Chapter 1
Five years later
C rap.
I’m going to be late.
Not that it mattered much. I didn’t even know the guy, at least not in person. All I had to go off were a few profile pictures and the texts we’d exchanged the night before. But he seemed nice enough, and I figured he wouldn’t judge if I were a few minutes late.
After all, I told myself, Downtown Orlando is a nightmare during rush hour. He may end up being late himself.
I rested my elbows on the steering wheel, grateful that I now worked from home and rarely had to deal with this awful traffic. Not only was the city full of highways that wound overtop each other in erratic rollercoaster patterns, but the drivers were often less than polite. The main road leading to the coffee shop was jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, with horn beeps and sudden stops a frequent occurrence as the crowd of cars inched forward .
Finally, after going two miles in twenty minutes, I made it to the parking lot. Despite the traffic, Orange Blossom Coffee was a wonderful first date spot – a cozy, inviting space with rustic décor and tons of live plants. I preferred coffee over dinner for first meetups – it was cheaper and less of an investment, leaving either party free to bow out with no hard feelings. But Orange Blossom was also downtown, which meant that I was subjected to the absolute worst of the city’s rush-hour traffic.
But this was the place he picked, I sighed. And I didn’t object.
As I turned off the ignition and stepped out of my well-worn Camry, I wondered what he’d look like in person. From my experience, men were pretty good about having updated photos on their profile. But people were always different in real life.
Plus, I chuckled, his profile says he’s six feet tall. Let’s see if that’s really the case.
As I entered the shop and eyed the slender man standing next to the pastry display case, I knew it had to be him. The shop was crowded, full of patrons chatting and sipping at the maze of tables, but he had one distinct feature in his profile photos – a head of vibrant, curly red hair.
He noticed me too, and greeted me with a cordial hug and asked what I’d like for coffee. After I spouted off my usual to the barista – a hazelnut iced coffee with oat milk – I took a moment to study his features while we waited for our order. He was shorter than his dating profile stated, likely five foot nine, and his teeth were more yellow and crooked than I’d expected. But being such a short woman, I’d never cared about height, and my coffee addiction didn’t leave me with gleaming white teeth either.
A few minutes later, we plucked our respective drinks off the counter and settled into one of the few remaining empty tables. We each took a long first sip, and I noticed while I’d gotten an iced drink with a straw, his was in an opaque cup that wafted with steam as he set it on the table.
“What did you get?” I asked, realizing that in my contemplative haze, I hadn’t paid attention to his order.
“Hot chocolate.”
“Ah,” I remarked, taken aback by the flat tone of his voice. “Good choice. I suppose it’s kind of late for caffeine, but I’ve always had a coffee addiction.”
I chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood. He sat stiff as a board, his face devoid of emotion, and the normally cheery atmosphere of the coffee shop suddenly felt heavy and awkward.
“I don’t drink coffee.”
I coughed as I took a second sip through my plastic straw. Once again, his tone was flat and dull, and it sent a prickly feeling down my spine.
Then why did you pick a coffee shop for a first date?
I sighed and set my drink on the table, watching as condensation droplets formed on the clear plastic cup. Ok, deep breaths. Maybe he’s just nervous. We just need to get the conversation going.
“So, uh, Anthony,” I gulped, momentarily forgetting his name. “You said you’re an engineer?”
“Yup.”
“What kind?”
“Mechanical.”
I froze, dread engulfing my brain and making my scalp ache.
How am I supposed to reply? I know nothing about mechanical engineering. Can’t he give me an answer longer than a single word?
He couldn’t. We managed to draw out the mostly one-sided conversation for another hour, with me asking sentence after sentence of questions and his replies being tense and blunt. His face was still devoid of emotion, but he downed his non-coffee drink in record time and started fidgeting with his fingers in his lap. I swore I even saw a bead of sweat slide down his forehead.
I took a deep breath. Relax, dude. We’re just getting to know each other. It’s not a job interview.
It was a shame, because we had many things in common. His answers, although awkwardly short, revealed a lot about him. He liked video games, especially shooters, because of how much he played them as a teenager. He was a fellow Creatures & Crypts enthusiast, which was always a huge plus for me to find in a potential boyfriend. He also enjoyed reading, especially fantasy novels, and his favorite place to be on a sunny Florida afternoon was the beach.
On paper, he checked all the boxes: a decently cute guy who was financially stable and shared my love of geeky things. It should’ve been perfect.
But it wasn’t. While his fidgeting fingers told me he was anxious, his dull expression told me he was bored. I couldn’t figure out which one it truly was, but I couldn’t continue dating this guy if we could barely hold a conversation.
My gaze flicked up to the old-fashioned, copper-rimmed clock hanging from the wall. We had been there for an hour and a half, and it had felt like an eternity. But it was only ten minutes until eight, meaning that if I left now, I’d still have time for some gaming before bed.
“Well, Anthony, I enjoyed meeting with you,” I said. I went to stand up, and his tense expression didn’t change. “But it’s getting late – I should head home.”
