It’s actually his father who suggests it. “Take the rest of the summer for yourself,” he says. “Do something fun.” “Fun,” Sidney repeats blankly.

Sid is smitten. He was smitten from the start, he thinks. The first time he saw Zhenya's dark eyes and hair and smooth skin. The way his cheeks flush the same color as his mouth with exertion, or passion. Sid knows that people make comments about his own mouth, the way it would be more suited on a childbearing male, but he thinks that they can’t possibly have seen Zhenya's. The perfect, sweet cupid's bow of his upper lip and the plush, fat pout of the bottom one.