“Well what the fuck else was I supposed to do?” Ted says, as if genuinely bemused as to why I might be upset to learn my boyfriend had sex with someone else.

I stare at him, feeling humiliated more than I am actually hurt. I suppose the right thing to do would be to cry here - at least, that’s what girls in the movies do when the asshole they’re seeing inevitably acts the part. But I’m pretty sure there aren’t any tears coming. Sure, I’m angry, but it’s more the principal of it all that stings more than hurt feelings.

Ted shrugs. “It’s not like you were ever gonna let me get any.”

I scowl at him. “So you cheated on me?”

“Babe, it’s hardly cheating if we haven’t even done it yet.”

I am actually getting dumber having this conversation. How did I ever find this boy charming?

Well, I suppose I knew if I thought about it.

So I’d come to college a virgin; big deal, right? I knew sex was this big thing, and pretty much anything anyone back in high school talked or thought about, but I just never got around to it. I mean, when would I have had the time? Between school, and running track, and being valedictorian, and getting into an ivy league school on a full scholarship, it just hadn’t been on the radar.

Okay, and if we’re being honest, it’s not like taking all AP classes and being on the math team exactly makes you the most popular girl in school.

I was what my mom called a late bloomer. I’d held on to my baby-fat a little longer than some girls, I guess, until junior year when I’d started running distance for the track team after a guidance counselor suggested adding sports to my extracurriculars. It would look better when I applied to schools. I wasn’t exactly a candidate for team sports - I didn’t even watch sports, really - and so track it was.

And then it was like the growth spurt and puberty and all of it hit overnight.

Overnight, I’d gotten boobs; big, full boobs. Track slimmed me down, but the hips, the butt, and the breasts stayed.

And I didn’t know what to do about it.

So, I started wearing baggy sweatshirts, and shapeless dresses and pants; anything to hide the curves that I wasn’t prepared for. So, add “dressing like a bum” to “math team”, “loner”, and “book nerd”, and we have a perfect recipe for escaping high school boyfriend-free and with virginity firmly in place.

It was before I left for school that the urgings of my mother and my one friend Amy finally got through to me. Or maybe it was that I was starting something new in the fall; a fresh start in a new place where no one knew the old dorky me, and where me being a smarty-pants would actually be a good thing. In any case, I gave in, and let Amy take me shopping.

So, the girl that walked onto that small-town, ivy-league campus in the fall was anything but the gawky nerd from high school. Okay, the glasses stayed, because contacts freaked me out, and I honestly liked my strawberry ginger hair too much to dye it. Styled, yes, but not changed.

And I finally had clothes that fit my form instead of hiding it away. Add the whole thing up, and I was a brand new me.

Right, so, that’s how I managed to start dating Ted, the football jock from one of the fraternities. I mean, this was me we’re talking about. Me, who’d never once been on a date, or really had much of anything to do with boys. Like for instance, cute and popular boys like Ted who waltz right up on the campus quad the second day of orientation and ask you out.

Of course I said yes.

Yeah, some of the other kids were there because of their parent’s money, but not me. I was there because worked for it. And if that meant I hadn’t had boyfriends, and subsequently sex, then…whatever. I was fine with it.

Ted, however, had not been, and in hindsight, I think that was the entire reason he’d come strolling up and asked me out that day - to get in my pants.

It made me furious when I thought about it, like he’d tried to cheat me out of something.

We’d had fun on date one, and he’d been a gentleman through the whole dinner and even walked me back to the dorms after, where I gushed to my roommate Ally about everything like the silly nervous virgin I was.

Date two, he’d gotten a little handsy, and I’d had to ask him twice to stop.

It was date three when he’d pulled his penis out in the car, like I was just supposed to do something with it. I’d left the car, and stalked back to my dorm room furious with myself.

And thus, he was breaking up with me.

Nice, huh?

“Fine, Ted,” I say, rolling my eyes and trying not to feel upset over an asshole like this guy.

“I mean, if you ever wanted to have some casual,” he says, shrugging. “You know, just call me.”

I don’t need this crap, I think to myself as I roll my eyes and walk away from him; my first failed attempt at the whole “boyfriend” thing.

What I need is a coffee.