“I can’t. Everything is full. I’m already on the waitlist.” After Sami made me start wearing gloves before I touched the doorknob, I applied for a roommate change. I am allowed to touch the light switch, she said, but the knob needs protection from my germs. “I’ll move when they have an open room. Right now, I have to make the best of it. Besides, it’s Saturday. They aren’t open.”

“Is there an emergency number for housing?”

“Probably.”

“But you won’t call it.” She’s exasperated with me. I miss her so much. I wish we were together right now so she could yell at me in person. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. Tell me about school.”

Jenna has much better stories about school than I do. She’s been to parties and football games and had sex seven times this quarter. Which is seven more times than I’ve ever had sex. Ever.

Which was not a problem until recently.

Nowadays, it’s kind of a problem.

Previously, I made it through high school with only the barest of crushes and only on unattainable, therefore safe, men. My chem teacher in eighth grade, Jenna’s older brother, occasionally Tony Stark. But they were mostly asexual crushes. I didn’t dream of sexy kisses or naked skin. More like—long talks about string theory. Or in the case of Jenna’s older brother, my fantasy started and stopped with him telling a room full of people that I was his girlfriend. That’s it. Just acknowledging our romantic relationship publicly. Lame, right?

While my classmates went from holding hands to making out to heavy petting to blow jobs and the Big O—I was content to fantasize about boys who wanted to talk to me about science.

I assumed that I would always be uninterested in sex. Jenna even suggested that maybe I am a lesbian. But, nope. After hours of looking at pretty girls online together, and none of them doing anything for me naked or clothed, we concluded I wasn’t any more attracted to women than men. I just wasn’t a sexual person.

Which was fine with me. Sexual attraction seemed messy and hard to understand. I could live quite happily coasting on platonic relationships and vicarious adventures.

Then I woke up one day this summer and my hormones betrayed me.

Turns out, I am not asexual, just a tragically late bloomer.