Growing up as the only daughter of a single father who was a career firefighter hadn’t always been the easiest. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had decided that parenthood just wasn’t for her shortly after giving birth to me and bailed. Dad had done his best after she took off, but as the years passed, it became glaringly obvious that raising a little girl on his own was seriously uncharted territory. I loved him to death, but he didn’t know the first thing about females, and there was no denying that a lack of female influence had seriously impacted my behavior as a child.

When I got my very first period, I came home freaking out that my internal organs had ruptured and I was bleeding to death. After blanching white as a sheet and locking himself in his study for a good thirty minutes, my dad came out with a stack of printed papers, slapped them down on the kitchen table, and told me to read every page word for word. That was how I’d learned about the dreaded menstrual cycle.

When I sprouted boobs seemingly overnight, going from an almost nonexistent A-cup to a full C, he’d tried locking me in my room until I agreed to wearing a sports bra two sizes too small and duct taping those puppies down. Was his reaction slightly overboard? Yes. But I was his baby girl, and he just couldn’t deal with me growing into a woman.

And let’s not even talk about my first foray into dating. I still had nightmares about that. It was bad. And when I say that, I mean in the sense that word spread no boy in my high school would come within thirty yards of me for fear of losing a beloved appendage.

But all of that was beside the point, which was that my life would’ve been much less complicated if I’d had a woman schooling me on how to behave like a lady, or the types of boys to steer clear of once I got older.

Case in point: In elementary and middle school, I was more of a tomboy than a girly girl. The other girls in my class liked to make fun of me, but having a father who was the very definition of a man’s man had taught me a few useful skills. Instead of being hurt at the teasing and name-calling, I handled it like a guy would. Meaning I got myself suspended for a week for cutting one of Lucy Alexander’s pigtails off in retaliation.

It wasn’t until I reached high school that I really started to become interested in boys. Well, one boy in particular.

Dominic Abbatelli, the older brother of one of my best friends, and the most gorgeous man to ever walk the planet.

He was four years older than me, already out of high school by my freshman year. But that didn’t stop me from falling, and falling hard. I wanted him to look at me the same way he looked at all the other girls I saw him around town with. I wanted that passionate, sinfully heated gaze of his directed at me. I wanted to be the one he shared those secret looks that spoke of naughty things with. I wanted to catch his attention. So I enlisted the help of his sister Lola to take me from tomboy to glam. I gave up all my boyish ways—the sports bras, duct tape, and sneakers—and embraced all things girly like my life depended on it. Makeup, clothing, hair, shoes—you name it, I went all out to catch his eye.

I thought my father was going to have a heart attack the first time he saw me in a skirt.

I spent the next few years mooning after my best friend’s older brother like a lovesick puppy. I’d finally started to give up hope until one day shortly after my graduation, he finally noticed me.

It was one of the best nights of my entire life that led to a handful of blissfully happy years. That was until I surprised my boyfriend during a long weekend by returning home from Seattle. I hadn’t seen him in way too long. The separation was taking a serious toll on both of us, causing petty fights and stupid arguments, and I wanted to make things better. I was missing him like crazy, so I spent what meager savings I had on a plane ticket back to New York.

And what did I get for all my troubles?

Well, I got to walk in on the love of my life giving the business to a chick who was not me while he had her bent over the back of the couch.

It wasn’t one of my finest moments, but I was thankful some of my father’s lessons came back to me right then, because the only reason I was able to walk away from a nearly four-year relationship was because I’d left one of them with a bloody nose and the other with a huge bald spot.

After that fun little experience, I decided that it was my lot in life to save other women from a fate such as mine.

That was how my two best girlfriends and I came to be three of the most popular women in Washington and the surrounding states.

We learned from past experiences and doled out relationship advice on the top-rated talk radio show geared toward women, aptly named Girl Talk. We did our parts for the sisterhood in the hopes of saving as many broken hearts as possible.

And I discovered that it was much easier and a lot less messy to keep a handful of men on my hook as random bed partners than it was to ever get into another relationship.

Don’t get me wrong, I never judge other women based on their relationship choices, but I’d been there, done that, and gotten the cheap-ass T-shirt. I didn’t need to take that trip again.

Besides, I had great friends, a killer job, and an income that most men would envy. My life lacked for nothing.

No way in hell was I letting a man barge into my world and complicate the bliss I’d created.

I was just fine on my own.