Baker tears her eyes away from whatever she was looking at and glances briefly up at Hannah-in the dim light of the lamp, her eyes look black and dead.

"In a minute," she says.

Hannah hesitates, wondering if she should go back down and talk to her, but Baker has already looked away.

Hannah lies awake for minutes and minutes, turning over the week's events, wondering if things will be better when they're back in Baton Rouge, desperately trying not to feel out the ache in her chest. She lies there for what seems like forever and still Baker does not come. One horrified part of Hannah thinks that maybe Baker changed her mind and went down to Clay's room. Another part of her starts to worry: she can't stop picturing that black, dead look in Baker's eyes.

She rises from bed and tiptoes downstairs. Baker is no longer in the family room, nor is she in the kitchen. Hannah walks out to the back porch, but Baker's not there, so she walks downstairs to the boys' room and pauses outside the door, listening. She opens the door as quietly as she can and hears the boys' even breathing. She looks around at their single beds, but Baker isn't in any of them. She breathes a sigh of relief. Then she walks outside to the pool, but Baker isn't there, either.

She's not sure why she does it, but she leaves the house and walks down toward the beach. A lone streetlamp lights her way as she walks, shivering slightly in her t-shirt and sleep shorts. She pa.s.ses the outdoor shower at the edge of the beach, and then she takes off her sandals and walks onto the cool sand.

Baker's figure comes into view as Hannah walks farther toward the water. She can see her sitting on the sand, rigid and still, her outline illuminated by the bright white moon. Hannah's feet rub against the sand with that familiar slipper sound, and she doesn't try to take quieter steps, for she hopes that the sound of her feet will alert Baker to her presence.

Baker turns around when Hannah is still a few feet away. She lets out a defeated breath.

"Hey," Hannah says. "Can I sit?"

Baker says nothing. Hannah sits down next to her.

"What are you doing out here?" Hannah asks quietly.

Baker watches the ocean. She doesn't blink for almost a minute. Then she drops her head to look down at the sand.

Hannah eyes the bottle of Cabernet resting between Baker's knees. "Are you drinking?"

Baker sighs and finally opens her mouth. "You always were smart."

The sarcasm stings, but Hannah doesn't respond to it. She drops her head and studies the gooseb.u.mps on her legs. "Can I have some?" she asks.

Baker hands the bottle over but still doesn't look at her. Hannah swallows the warm, bitter wine, feeling it flood all the way down to her stomach.

"My dad always says," Hannah whispers, pausing to take another drink, "that when he drinks wine, he likes to imagine the hands of the person who picked the grapes that made it."

Baker sprinkles sand onto her calves. "That sounds like something your dad would say."

"Baker, I'm sorry," Hannah says with half a voice. She folds her hands around the wine bottle and breathes once, twice, three times, before she speaks again. "I shouldn't have done what I did-it's just-it's just that I felt so much, and I thought you felt it, too."

The waves stretch toward the sand, then pull back toward their indefinable center. They whisper their mesmerizing magic, saying Yes, yes, Truth.

"We can't have this conversation," Baker says.

"We have to have it. We can't keep doing this same thing and then not talking about it-"

"Hannah, I do not want to talk about this," Baker says, breathing in so fast that she might be choking.

"Do you think I do?!"

"Yes! I think that's exactly what you want! You always want to talk about things that shouldn't be talked about!"

"Because we NEED to! You can't just keep hiding from me, and hiding from whatever is going on between us, just because it might be messy and scary and require you to color outside the lines! I know you're scared, but guess what, I'm scared, too!"

"You're not scared!" Baker yells, wrenching herself off the sand and stalking away toward the ocean. "You're never scared!"

Hannah sits dumbfounded for a moment, but then she pushes up from the sand and follows Baker farther down the beach. "How do you know? How do you know I'm not scared?! Maybe I am scared! Maybe I'm terrified!"

