For months he'd been saying it was inevitable. We were going to hook up.

"No way," I'd said. "Our friendship would implode." There were illustrative hand-gestures and sound effects.

"Not necessarily."

"Yes, necessarily."

We'd go round and round and then, finally, he'd concede that I was right. If we hooked up, he couldn't tell me the sordid details of all his other hook-ups. And those were some of our best conversations.

One night, the tequila shots came out, and so did the old hooking-up discussion. He went over the same material as before - how he'd miss being able to tell me all his scandalous stories, how he liked our friendship. Only, this time, he was standing behind me, with his nose mere inches from my hair. If we were going to be just friends, he said, it wasn't fair that I smelled so good. Standard tequila conversation.

"That first kiss would be really awkward, though," he said, almost to himself.

Enough! I thought. And without saying a word, I turned around and kissed him. Just like that.

Huh," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Wasn't awkward for me."

And by the dazed half-smile on his face, I could tell that awkward wasn't the word he was thinking of either.

When he climbed in bed next to me, I thought, no big deal. The five of us had come back to Venice hostel that night in various stages of drunk, and it was cold in the attic dorm room. Really cold. Obviously he just wanted someone to sleep next to. I mean, I was ten years older than the kid, so there was no way he wanted...

That's when he started rubbing my arm. And kissing my ear.

"I think you need to go to your bed," I said, ripping the yellow spongy earplugs out of my ears and inching away. It was a twin bed; there wasn't really anywhere to go.

"Do you really want me to?

"Yes! Yes, I really want you to!"

I was not about to turn Mrs. Robinson in a room full of sleeping strangers. He was out of his gourd!

And what he said next will go down as the biggest pillow-talk backfire in the history of... well, ever. The best worst line. Sliding his hand down my arm, he lowered his voice and said,

"Come on, Heather. You can be twenty again."

"Out!"

I can be twenty again? Flattering! And, uh, no thank you. I wouldn't be twenty again for a lifetime of spa pedicures and a day pass to Detective Elliot Stabler's wardrobe trailer. That is how much I do not want to be twenty again. I love my not-twenty crows feet and the age-acquired good sense to not hook up with a college kid while his friend is sleeping five feet away. Twenty again! Gah!

Besides, at twenty, I was Mormon and extremely uptight. And I'm betting he didn't climb into bed with me so we could pray together.