Trish was petulant. “I don’t understand why you won’t just try a Sex on the Beach, not even a sip?”

Dustin was stubborn. “I don’t like to change my drinks in the evening. I’ll try one the next time we’re at Stubby’s, I promise.”

Trish, frustrated, “A Sex on the beach is just a Cape Codder with orange juice and peach schnapps.”

Dustin, “Look, it’s not about the ingredients, okay? It’s about how I feel about what I’m doing. When I was growing up in New England, every evening my father would prowl around the house with a Cape Codder in his hand. It was just the coziest thing, you know, the lamps would be turned down, and there were all these dark windows around us, barely keeping the night away, and the ocean whispering eternity out in the dark, and the TV would be on, with my sisters enraptured in their pajamas and my parents presiding on the couch and my father, always with this blood red Cape Codder in his hand. We were from New England, and this was the drink of our men, and this was how we drank it, snuggled up cozy in the half-light with our families, watching TV and grumbling about the dismal fate of America. So I just have this visceral feeling that as long as I’m drinking a Cape Codder in the evening, I’m doing the right thing, I’m not breaking any rules, I’m not even really drinking alcohol, I’m just staying the course. To drink anything else would violate the family honor.”

Trish raised an eyebrow. “I just want to state, for the record, that I think it’s absurd that at this moment, you have just actually had sex with me on a beach, that very beach of Lake Michigan right out there, which you know your great uncle the Episcopalian bishop would detest, but you will not take the smallest sip of a drink called Sex on the Beach because it would be breaking the rules.”

Dustin shrugged. “It’s my way.”

“Like Mr. Spock,” Drake chimed in.

“Exactly.”