He handed it back over.

I figured you… knew stuff was his response.

Knew stuff? What did he…? He was going to make me say it, wasn’t he? He really was.

Flashing him a side look that he met with his dark brown eyes, I cleared my throat and typed a message back that had me cringing on the inside. Maybe I should have dropped it and let him keep believing what he’d been believing.

What do you mean by “stuff”? I’ve seen… penises. I’ve watched… stuff… online.

His face turned a shade of red I’d never seen on him before as he read my reply. He hesitated. Gulped. His thumbs flew across the screen in a blur before he handed me back the phone with his gaze trained forward.

OK.

I swallowed and decided I needed to just tell him. Get it over with. So I did.

I’m not a virgin.

It wasn’t like he knew what I’d typed when he took his time picking the phone off his leg and reading what was on the screen. I didn’t miss how his eyes flicked back up to the top as if he was rereading what I’d written. Then he did it again. Slowly, too slowly, he typed up another message and set the phone on my thigh.

I thought you said you’d never had a boyfriend before.

Really? Really? My heart was beating fast as I typed, You’ve only had sex with people who were your girlfriends? Did I write that more defensively than I probably needed to? Yes. Definitely yes. But I’d never told anyone this before, and… well, I’d chosen him. It wasn’t like admitting what I’d done was easy for me.

Aaron stared at the screen for a second before his Adam’s apple bobbed once.

No. Was his simple, basic response that I couldn’t get even a remote feel on. His attention was still focused directly in front of him, and I didn’t know what to think about him not wanting to make eye contact with me.

But what was I going to do? Lie? Let him do this double-standard crap? It was my fault for not being more upfront with him, but it wasn’t like I was proud of what had happened, and if I could go back, I wouldn’t have let it go down like that.

But you couldn’t go back to change things that were already in the past.

It was only once and I was 21. He wasn’t my boyfriend then or afterward. He regretted it almost immediately, and besides apologizing to me for it, we never talked about it again.

My face was red as I finished typing out the truth, but I kept holding the phone in my hand, trying to think of what else I could tell him.

I don’t like talking about it because it’s hard to think that I gave someone something I’d really wanted to, had them accept it and then pretty much reject it and make me feel like I was a giant mistake. He blamed it on “being caught up in the moment.” Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t what I had expected. I felt like an idiot.

Aaron took the phone from me slowly and read the message at least three times from the way his eyes moved down and across the screen several times. Then slowly, slowly, he typed out a message and set my phone back down on my thigh for me to take.

What happened?

Nerves caught up with me as I reminisced about that one thing I really tried hard not to think about ever.

Right after I turned 21, I told myself I was going to try and be more outgoing, that I’d go after the things I wanted more often, you know? I tried, I really tried to get out of my shell. My brother’s birthday is a few months after mine, and he decided to have a party. I went. I’m a crappy drunk, and I had one too many margaritas at his house that night, so I wasn’t exactly acting like myself. Which was what I wanted. I guess I was more outgoing and uninhibited. I never would’ve come on to him that hard or flirted so much if I hadn’t drank so much… but I did. We ended up talking all night. He was being so nice to me and friendly… He acted like he liked me, but I think I made up more to it in my head, and when I wanted to go home, he offered to take me.

When he dropped me off, he asked if I wanted to go to a party with him the next day. I didn’t want to, not really, but I wasn’t going to tell him no. So I went. And I drank too much that night too because I’d been so nervous. I just wanted him to like me. And he was great. I thought that was it.

I cleared my throat and kept on typing away.

On the way home, I pretty much threw myself at him. Literally. It was the ballsiest thing I had ever done before I met you. He tried telling me it was a bad idea and that we shouldn’t, but… we did. Once. He took me to his place and it happened. He wouldn’t even look at me afterward. I got dropped off at home and he kissed my cheek without saying anything. The next day he came by and told me we shouldn’t have done that. That he cared about me and thought of me like a little sister, and that he hoped I wouldn’t tell anyone. I told him I wouldn’t, but when he left, I cried for days. I thought there was more to “it,” thought he’d come around one day and apologize because he’d changed his mind, but he never brought it up ever again, and I couldn’t either.

I knew Aaron saw the way my hands were shaking as I typed on the screen and then set the phone on his knee. I could see him flicking his gaze between my face and the phone as I put my hands in my lap and waited for him to read what I told him. He had to have read what was on the screen at least five times because it seriously took almost ten minutes before he finally wrote a reply. I didn’t miss the way his hands trembled as he set my phone on his leg that time, not mine.