He was the only boy she’d ever lusted after so badly. Years of passive emotional abuse were summed up into dead-end compliments, “we should hang out sometime” and not much more. These teasing statements only increased her heartbreaking infatuation, and further defined the very nature of a crush. She finally decided after their last awkwardly misleading outing, that she would soon repay him for all the kindness he had bestowed on her adolescent heart. It took some maneuvering and manipulation, but eventually she had herself a plan. She made herself appear uncharacteristically easy, so as to bait the very hook on which he would soon snag his fragile ego. After a short evening of “you look really good”, shallow banter and a few glasses of red wine, she was led back to his unkempt bedroom, once a completely unreachable fantasy, now not much more than four walls.

Things progressed as they usually did until unlike times before, they were now giggling in only undergarments. Breathless and stuck to one another, he had a look of smug accomplishment on his face that he was ineffectively hiding. His fingers traced up her curved back and inched towards the closure of her favorite bra. She closed her eyes and waited, giving him a silent signal that he was allowed to proceed. But then, without opening her eyes, she held his hand still behind her back and slowly leaned over his chest to reach his right ear. Her hot breath made goosebumps appear on the skin of his neck as she mouthed into it: “tell me you want me.” Across his face crawled a look half-way between annoyance and satisfaction. Deliberately this time, she repeated: “tell me. you want me.” He broke down, if only for the sake of time and lust and softly admitted, in between kisses to her collarbone: “I (kiss) want (kiss) you.”

Finally! Those three words whose thrilling importance was often overshadowed by a different significant three words, all shoved into a sentence meant for her. She had longed for this moment through many a lonely Saturday night and often through dreams in which someone kinder should have been cast, but where only his shadowed face appeared. She pushed herself back up off his chest in a most provocative manner, gave him the best seductive face she could manage without giving away her next move, and leaned back down to his neck where she quietly whispered the sentence she had spitefully rehearsed for days: “you. can’t. have. me.”

With that utterance, she promptly sat up, threw back on the clothes she had worn in, stepped over piles of dirty career shirts and closed the door behind her without anything so much as an over-the-shoulder glance at his undoubtedly shocked and confused expression. As she strapped on her seat belt and shifted into reverse, she eyed the rear-view mirror and silently added: you were right, I do look good.