The sun hung low in the sky longer than I could have hoped, longer than seemed possible or fair. It gilded the trees and hills in a cozy glow and warmed my burned shoulders. Across the lake, it blazed a stripe of white.

We listened to the gentle lap at the boat dock, and when I opened my eyes, she was sipping her IPA so carefully I knew it was for my benefit. Dainty acting for her one-man audience.

It would get chilly soon, and she and I would paddle back in and towel off, but not just yet. We were hellbent on wringing every drop out of another perfect day.

The selfishness of a relationship, one so new it hadn’t been defined or labeled, is intoxicating. I wanted to know everything; how old she was when she went to her first hockey game; if she ever skinned her knees falling off her bike or cried when her pet goldfish died; where she kept her diary in middle school; when she first learned of the devastating effectiveness of tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder — a move as beautiful and calculated as it was ancient.

I wanted to pry open her vault and revel in her, learn things she had never told anyone. I wanted to protect her and help her protect herself. I wanted to be her every superlative — the biggest, the best, the most, the only.

She hooked a long, tan leg into my tube, and we talked. About what, I can’t remember. Wry acknowledgements of our situation, maybe, or charmingly reductive nothings.^a It’s hard to focus on the future when you’re drenched in the present.

We were running out of days to exhaust. The sun was dipping lower.

Such a disgusting cliche, I thought. Graduation was around the corner, and these self-indulgences were fading behind me. But not her. Even if we fought and failed, I would always have that memory, permanent but a little hazy, like an over-exposed photograph.

Her smile, that sip, one leg, forgotten conversation. Just for me, the volition and affection of a beautiful girl is forever.