It was him I couldn’t. Him, with his graphic T-shirt and his rosy cheeks and the earnest look in his eyes, every fucking day at the coffee shop on campus. Jordan Exley, telling me he was so sorry this had happened to me, that it was awful what everyone was saying, that if I ever needed someone to listen, he was there. That we should really go get coffee or tea sometime. Talk.

He came every day, and each time he politely asked me out, and I politely said no, because if I snapped, I’d lose my job, my work-study. I’d be fucked.

Every day he looked at me with such pity as I made his extra-hot almond milk latte. Every day he told me that he was a good listener and I should give him a chance.

Every day, until I couldn’t listen to him anymore.

Every day, until that one day I let myself fully open the hatch. I reached out to hand him the latte, and he tilted his head to the side, said: ‘Really? You’re going to reject me?’

Without even realizing it, my hand was crunching up, popping the plastic lid off. I was throwing the drink – almond milk burned to one hundred eighty degrees – toward his smug little latte-loving face.

His scream was instant, and so was the sweet charred smell of burning skin, and it was only due to some extremely quick thinking on my manager’s part, immediately dousing him with water from the sink, that the burns weren’t worse than they were. It was only due to my awful aim that his whole face wasn’t marred – only his neck and about two inches of his chin.

It was only because he prided himself on being spiritual that he, against his parents’ strongest wishes, didn’t press charges against me.

It didn’t matter to the school – or my reputation. I was expelled almost instantly, three-quarters into completing my degree. What’s more, articles were written. In the school newspaper, but other places, too. Blogs. Shitty news sites. Anyone who could gain a click or two from gossip, from a story of a skanky college girl who’d come unhinged. My name was fairly uncommon, something I’d been pleased with, when I’d decided to be a journalist, but after that day, it only made it easier to google me, instantly learn my whole sordid story.

My parents, they should have been on my side. They should have at least cared about the harassment or the video – or any of the extenuating circumstances. But they didn’t. I had done what they’d always feared. I’d let my anger get the best of me.