of late, and frankly, I might still get a woody.”

This sends them both into hysterics.

Ben finally puts the bag of chips on the floor, and they sit back, witty-bantered out. Carrie sips her Diet Coke and leans into Ben. He puts an arm around her, and with his free hand, he snatches her soda and takes a few loud slurps. She leans deeper into his body, and he gives her a squeeze. It’s sisterly because it’s Ben, but it feels good.

Ben hands back the soda can. It's sticky with Dorito remnants. She wrinkles her nose and shoves it back at him, carefully avoiding the orange goo. He shrugs and drinks the rest. Their friends jokingly called them the married couple.

Her stomach growls. “Ben, I gotta eat something. Want me to get us some pizza?” Ben barely shakes his head. His eyes are closed.

“Stuffed, bloated,” he mumbles. “Go, but come back and sit with me, okay?”

She pats his arm and kisses his cheek. The touch of skin to her mouth is a little shocking. That’s what a few months of no hooking up will do! She reminds herself that the skin she’s kissing is attached to Ben, nothing she should be excited over.

She pushes open the door at the top of the stairs and feels a tug on her skirt.

Neil.

“Wanna grab some pizza with your son-in-law?” He asks.

“I don’t know…” She waits a beat and peers at him through the semidarkness. Even in the darkness, she can see his blue eyes. Blue is not like the ocean and not like the sky. She smells what is probably Neil’s musky deodorant.

She wonders if, because Neil will not be a random hookup, maybe he might be a candidate for some kind of normal relationship with a guy. These months of so-called “abstinence” have made her think she might be ready to try the whole boyfriend thing. In a way, Ben had been her practice boyfriend all these years. They did everything normal couples did in high school: sit together at lunch, stay on the phone too late, prefer each other over other people, etc. They just never fooled around.

Maybe Neil could be a real boyfriend? She could even ask him to prom, and because she was no longer hooking up, it might be the opportunity for a real, innocent date. The problem is Ben is supposed to be her date. But he would understand, wouldn’t he? She considers all this as she leans against the wall and coils a strand of hair. She decides to flirt back, which, she reminds herself, will not lead to anything, but maybe the possibility of a date to prom.

“Kinda scandalous to run off with my son-in-law.”

“It’s just pizza, right?”

Carrie swishes her skirt at Neil, ready to go toe-to-toe with flirting but reminding herself again that it will not lead to anything.

She says, “Just be sure not to tell my husband or daughter.”

"Well, I wouldn't worry. They are busy getting it on in the corner down there."

She pushes open the door, and they climb up to the back hall of the house. Neil lives in an old Victorian on a street near downtown. It smells like cinnamon Potpourri in the hallway. Black and white photos of Neil and his family decorate the burnt orange walls.

Neil takes Carrie’s elbow. Instead of directing her to the kitchen, he steers her in the opposite direction. Their flirting over the last few days has mainly been while they wait to go on stage. They’ve had water bottle fights in the hallway behind the stage, resulting in some—okay, intentional—soaking of his t-shirt so she could check out his body. Oops. They thumb-wrestled to pass the time until their scenes came up. Just an excuse for her to feel his strong fingers, large and smooth, wrapped in hers. His intense grip sent little finger-like tickles up and down her arm. The thing about the flirting is it took away the loneliness of sitting by herself off-stage waiting. Ben did lights, so she couldn't ever hang out with him.

Ben thought Neil was all wrong for her. “Neil’s too slick, too pretty.”

How wrong Ben is.

Ben.

Who right now stands near the bathroom, orange powder smudged across his lips, watching her go with Neil into his bedroom. Pretend you don’t see him, Carrie thinks as she follows Neil in. She promises herself no hooking up, no making out.

We’ll just talk, and then maybe we’ll see about that pizza.

Ben’s backpack hits the lunch table with a thwack.

Carrie looks up from the remains of her lunch. She doesn’t bother with any formalities. Not that they do formalities, but the look on Ben’s face says he’s pissed.

“You’re lucky I found a ride.”

“I know.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t try to hitchhike or walk home. I could have been killed.”

Although Carrie is the actor, Ben is far more dramatic. She has to crack a smile.

