My heart soared.

“I know most guys mind a little extra padding, but not me.”

My heart soared higher.

His lips kissed a path down my jaw, stopping just below my ear, where he whispered, “Though not too much more, right?”

“Right,” I answered breathlessly.

He kissed me right out of my head, and when he pushed his hand under my shirt and grazed the underside of my breast, I was certain that if he’d asked that night, I would have let him do anything he wanted to me.

But he waited. A gentleman? Sure, let’s go with that.

The rest of that spring I spent with Thomas. If I wasn’t physically with him, I was thinking about him, dreaming about him, mooning over him. He couldn’t always be with me, of course; he had studying to do, projects to work on, and I would never think of interrupting him when he was working on his master’s thesis. But when he had a break, I dropped whatever it was that I was doing to be with him. After all, as he’d pointed out numerous times, I was a senior, and really didn’t need to spend as much time on my studies as he did. Last semester senior year was just a formality, right?

Until my midterm grades came in, and my B’s had fallen to C’s, D’s, and one very upsetting F.

My parents had met Thomas by now, and while they liked him, and liked that their daughter had a boyfriend (I had a boyfriend!), they weren’t crazy about me spending so much time with him. Especially after my grades came out.

A war was waged in our brownstone that day, a war that had been waging between teenagers and their parents since the dawn of time. And I was going to fight to the death to be allowed to continue to see Thomas.

For a girl whose world had been mostly observing the world happen to other people, now I was actually experiencing things, doing things, wanting and being wanted. It was intoxicating, and nothing could have stopped me from what I wanted, what I needed.

And what I needed, more than anything, was Thomas. Never mind the fact that I never once met his friends (it’s not the same as silly high school parties; my friends are all busy either studying or working their two to three jobs because not all of us were lucky enough to be born into wealthy families), never once met his parents (they live in New Jersey and I don’t have a car, and no, you can’t just take a town car everywhere), or even went out to a nice dinner (if we stay in, you can practice your cooking skills. I mean, really, Natalie, how can you not even know how to make toast?).

The first time he put his hands on me, he told me how pretty I was, how soft I was, and how I should never feel bad about my body, that I just wasn’t meant to look like most girls my age.

The first time he put his mouth on me, with his head between my thighs and a serious expression on his face, he told me it was natural for women to love this, and if I didn’t love it, too, that maybe I should think about how lucky I was that someone was willing to do this, considering the obvious. And that even though he personally thought I had a pretty cunt, perhaps I should visit a spa and have some of that au naturel look taken care of.

The first time he let me put my mouth on him, he told me how perfect I looked on my knees, and that he was so very glad that I’d never done this before, because he wouldn’t have any bad habits to break. And for fuck’s sake, he wasn’t an ear of corn, to control my teeth and the urge to not gobble like I hadn’t eaten in a month, which of course would never happen to someone like me.

The first time he was inside of me it didn’t matter if it hurt, because that’s what love was, it was supposed to hurt a little so that you knew it was true and real and worth having, and that don’t worry, it will get better, and if I could figure out how to finally have an orgasm like regular girls, it wouldn’t be something I’d have to think about anymore.

Looking back now, how fucking stupid was I not to see what was going on? But when you were in it, you didn’t know it, and when your life had finally started to happen, it didn’t matter what else you were giving up for that life. It only mattered that you were special—to someone—and that you were very lucky indeed to have that someone. And everything else should just fade away and become background noise.

Background noise like prom, which I could have finally gone to because, hello, boyfriend! But, hello, college guy, and why the hell would he go to some stupid high school prom with other stupid uppity rich kids?

Background noise like college essays, because even though I’d been preaccepted, I still had to go through the formality of being actually accepted into the schools I’d been dreaming of attending since I was in junior high and beginning to plan out my life carefully and methodically.

Background noise like my high school paper, of which I’d been the editor, but now was lucky to get an article in every other month

. . . like my brother’s birthday

. . . like my parents’ anniversary

. . . like my graduation.

I missed my high school graduation, spending it naked on a mattress on my hands and knees, getting fucked in the ass by someone who told me I would absolutely love it, and if I didn’t, then there must be more wrong with me than he originally thought, and that it was only because he loved me so much that he hadn’t dumped me weeks ago.

If someone had told me that I would have moved out of my parents’ home to go and live in a fourth-floor walk-up in the Bronx with my boyfriend, to say fuck off to my mother when she told me this was a terrible mistake, and tell my father he was an asshole when he told me college was off the table if I did this, I’d have said they were nuts.

And yet that September, when everyone I’d known since elementary school was off at Brown and Wellesley, I was standing in front of a two-burner stove, trying like hell not to burn toast because I’d never hear the end of it, wearing nothing but a plaid skirt and bra because that’s how he liked me best, and wondering how much it would cost to get a new air-conditioning unit for this piece-of-crap apartment, because ours had died last night and it was stifling hot.

I’d never spent August in the city. We had a house in Bridgehampton, natch. I’m not trying to play poor little rich girl, but the city was murder in the heat. And the excitement of walking away from my life to play house with Thomas was beginning to wear a little thin.

What wasn’t thin was my body, something that was the center of almost every conversation I had with him. Where he used to tell me how much he loved my curves, he now told me how flabby I’d gotten, and how much everything jiggled when he was pounding into me. Which was almost every night, and every day, pounding and thrusting and thrashing and hair pulling and get up on top like this and arch your back like that and why the hell can’t you figure this out for God’s sake why do I have to do everything?