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was practically invisible until I got my braces off then poof, instant B.D.E. (big dick energy). Boys who I’d known my entire life, but had never shown romantic interest, were lining up to have steamy, awkward, teenage sex with me. None of them were quite right — but that was about to change.

One night over the summer before my senior year in high school I was at my friend Kate’s house, which was a typical hang out spot because Kate’s mom was usually out partying or tanning on some guy’s yacht in Miami ever since they caught her dad cheating with a real estate broker. Kate did whatever she wanted because mommy did too. We were watching shitty rom-coms we’d already seen when she told me people were coming over.

I was ​not​ expecting to see my fifth-grade crush, Harry. I would have taken a fucking bullet for him. A little about Harry —

We sat next to each other on the bus to and from school for an entire year when I was 11 years old, slumped down with our knees against the seat in front of us playing rock, paper, scissors which would occasionally turn into hand holding. I saved him a seat in the morning when I got on the bus before him and he’d save me a seat in the afternoon if he made it to the bus before me, placing his backpack down next to him and only moving it when he saw my head peer around the aisle. He’d whisper secrets in my ear, which wouldn’t actually be anything juicy, just an excuse to get close. We’d meet up on the playground at recess and hug, sparking rumors of our fling and making girls in his grade jealous (he was a year older). His bus stop was before mine so I’d wave from the window when he got off the bus, then expect an IM from him by the time I got home since he had a headstart to send one. He played guitar and told me once he wrote a song about me. He was it: my soulmate, my end game, the only boy for me. I was convinced!

When he went to middle school, I was numb. The one person I looked forward to seeing each day was gone. Boys my age just weren’t the same. They couldn’t carry on witty banter like he could. I felt him slipping away over the summer, so I IM’d him that I really liked him. While he reciprocated, he wanted to remain unattached to meet girls his own age. One year later he kissed me on the cheek ice skating under pulsating strobe lights to Cascada’s “Everytime We Touch” blaring around us. That led to heartbreak yet again because he still wasn’t ready to commit.

Such a roller coaster! And I hadn’t seen him since. He went to a different middle school and high school, so there was never really a chance for a casual run-in in the halls or rekindling on the bus anymore. Star-crossed lovers.

But that night was my chance, fate was finally taking its hand, that slow son of a bitch.

He came over with some friends who went to my high school and liked to smoke weed at strangers’ houses, wherever they could without getting caught. As soon as he walked into Kate’s living room we made eye contact. I’m sure I was the last person he expected to see when he set out to cruise around our small town with his best friends that night. An hour later I was sitting on his lap, talking and making up for lost time.

He made up an excuse to go outside and I played along. “I, uh, need something from the car.” “Yeah, me too,” I mumbled.

No one even noticed us slip out. We made out leaning against the side of Kate’s house until his friends were ready to leave and before I knew it, he was gone. Snatched away all too quickly. The next day I was working at the daycare I had for the past three summers when I snuck a look at my phone. He texted me, “Hi.”

Swoon. We still had each other’s phone numbers from middle school. How romantic that he never forgot me, right?

He asked if I wanted to hang out that night, so being the hopeless romantic I am, I agreed. At 10 p.m.he told me to come outside. I walked out my parents’ front door without either one of them noticing. I shuffled down the long driveway in the pitch black to find him idling in his car with the headlights dimmed. We drove half a mile further into my neighborhood before he pulled over, then turned off the car.

It wasn’t sharing a milkshake with one straw in a diner professing our love to each other as I’d envisioned, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. This is what I had been waiting for my whole life.We awkwardly made out for a while, leaning against the console between us, which led to doing it doggy style in his backseat.

As soon as he finished he got out of the car to pull up his pants and I rose from my knees to see my hands soaked in blood. Pools of blood gathered below me, seeping into the cracks of his leather seats. I was so embarrassed because I ​thought​ I’d had sex before, but dry-humping boys naked and drunk at parties did ​not ​feel like ​that​, like a monstrous swell water bottle was moving through my body, taking my breath away, and about to come out of my throat. It was too much blood for me to blame on a cut, so I had to tell him. “

So, uh, something kinda happened to your back seat.”

“Are you on your period? You could have told me.”

“I’m not.”

His eyes widened. “Are you a virgin?”

I said no because I genuinely thought I wasn’t. Then he said, “sorry my dick’s so big.”

And that was it. My night ended with me crying over the embarrassment of ruining the interior of a lifelong crush’s car — his night probably ended with him scrubbing blood out of the crevices of the seats, the leather stitching most likely stained forever.