Sex & Relationships

HUNG UP ON THE SUMMER OF LOVE

WE’RE sitting on the beach in Miami, it’s around 10 p.m. Super Preppy’s head is resting in my lap, the waves are rushing toward us, and no one else is around.

I feel like I’m about to burst with happiness. My mind is racing with a million questions about what is going to happen to us, what will happen tomorrow, what happened yesterday, if he feels the same way that I do.

Which is my cue to (you’ll be proud of me here): say nothing.

All I do is stroke his hair.

“It is so,” I can barely breathe, let alone talk, “beautiful down here.”

“It certainly is,” he says, looking straight at me. We kiss a little, but it’s the holding that sends shivers down my spine.

Although there are about 500 parties and art fairs going on this weekend for Art Basel – and we make pit stops at the Esquire party, the Raleigh Hotel party and about seven different exhibits – the moment that I keep coming back to is this one.

When I’m talking to other people. When we’re at dinner in the Design District. My brain is still at the beach.

“Oh, I remember five months,” says an older man who’s been involved in a multiyear relationship, as we lounge near the pool of the Shore Club at the Vanity Fair party, awash in balloons and white light. “Everything’s so new, everything’s so exciting.”

I laugh. And I look at Super Preppy and try to imagine being sick of him. During this trip, we’re staying, hilariously enough, with Fred Gonzalez, who writes the Miami Herald’s “The Dating Game” column. (Yes, it’s true – we really do all hang out together.) As I talk to Fred about SP and me, I realize for the first time: There really is an “SP and me.”

“You’ve been together five months?” another woman asks as we hit a small party in South Beach. She eyes us and makes mental calculations. “That’s actually something in New York.”

It’s like dog years, I guess. I’m trying really hard not to quantify.

“It’s definitely been five months,” I quantify later that night to Super Preppy, who knits his eyebrows.

“Are you sure?” he says. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Since the summer.”

Everywhere we turn in Miami, he’s seeing artists that he likes, from Robert Rauschenberg to Ellsworth Kelly. But every once in a while there’s a particular exhibit that captures his imagination.

He takes my hand and leads me to a drawing of two clothespins. They are entwined, in a way.

“It’s called ‘Summer of Love,’ ” he says. As I do whenever anything seems too wonderful, I change the subject.

“Nice,” I say. “Yeah, this other one’s cool, too.”

I have no idea what the other picture was. Offer me a million dollars, still couldn’t tell you.

He’s deliberating. We circle around several more exhibitors, but something draws him back to the little space set up with this simple sketch of two clothespins.

“I’m going to get it,” he says. “I really like it.”

On Sunday night, we return to New York and I spend the night at his apartment. I’m stretched out on the couch, reading, and my mind is still on that damned beach in Miami. All of the sudden I hear pounding.

“What are you doing?” I yell to him.

I walk into the bedroom. It’s winter outside, solid winter.

And “Summer of Love” is hanging by the windowsill.

mstadtmiller@nypost.com