They start dating

An hour later, we were on our way back to my car at the bottom of the hill.

“So… I take that as a yes? About prom?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think I’ve suddenly gone from being jealous of Josh Peterson to feeling really sorry for him.”

“Ian, he’s GAY. Josh just asked me to go as a friend after Stephanie told me you were for sure not gonna ask.”

“He’s gay?”

“Keep it to yourself, okay? He doesn’t want anyone to know.”

I burst out laughing at my own stupidity.

···

For the first time in memory, I slept like a baby.

From that night forward, Elizabeth and I were officially a couple, with all the bewildering euphoria that came pre-packaged with young love. I was so caught up with the excitement of the moment, I didn’t even realize that, for the first time in almost a year, I was no longer fantasizing about the other girls. My constant, unbearable urge to sleep with all of my friends had miraculously disappeared.

Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true, but for the most my every sexual thought was directed at my girlfriend.

One day, I started to give Corrine a backrub—as I had millions of times before—only to realize that I was just giving her a backrub. Not as an excuse to caress the shape of her body, and not a backrub with the hope of it leading to sex.

Just a backrub. It was actually kind of a relief. The end of an era. At long last, after months of lusting, and teasing, and confusion, my friends and my sex life became completely separate things.

With one exception.