Baker turns around, and there's dark fire blazing in her eyes. "Oh yeah?!" she shouts, her expression contorted with fear and madness Hannah has never seen before. "Tell me, Hannah, just how scared are you? Are you scared that someone saw us in the garage? Because you didn't seem very fazed by that. Are you scared that our friends are going to find out? Are you scared the boys are going to find out? How about our cla.s.smates? How about our entire school? How about our parents? And what about everything beyond that, Hannah? Tell me, how are you feeling about G.o.d at this point? Are you scared that He's going to reject you? Maybe that He already has? Are you scared that we're messing with something that goes all the way back to original creation? Are you scared that this is the one catch, the one thing that throws everything we've ever learned about G.o.d and religion into doubt? TELL ME, HANNAH," Baker screams, her voice breaking now, "HOW EXACTLY ARE YOU SCARED?!"

She whips around and pounds across the sand, farther down toward the water, and Hannah follows her without thinking about it, her heels aching as they hit the sand.

"I'm scared of all those things!" Hannah yells, kicking sand at Baker's legs. "Everything you just named-and G.o.d-and judgment-all of it!"

Baker spins around and kicks sand back at Hannah. "Just go away!" she cries. "Stop making this so hard!"

"No! I'm not leaving!" Hannah shouts, kicking more sand at Baker. "Not until you talk to me!"

Baker scoops up a handful of sand and throws it at Hannah's face. Hannah keels forward, the sand stinging her eyes and her cheeks. She spits sand from her mouth and hears it crunch in her teeth.

"I don't have to talk to you about everything," Baker says, her voice wet with tears.

Hannah wipes her face on her arm and spits into the sand again. Her blood rushes through her body and she snarls at Baker. "Did you seriously just throw sand in my face?"

Baker opens her mouth uncertainly, but then Hannah picks up a handful of sand and throws it back at her. Baker yells and falls to her knees, scratching madly at her face.

Hannah's furious now: she kicks at the sand over and over and over while Baker splutters and spits and crosses her arms over her face. Baker cowers until she falls prostrate with her head clutched between her hands, and then she begins to shake.

"Please," she cries. "Hannah, please."

Hannah freezes. Baker's breath comes in huge heaves as she cries with her face in the sand. "Please," she cries again, weaker this time. "Please, Hannah."

"Bake," Hannah says, dropping to her knees. "Bake, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Please, Hannah-"

Hannah wraps her arms around her. Baker tries to throw Hannah off without shifting her position, making noises of pain and protest, but Hannah tightens her arms.

"Baker," Hannah says desperately, fighting to hold onto her, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Hannah," Baker cries. "Hannah, make it stop."

"Bake?"

"Make it stop," she repeats, no longer fighting but continuing to cry. "Make it stop."

Hannah places a hand on Baker's shoulder and pulls Baker back toward her, breaking her from the sand. She scoots around Baker until she's facing her, and then she touches her hands to Baker's face, wiping the sand away. Baker sobs helplessly, her eyes closed, tears streaming down her face. Hannah wipes the sand off of her forehead, out of her eyes, away from her mouth.

"Baker," Hannah says, her voice breaking.

Baker opens her eyes, and all the anger is gone from them. Now she only looks anguished and broken.

"Bake," Hannah whispers, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She places her hand on the side of Baker's face, and Baker leans into it. She pulls Baker into her arms, and Baker falls into her like a child, still crying and gasping. "It's okay," Hannah says. "It's okay."

"Hate-this."

Hannah cradles Baker's head under her chin. She kisses the crown of Baker's head over and over and over while she rocks her in her arms.

"It's okay," Hannah promises her. "It's okay. It's okay."

The waves break in the surf. Hannah knows that she and Baker are outside of time. She can tell by the whisper of the air and the pattern of the stars, by the swell of her heart and the immediacy of her pain. They are the only two humans on the earth tonight, she and Baker, and Hannah knows this. The sand is cool until their skin brings heat to its tiny grains. The heavens are unseen until they look upward, their eyes searching for luminaries in the great dome of the sky. The waves are still undiscovered, still naive in their movements: they do not know anyone is watching them. We're watching, Hannah thinks.

