My anger is an army revved up for warfare. I can still see Werner’s apologetic face and hear him telling me I’m the girl you bring home to your parents. The girl you marry. And all the things I couldn’t say to Werner, they’re lined up like soldiers, ready to march out for battle.

“I’m not the girl who anything,” I say. “I’m Rachel. I’m this girl—this woman, actually. I like sex, and I think I would probably enjoy getting fucked in a truck, with the right guy.”

I note that I just said fucked and the world doesn’t seem to have ended. Actually, I feel pretty good.

“And FYI, the ‘right guy’ would not be the kind of guy who would tell me I wasn’t that kind of girl.”

Brody winces. “Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry. That was a dumbass thing to say.”

Oh.

A real apology.

Haven’t heard one of those in a long time. Do people even do them anymore?

“Thank you.”

We’re both quiet for a moment. He’s still watching me silently, attentively. Like he heard me. Sees me. As if what I just said makes as much sense in his head as it does in mine. Which may or may not be the case given that I haven’t told him yet why those words—“you’re not that girl”—made me insta-lose my cool.

“I mean, I get it,” I tell him. “You’ve spent your whole life thinking of me as Connor’s little sister.”

He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it.

“I’m not. I’m not anyone’s little anything.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not. And Rachel?”

“Yeah?”

“To me, you never have been. And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I thought that.”

I’m not sure if it’s the apology, his sincerity, or the warmth in his eyes that makes me able to take my first long, deep breath since I started yelling at him, but I do. And then another. The vise around my chest loosens, which is almost worse, because what’s left is my hurt feelings.

And the truth.

“I’m not mad at you.”

Then I tell him the story.

The whole thing. Not just the version I’ve told my friends, where I lose my job and then catch my boyfriend cheating, and bummer, as a side effect, no apartment! Not that version, an adult Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. But the whole thing.