“I completely cut his mouth up. There was blood everywhere. He ran out of the room. As far as I know, he didn’t tell anyone the details, but it was pretty obvious what I had done. Everybody called me BB, for Bloody Braces, the rest of high school. The online bullying was relentless. Which meant that I wasn’t going to date any guy I knew, because everybody teased me constantly.”

“Understandable.” He paused. “To be honest, I thought you were going to tell me that someone hurt you. And that was why you steered clear of men.”

“No. Nobody hurt me. I was the one committing face felonies with my teeth blades.”

He smiled slightly at that, and it emboldened me to go on. “Then I went to college. And it was really awkward to be so far behind everyone else. I’d hated that feeling in high school, like there was this race everybody else was running, but I was still stuck at the starting line wondering when it was going to be my turn. Everybody else was having sex, and I’d never even kissed someone. So freshman year I decided to find a guy to make out with. I was friends with this girl from one of my math classes, and she said her boyfriend’s best friend was into noncommittal make outs and hooked up with different girls constantly. And I wasn’t going to sleep with him, but I thought kissing someone who knew what he was doing would be a good option.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well?”

I hugged the pillow tighter. “This friend brought along her boyfriend and the four of us were hanging out and watching a movie, and then she came up with an excuse to leave. So here I was, alone with this guy in his living room, not knowing what to do and feeling fully freaked out. Waiting for him to make a move.”

“And what happened when he did?”

“He didn’t. The guy who was known on campus for cycling through every available woman wasn’t interested in me. Which was this total blow to my self-esteem and put me off the idea of dating for a long time. And then when I tried to get back into dating again, there was this boy in my statistics class who seemed decent and interested in me, and we went to a movie and ice cream and I was like, This is it. I’m going to kiss this guy. I thought I was too old to keep waiting.” I stopped for a second, worried that if I brought it up again, I’d be back in that moment, feeling the way I felt. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly and then kept going.