It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I told myself that over and over, as if repetition could make it true. But intentions are slippery, and what followed is something I’ve hidden for so long it feels less like a memory and more like a dream I can’t shake. Still, if I close my eyes, I’m there—flat on the library couch, staring at the ceiling, my head filled with nothing but the hollow hum of the day after.

I met him—the professor’s son with the family everyone whispered about. How do you describe someone like that? He was like the rest of Hampden: wealthy, clever, unknowable. But there was something different, something more. Even Judy, perpetually unimpressed, couldn’t stop talking about his family, the rumors of trickery and deceit. But none of it mattered. He wasn’t like them; he couldn’t be.

He was ethereal. They looked at him twice, sometimes three times, just to confirm he was real. Me? I was invisible. In secondhand sweaters with a quiet voice and scuffed boots. I didn’t belong in his orbit. Yet, one night at her party, I found myself standing beside him. I don’t remember how it happened, only that it did.

We talked—about his girlfriend, his life, the weight of his family name. I laughed too much. He smiled at me, and something in me unraveled. After that, I thought about him constantly, against my will. In flashes, images I couldn’t control. His face, his hands, his body in the pale light of some imagined moon. It frightened me, the wrongness of it. But I couldn’t stop.

He started inviting me to his house. We’d sit in rooms filled with warm light and shadows, saying little. I told myself it was nothing. Harmless. But it wasn’t.

One night at a party, I drank too much—so much I ended up vomiting on someone, humiliated and dizzy. He led me to the bathroom and stayed, sitting on the floor while I leaned my head against his shoulder, too far gone to stop myself. I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of him steady me.

But even then, I think I knew. I would regret it forever.