“Since you are afraid of the dark, I wasn’t really worried about either of those things.”

He ignores that comment but says, “Are you going to admit that you relapsed?”

She laughs. “What?”

He doesn’t laugh.

“I will not admit anything. I just lost track of time.” She doesn’t want to fight with Ben but doesn’t want to tell him what happened.

“You left me alone, covered in Dorito splooge, stuck in the basement in the middle of an orgy!" He pauses and rolls his eyes. "All to make out with dreamy Neil!"

Carrie leans forward and looks at him carefully. “You have circles under your eyes.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Waiting for your dad to call.”

Ben doesn't say anything, just ignores her and flops his backpack from the table to the bench. "I was up studying for Chem, and yes, he was supposed to call. But, whatever. It's fine. Enough about me. Did you fool around with Neil or not?"

“What?”

“Did you break your promise to me or what?”

Carrie holds the empty bottle and taps it gently to the table. There's a lot she wants to say to Ben right now. But the thoughts aren't in clear words. Just images. Images of the party. Ben eating Doritos. She and Neil were on his bed, looking at his photo album filled with pictures of all the cool places he and his family had lived before Rhode Island. Neil's arm brushed Carrie's, and then he kissed her. Their tacky costumes were on the floor. Her flowered blouse and skirt. His polyester dinner jacket and red tie landed on top of it. There they were, two costumes, mother-in-law and son-in-law, tangled up in each other. It looked very wrong.

The guilt surprised her. The loneliness after, in her car, driving home without Ben. How her body ached, how dead her sleep was, and then to wake up, the sun pouring into her room, making her sweaty; she had forgotten to shut the shades. The heat confused her and increased the anxiety that hit her when she remembered what she had done. I had sex with Neil. She didn't just kiss him, a minor infraction of her promise. She didn't just fool around like she used to. No, she had sex.

After it was over, Neil kissed her and told her this wasn't just a fling. He had liked her all these months, waiting for the right time to tell her. I didn’t get you up here to have this happen. He was serious. She gathered her clothes, tried to seem fine, and got the hell out.

Being with a guy had never felt this wrong. The loneliness she often felt after hooking up was usually fleeting, or maybe it was that she could ease it by calling Ben. Since she couldn't call him this time, that loneliness grew and sprouted heavy limbs of guilt and anxiety.

“Hello? Are you even listening to me?” Ben’s face is inches from Carrie’s.

Those limbs feel like vines to her now, and a choking sensation loops around her throat. She tries to summon up a smart retort, but in her cloudy head, no words appear. Just the sensation of choking.

“I gotta go,” she mumbles, gathering her containers and empty water bottle.

“Carrie, why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

“Ben, I’m serious.” She shrugs her bag over her shoulder, avoiding eye contact because if he sees her eyes, he will see dots of tears. “I’m going to be late, okay. Let’s talk after school.”

He grabs her arm, "Look at me. What happened? Did he…?"

She stops struggling with her bag and lunch, blinks the tears, swallows hard, and doesn't make direct eye contact. "Nothing happened, Ben. Nothing. I just asked him to prom, and he said yes, and I didn't want to tell you." It's a lie that makes the most sense at the moment. It's a lie she can easily correct later when she can fake that Neil changed his mind. It's a lie that will provide something, some reason why she is afraid to talk to Ben right now.

Now she looks at him. It’s difficult not to let the tears fall. She instantly regrets the lie. Maybe even more than what she has done. Maybe the truth would go over better.

His whole face falls, his eyes, those green eyes, drop, and even his mouth. He shakes his head. His smile is forced. "Ah! You were afraid to tell me that good ol’ Neil might be The One. It’s okay. I’ll just sit home and watch a High School Musical again or something.”

She wipes her eyes quickly and laughs. For a moment, there is no cast party, no Neil, nothing to regret, and nothing to lie about. "We hate musicals, Ben."

“Well, if I watch anything else…I’ll just think of you.”

