It was a big deal. Sex. Sex for the first time. It was breaking a boundary, crossing a line, it changed the title. Virgin would no longer fit. It was serious, and I had to be sure that it was right. I had to be sure he loved me.

Craig. I loved him. I’d loved him ever since last year when we did that skit in Kwan’s class. I loved when he said if you love someone you shouldn’t want them to change. He was right. People weren’t your own make-over project like all those shows on T.V. You had to accept people as they were, love them for who they were, not what you wanted to make them into.

And all those times we’d be making out and I felt myself sliding into that feeling like, yeah, we could do it. It would be great. I’d stop myself, because he hadn’t said he loved me yet so I didn’t know if he loved me or if he just really really liked me.

Craig was funny. He joked a lot. A lot. And it wasn’t always appropriate. In fact, it usually wasn’t appropriate. It was when serious stuff came up and he’d joke, he’d laugh. He wasn’t ever serious. But I needed him to be serious about this. I needed to know how he really felt.

I said I loved him in my bedroom. We’d been making out and I felt my hair all messy, and I looked at him, his face flushed, his eyes half closed. I could imagine us having sex, I could imagine it. Feeling those feelings I’d never felt, those sensations that would be new. And it might hurt, I’d heard that. But it would be okay because it was him, and to feel him inside of me would be just so amazing. I wanted it. I wanted it to be him. But not if he didn’t love me.

He didn’t say it back. I felt cold. He didn’t say it back.

“Do you feel that way?” I said, and then I saw it, the panic and the covering of the panic.

“No. You’re ugly and you kinda smell,” he said, smiling, joking. He didn’t get it. It wasn’t funny. I had bared my heart to him, said I loved him, and he joked. I was beyond pissed. I felt the hurt just rising up in every cell. I wanted him to leave. I wanted to scream, ‘Get out! Get out!’ and throw him out. How dare he deny me what I needed to hear. Why was he making this so difficult?

Craig left, and I came downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.

“Hi, Ashley,” my mom said, looking at me with her concerned mom face.

“Hi,” I said, my voice slow and sad.

“What’s the matter?” she said, and I sighed.

“Have you ever wanted something from someone, like a boyfriend, and they don’t, or can’t, give it to you?” That was one messed up question. But she looked thoughtful and seemed to understand.

“Yeah. You have to give people time sometimes, and space. You can’t force people to be what you want when you want it. Is this about Craig? Remember, Ashley, there are two people in the relationship, and one of them isn’t you,”

I thought about it. She was right. Craig was kind of complicated. He’d had a rougher time in his life than I’ve had. I knew a little bit about it. I mean, his parents were both dead and he was only 15.

Still, he was running from this. He knew what I wanted and I didn’t know why he couldn’t say it. If he had all these issues preventing him from telling me he loved me than that was screwed up.