My heart was torn, half aching for causing her pain, half trilling that she cared enough to feel it.

“What kind of fucking it up did you do? Did you pluck some poor girl from your harem and have your way with her?”

I shoved him gently. “No. She wanted something I can’t give her.”

“Not an STD, then?” he said, grinning.

“Oh fuck off.”

“No, come on,” he said, putting a serious face on, “I genuinely want to know. I care about her.”

I sighed but reluctantly gave him one more chance to act like a human being.

“She wanted something more . . . I dunno . . . real? That’s not what I wanted. We had an agreement. I told her that the first night.” I realized I sounded like I was defending myself on trial and maybe I needed to tell the truth. “I made all these rules for myself about what I shouldn’t do so I wouldn’t get hurt. Don’t have serious conversations. Don’t picture a future together. Don’t fight and don’t make up. Basically don’t have feelings, don’t fall in love. I knew it wouldn’t work. I shouldn’t have let myself get talked into it.”

“Maybe you wanted someone to talk you into it,” he said, knocking his knee against mine. “Maybe you want something real too. Why are you fighting it?”

I resisted the urge to make fun of his Oprah psychobabble and really thought about it. In the beginning, it felt so important that I didn’t tell her about Mum or about anything to do with me, and that was OK because it was a fling. But after a while, it started to feel like a lie and I clung on to my rule of not talking about it even when it no longer did what it was supposed to do, which was give me space not to think about it. It was meant to stop me from getting hurt. Instead, I thought about it and it festered and I stomped it down so it wouldn’t slip out.