I navigated to the photo and held my phone up to his face. “This girl. Who is she? Why is she kissing you?” Why did I sound so damn jealous? I was going to blame the shrillness in my voice on my roller coaster of a night.

Oakley looked at the picture and laughed. Was this man trying to get murdered tonight?

“What the hell is so funny?” I snapped.

“One, you’re insanely cute when you are jealous. Two, she was just a random drunk girl. Her friends dared her to come get a picture with me. I overheard them telling her to pinch my butt, so I made sure to keep it out of grabbing range. I thought she was just going to give me a hug, but she went in to kiss my cheek at the last second.”

Oh. Okay. I felt really dumb.

I folded myself back into his chest. “Oakley? Can you stay with me tonight?”

“Anything for you, Solver,” he said as he easily scooped me up and carried me to bed.

22

I could count off the top of my head three conversations that made me cringe.

The first conversation was when my mother told me about sex. I was eleven years old and had gotten my first period during a math test. I was wearing white jeans like the badass middle schooler I was. The entire class knew, and when I got home, my mother threw me a period party.

Yep, a period party.

She made us eat tomato soup. She also had a vagina piñata and filled it with pads. It was seriously traumatizing to beat it with a baseball bat. Then, she dragged me kicking and screaming up the stairs so she could tell me about the birds and the bees. I’d already known the mechanics of sex thanks to health class, but after four Bloody Marys, my mother felt like she needed to give me the nitty gritty.

“Anal is painful, Amanda,” she’d said. “Even if he begs, don’t do it. You’ll never be the same, and the pain isn’t worth it.”

I’d scrubbed the conversation from my mind while keeled over with cramps. It was terrible.

The second worst conversation was when I had to explain to President Gentry why I was buck naked on his lawn. Listing the amount of Four Lokos I’d had seemed appropriate at the time, but I still felt a twinge of secondhand embarrassment every time I thought of it.

But the third worst conversation? It was happening right now. “So what is this?” I asked with my heart pounding. Defining the relationship was like getting an annual pap smear: No one really wanted to do it, but it was necessary. If I had to compare this conversation to having Dr. Johari’s hands up my tunnel of doom, I’d say her tender touch and the feet stirrups were preferable.