"Do you really feel scared?" Baker asks, when they're calm.

"All the time." Hannah looks down at her. "But I still feel this-this pull towards you. Like I want to be around you every second. Like I can't be away."

Baker wipes at her eyes. In her barest voice, she says, "I don't want to feel this way."

"Me neither," Hannah says.

Baker turns toward her in the darkness. She wipes at her eyes again. "I want to be around you, too. All the time. I look at you and I just-I just-"

"I know," Hannah says, taking her hand. "Me too."

"But I'm scared, Han. I'm scared and I-I don't know if it's okay. I don't want to be wrong."

"I know," Hannah swallows.

Baker looks at her with desperate eyes, lit only by the brightness of the moon. "Do you think we're wrong?"

Hannah's heart hangs heavy in her chest. "No," she breathes, and in the silence that follows her admission, she cannot discern truth from lie.

Baker's eyes are sad but determined. She looks at Hannah, and now they are reading each other, reading each other's eyes, reading each other's selves, and Hannah's heart beats so strongly in her chest that she feels like it has only now been placed within her, an organ to confirm her humanity.

Baker's eyes are wet. "Hannah," she says, "Hannah-I want-"

Hannah nods and realizes her eyes are wet too. She sets a hand on the cold sand and pushes herself forward until her lips meet Baker's with the delicate touch of tree leaves. And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation.

"Don't cry," Hannah whispers against Baker's mouth.

"Have to," Baker gasps.

They kiss each other beautifully but brokenly, each kiss imparting wishes and prayers and shame, their tears mixing on each other's mouths, and in a startling moment of clarity Hannah feels G.o.d there with her, pounding in her heart, flowing through her body and blood, but whether in jubilation or admonition, she doesn't know.

"Hold on," Baker whispers, drawing back and wiping her eyes. She turns her head from side to side, looking down the beach, then looking up at the sky, her eyes seeking something beyond Hannah. "Let's go back to the house."

"Right now?"

Baker's lip trembles. "I don't want to do this out here."

Hannah pauses. "Okay."

Their bedroom is a sanctuary, cradling them in its remote darkness, hiding them from the rest of the earth. It teems with the dark shapes of their clothes and towels, growing out of the carpet like familiar flora and fauna.

Hannah crosses to the windows to let some air into the room, but Baker's voice stops her.

"Don't," she says urgently. "Keep them closed." Her voice is shaking and pained. Hannah stills with her bare feet rubbing sand into the carpet.

They stare at each other's outlines, their eyes straining through the darkness.

"Hannah?"

"Yeah?" Hannah answers, her own voice shaking and pained now.

"It's just us, right?"

Hannah walks to her. She touches her cheek and finds her eyes. There is a desperate light hanging on her pupils. A flicker of pa.s.sion, a flicker of shame.

"It's just us."

Baker nods, and Hannah can see in her half-lidded eyes that she's trying so hard to believe it. Tears bleed out of her eyes again, water and salt collecting on her face just as they did on Christ's face when he wept in the garden, just as they did on Eve's face when she wept beyond the garden.

Hannah presses close to her and kisses her tears. "Just us."

Baker raises an unsteady hand and grips the cotton of Hannah's shirt. "Will you-" she starts with a trembling breath. She shakes her head and grips Hannah's shirt tighter. "Will you-?"

Hannah kisses her gently, pressing against her lips with earliest innocence. Baker inhales like it might be the first time she's ever done so, her eyes closed and her hand still knotted in Hannah's shirt. They kiss again, more eagerly this time, until the kiss turns into a deeper hunger, each of them asking for their fill, both of them making offerings of lips and tongues and saliva.