He drops his head, and she stares at his thick uncombed hair. She knows what his head smells like even though she isn't close to him because he asked her once to pick out shampoo for him after his tonsils were removed in eighth grade; he told her he couldn't smell things really well. Couldn't decipher between certain scents. She picked out this really manly-looking shampoo one day at the drugstore near her house and walked to his house to give it to him. He asked her to wait while he tried it out. He returned to her, showered, and stuck his wet hair in her face. He smelled amazing. That was years ago, and he never changed the shampoo. It’s been a long time since she smelled his hair. She wants to lean in and take a deep breath.

Now she knows, really knows, in a way that she can't push off; in a way, neither of them can ignore that he means what he says. I’ll think of you. She wants to take back her lie and tell him the truth the whole truth, that Neil isn’t The One.

Carrie sees Ben’s face in front of her, hurt and confused. She thinks of the cast party before she made the worst mistake of her life, of how Ginny, fucking Ginny. She was right. How many people bet on them that night?

Here’s an opportunity, she thought. Didn’t he just admit he would be thinking of me? Isn’t this the point where I say… say what? What can I say now that I have gone and slept with someone else? All I can tell him is that sleeping with Neil made me realize I want someone else.

It's Neil that she talks to first on the third day of avoiding both of them. The first two spent home, "sick," crying so much her mother took her puffy eyes and stuffed nose for a full-blown head cold. As she lay in bed, she looked around her room at the collage of pictures above her bed and her collection of BBC productions of the plays she had been in. Everything in her life is connected to Ben. Her favorite T-shirt and boxers for bed. Both were Ben's. The music on her phone was filled with playlists made by Ben. Even her dog, Hank, who lay at the foot of her bed for three days, was a gift from Ben three years ago. Her parents hated animals, but because the dog came from Ben, they made an exception. Ben even had a spot at their dinner table, and when he didn't join them, no one sat there, not even her older sisters when they came home from college. How did she miss this all? How did she miss all the signs? Did other people in her life ever say anything? Her parents, her sister? Her friends?

Maybe they did, and she just didn't listen?

When she turned her phone back on in the morning, there were forty text messages from Ben and ten from Neil. Her mother tells her that Ben came by three times, but she was sleeping. She doesn't read any of the messages. She has something she has to do.

But when she goes to school, Ben is nowhere to be found. She gets through the whole day before seeing Neil.

And it’s in the parking lot.

He’s standing at her car with a single rose, a single dead rose.

“I’ve been bringing this to school every day, but you haven’t been here,” he explains.

She laughs, despite feeling sad.

“Okay, so I get that you’re freaked out, but there’s no reason to be. I like you, okay? See—” He thrusts the wilted rose at her.

She doesn’t take it.

“I can’t, Neil. And, I, uh…I’m sorry about, you know, Saturday night.”

Neil doesn’t blink. The corners of his blue eyes kind of dip as if he were disappointed.

"Sorry?" He drops the rose. "Sorry isn't what I thought you would say. I thought maybe, ‘Hey, Neil, Saturday was awesome. The best night of my life!’ ”

Carrie can’t help but smile. He is a good guy, and if she were a different person, if there wasn’t a Ben…no, it’s not just that. She just doesn’t like him the way she now knows you should like a person when you have sex with them. Something inside her has changed from all the months of abstinence, of being a little more like Ben.

"Neil, I can't really explain to you clearly what happened to me between Saturday night and now. But, you know, you probably don't want to get involved with me anyway."

Now, he looks like he might laugh. He holds up his hand. "Don't bother. You know, Ginny warned me when I told her I liked you."

“But you didn’t tell her, did you?”

"No! No, I'm not going to run around and tell everyone what happened, okay? I just told her a few weeks ago that I liked you, and I wanted to ask you out." He shakes his head and smiles. Dimples and everything. Carrie, though, feels nothing from those dimples, and it surprises her as they talk. She doesn't think about his skin or lips or the way it felt when they were together.

“Ginny told me that even though you have hooked up with other people, you’ve never had a real boyfriend, and Ben’s never had a girlfriend.” He waits for her to say something and then adds, “And you guys have known each other since you were in middle school or something.”

She almost corrects him. Preschool.

