Grisha is a college architecture student who works as a male escort, primarily for older couples in heterosexual marriages, after his professor, Nate, and his wife coaxed him into becoming sexually involved with them for money one summer. Grisha's best friend in high school, Marshall, who he had been in love with, had dropped dead one day, and Grisha had found his body. The couple Grisha is living with this summer is Enid and Victor. They take him to parties where their other aging friends ask how they met—a question which Grisha hates to answer—but Grisha assumes they know how they met and what they're really asking is if they could be next to employ Grisha as an escort. Grisha leaves to smoke on the patio and Enid joins him. She discusses how she and Victor knew the host, James, and his first wife, Claudia, who died of cancer, in "another life." James is now married to a woman named Ramona. Enid leaves and Grisha spots Victor alone. Victor tells Grisha that he's sad that their time together is almost over, and that Grisha will be a magnificent architect. Grisha realizes that Victor is in love with him, which has never happened before or occurred to him as a possibility. They have am intense sexual encounter in the shadow of the foyer. They rejoin the party and Ramona asks Grisha to help her with something. He expects her to make some kind of advance, but she just asks him to carry a dessert back to the party. An argument begins between Enid and Ramona about James' late wife's son, Robert. Ramona asserts that Enid never knew Claudia, because she was different after the cancer. Enid says she's just worried about Robert. James jokingly proposes they exchange Robert for Grisha. James learns he's in architecture school and asks if he knows Nate, the architecture professor, who he says designed the house they're standing in. Grisha follows an upset Enid into the kitchen. There, Enid tells Grisha she senses Victor is in love with him. Victor asked her if he could stay past the summer. She asks him to leave that night rather than stay his last couple weeks. She says she'll pay him in full and compensate him for his possessions. Grisha is hurt that she wants him gone so badly, and hurt when she says that she doesn't love him, even though he doesn't love her either.