Baker's hands wander over Hannah's hips and around to her back, and Hannah mirrors her actions, touching the stretchy fabric of Baker's bathing suit, then the soft nakedness of her skin. They kiss each other hard and touch each other with a frantic restlessness, and there is no sound in the room but the union of their wet lips and their panting. Baker kisses Hannah's jawline, her ear, her neck, her collarbone, and then walks her back toward the bed and eases her down onto her back, so that Hannah is sprawled out beneath the canopy of Baker's long, dark hair. Hannah surrenders with tentative willingness, opening herself bravely to the fate of these kisses, feeling her blood course through her body. She sits up and places her hands on Baker's hips to still her, and then she tugs her own shirt over her head. Baker draws back from Hannah and looks breathlessly over her body, and when Hannah meets Baker's eyes, she can still see that desperate light hanging in them, magnified in her enlarged pupils. Baker glides her hands down Hannah's stomach, seemingly in awe of the gooseb.u.mps that form at her touch, her face full of wonder, her eyes carrying that desperate light.

Then Baker takes off her bathing suit top, and Hannah can only breathe.

Baker hovers above Hannah, breathing hard, her face still wet with tears. Hannah's arms begin to shake, like branches of a tree in a rainstorm, and Baker's eyebrows crinkle in concern, but Hannah keeps eye contact with her and lies back down on the bed.

Baker kisses down Hannah's chest, down her stomach, across her bellyb.u.t.ton, at the bones of her hips. Hannah's body shakes more, and Baker looks at her with pained eyes, asking what to do, asking, wordlessly, whether they should keep going. Hannah looks back into Baker's dark eyes-darker and richer than the earth's oldest soil, but still with that desperate light hanging in them-and takes a deep breath. Then she nods.

Baker hesitates for a second, her wet lips parted in uncertainty, but then she nods, too. Hannah rolls down the waistband of her sleep shorts, and Baker watches Hannah's fingers move.

And then Baker's fingers are on Hannah's thighs, and then they're peeling Hannah's shorts down her legs, and then Baker looks at Hannah one more time, still blinking back tears, and Hannah holds her eyes and nods.

It's a feeling she never could have prepared for, having Baker inside of her like this. They breathe in at the same time, quick and sharp like they're hiccupping on air, and Baker looks at Hannah with such shy wonder that Hannah smiles, maybe out of nervousness or maybe out of shock, or maybe even out of joy, and then Baker's mouth upturns with the shadow of a smile, too, and Baker looks down at her hand like she can't believe it's connected to her body. Hannah closes her eyes, opens them to watch Baker, closes them when her feelings overtake her, opens them to watch Baker again.

And then they're still, no sound in the room except for their ragged breathing. Hannah lies naked on the bed, one hand raised above her head, the other hand reaching for Baker's face so she can pull her down to kiss her. She can feel Baker's tears on her cheeks.

Baker moves her hand from between Hannah's legs to the plane of her stomach, and Hannah feels the wetness of Baker's fingers on her skin. They both stare at Baker's fingers, at the proof of their sin, at the seed of their salvation.

Hannah touches Baker's jaw to get her attention. Baker's eyes meet Hannah's again, and Hannah feels overwhelmed by the emotions she sees in them. She pulls Baker down and flips her onto her back, and Baker breathes as Hannah's fingers move to the b.u.t.tons on her shorts.

And then Hannah has learned the oldest secret on earth, has connected herself to the long human story, has taken her place in the pattern of human unions. Baker's stomach rises and falls, her back arching off the sheets, and Hannah hovers over her on the bed, moving her fingers instinctively, touching something primitive and sacred deep inside the basin of Baker's body. Baker makes small sounds, woman's pleasure mixing with child's need, and then she starts to cry. "Please," she gasps, looking at Hannah, then looking away from her. "Please." Hannah moves one hand to Baker's forehead, brushes her hair away, combs a thumb across her eyebrow; she moves her other hand at the base of Baker's body, pulling prayers from deep within her, until, with one last pet.i.tion, she comes.

There are fresh tears in Baker's eyes when she looks up at Hannah, both of them breathing rapidly in and out, trading air between their mouths. Hannah kisses her and rasps, "You okay?", and Baker doesn't answer except to pull Hannah toward her, and they lie with their bodies overlapping, skin on skin, beating heart on beating heart.