Carrie looks down at her feet. Neil is still talking, saying something about how Ginny told him that Ben was in love with her and that Carrie was probably in love with him. But Carrie can't really focus on Neil or Ginny; she's thinking about Ben. She thinks about the party before she went with Neil. How she was so aware of him sitting next to her in that chair. How he couldn't hear her say, "Giving or receiving head."

Could he feel the same way about her?

He’s never had a girlfriend.

“I have to go.”

Carrie shuts off her car, one hand on the wheel at ten o'clock, and the other pauses at the ignition. Her heart hammers. The Chasm. The place where they went when Ben found out his parents were splitting up. Sitting silently, side by side, sharing Ben's air pods and listening to The Barber Violin Concerto: 2nd movement. Ben’s father was a music professor, and this was his favorite piece. Ben let his tears fall, and Carrie just held his hand. This is where they went after Carrie found out she had the lead in You Can’t Take It with You. They stood looking down at the Chasm, screaming, "Carrie is awesome!" And "Holy shit, that's a lot of lines to remember!" This is where they have studied for finals and where they camped out one night in order to catch a comet that was making its every hundred years appearance. They fell asleep and missed the whole thing.

She feels that familiar kind of tightening in her throat and thinks of that night of the comet. Their heads angled towards each other, and waking up with his arm flung over her stomach.

She pulls the key out of the ignition and takes a deep, long breath. The Chasm is a couple of feet up from the beach, and the smell of salt is thick today, just like the gray clouds.

There's a chance he may not feel the same. She doesn't click the automatic lock; she wants to savor the moment before she has to change everything and pauses in the scary uncertainty of what she is about to do.

She hears the water rushing and the sounds of faraway seagulls circling overhead, calling out. She walks across the small parking area through the patch of trees that lines the Chasm. Her sneakers are silent as she reaches the large, flat rocks that get bigger and steeper. Now, she climbs up the short cliff and sees Ben's back once she reaches the top. That hair, she wants to rush to him and circle her arms around his neck and bury her head in his hair and smell what is that scent? She stands motionless, her arms hanging, her heart storming. Ben sits on the flat plateau with his feet dangling over the Chasm. He's hunched over. From behind, he looks young, much younger than she ever knew him. It makes her smile for some reason.

"Did you know that the definition of chasm is a sudden interruption of continuity, a gap?" Her heart stops. He knows she is there, and yet he doesn't turn around, and the c of his curved spine is not straightening. "A chasm is not expected, you know."

She is surprised at how clear his voice is over the din of the water rushing.

"It's completely a surprise when it happens, even though the way it happens is over time, the plates of the earth shifting slowly, taking thousands or millions of years to get to the point of a chasm. So is it really sudden, or is the movement just not noticeable?" He straightens his spine but doesn't twist to look at her.

She takes a few more steps and says, "It's not sudden, and it is noticeable, but people just don't pay attention."

"Maybe," he says, hunching over again. "But the movements are really tiny. We're talking undetectable to the naked eye."

“I’m sorry,” she offers.

"You know what? Don't be sorry for what happened with Neil—whatever it was or wasn't. I really don't want to know. But I've had some time to think over the last few days. In between, of course, stalking you." He twists to look at her. "Well, maybe you were really sick. You look like shit."

She laughs and walks all the way to him.

He pulls her down next to him, and they sit in the silence of the ocean and wind and leaves rustling.

“I didn’t really ask Neil to prom.”

“What?”

“I was just embarrassed about you seeing me go with him to his room, so I just made that up.”

She watches his face and the way he looks at her. The way his eyes meet hers and lock in and how, through his gaze at her, she feels more connected, closer than she did that night naked with Neil.

“Hello? Tell me why you made that up?”

But she can’t concentrate.

“I don’t know…” She is so distracted by her feelings and her overwhelming urge to lean all the way into him but not into his face. She leans into his hairline above his ear and inhales, and he doesn't move and doesn't talk as she breathes him in completely. In fact, she feels him lean back against her nose and mouth, his hair softer than she imagined.

“What are you doing?” he whispers.

“Smelling you,” she murmurs.

“I’m not sure how long I can sit here with you this close to me and not have something unexpected happen.”

He turns around, and their lips press together, slowly, but at the same time, quickly too.