Java : Best way to pass int by reference

I have a parsing function that parses an encoded length from a byte buffer, it returns the parsed length as an int, and takes an index into the buffer as an integer arg. I want the function to update the index according to what it's parsed, i.e. want to pass that index by reference. In C I'd just pass an int *. What's the cleanest way to do this in Java? I'm currently looking at passing the index arg. as an int[], but it's a bit ugly.