“Alright. I’ll text you later.”
I exhaled. I was hoping his reaction to seeing me leave would give me more clues.
Was he relieved? Disappointed? Does he wish I would stay longer ?
We exchanged another brief, awkward hug. But as I walked out to my car, I felt relief wash over me as soon as I settled into the muggy seat. Now that the sun was setting, the steering wheel wasn’t scalding hot, and I could guide my car out of the parking lot without getting first-degree burns on my palms.
Since the traffic had cleared out, it was only a fifteen-minute drive back to my apartment on the edge of downtown. It was a modest abode – a single-story, two-bedroom townhouse with bright yellow paint and a brown shingle roof that needed replacing. Rows of patchy bushes separated the interconnected townhomes, and I’d stuck a massive potted monstera plant next to our front door to give it some liveliness. It kept the front porch from looking too bare and sterile—from revealing that it was home to two broke twentysomething women who had other priorities than decorating.
I stepped onto the front porch, my eyes scanning the dirt that lined the cracks in the concrete like blood vessels. Maybe I should get a pressure washer, I sighed as I fiddled with the front door lock. Make it look like this place isn’t the women’s equivalent of a bachelor pad.
I smiled as Cassidy’s cheery folk music echoed down the narrow main hallway. I could tell by the sounds and smells coming from the kitchen that she was making dinner.
“Good evening, girlie!” she shouted once I was near the kitchen.
Her auburn hair, which was even curlier than mine, was piled high atop her head, and her black-rimmed glasses framed a small, round face. In one hand was a dirty spatula, which she used as a microphone as she twirled around the kitchen, belting out the lyrics to her favorite songs.
Having a roommate wasn’t ideal, but Cassidy was my best friend, one of the first people I’d met when I moved to Orlando five years earlier. We loved each other to death, but living together often made us fight like sisters. It both strengthened and frayed our relationship at the same time.
“Sooooo?” Cassidy cooed in a singsong voice as she plopped her elbows on the counter. “How’d it go?”
I didn’t reply, but the slight grimace on my face gave her enough of an answer.
She chuckled. “That bad, huh?”
“Well, no.” I plopped down at the dinette, picking at the paint chipping off the back of the antiquated chair. “That’s the thing. It was just okay. We have a lot in common, but he’s really quiet. I couldn’t tell if that was just his personality, or if he was nervous.”
“So do you think you’ll go on another date with him?”
I shrugged my shoulders. The old Avery would’ve said yes. I would’ve given it another chance. But six months and half a dozen men into my online dating adventure, my optimism was starting to wear thin.
“Honestly… no. Because I shouldn’t feel wishy-washy about it. If it had been a good date, I would have butterflies in my stomach, giddy at the possibilities. Whether or not I’d go on a second date with him wouldn’t even be a question.”
“Agreed,” Cassidy remarked as she stuck her spatula into the pan of fried rice she was making. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
I shook my head. “Did you make enough for two?”
Cassidy grinned as she scooped the fried rice into two bowls. “You know I always do.”
We ate our meal at the dinette in silence. I knew Cassidy was tired, as her job as a vet tech kept her away from home and on her feet all day. And I was too busy swimming in my own tangled thoughts to make conversation.
The past five years had consisted of me putting the pieces of my life together after my expulsion from college. I had been caught red-handed by my RA, naked in bed with the man who was supposed to be my whole future.
But everything changed after I left campus. Tyler’s parents were wealthy alumni, and they made a hefty donation to save his son from the same fate. He was suspended for two weeks, but unlike me, he still graduated. He still walked across that podium and accepted his diploma while the woman he had promised to marry was nothing more than an empty chair.
He ghosted me after that. I never heard from him again, and after a few weeks, I stopped sending him desperate text messages. Getting kicked out of college wasn’t the real problem – I could always apply elsewhere to finish my degree. And I knew that wasn’t the reason why Tyler left me.
The real reason, the one that had haunted my love life for the past five years, was my inability to have sex. It seemed cruelly ironic – that my pure, innocent self, one raised by two devoutly religious parents who wanted me to follow in their footsteps, would be incapable of rebelling. Purity was no longer a shield, a symbol of my morality to wear with pride.
It was a punishment.
“Wow, you were hungry,” Cassidy noted, staring at my empty bowl while hers was still two-thirds full.
I frowned. I tended to scarf down food when I was angry. I was no longer alarmingly thin like I was in college, but I would always have a wiry figure with very little body fat, even in places where I wanted it to be. Fast metabolism , my parents had told me. Which made sense, because they were both sticks themselves.
I waited for Cassidy to finish eating her dinner, and then we both scrubbed dishes and wiped down countertops until the kitchen was sparkling clean. Our home was plain, with mismatched, hand-me-down furniture and cheap plastic kitchenware, but we never let it get too dirty.
Cassidy sensed my foul mood and asked if I wanted to watch a movie, but I declined and slunk off to my room. I didn’t feel like socializing that night, even with my best friend. And Cassidy was always understanding of other’s emotions, so she didn’t mind if I became a recluse for the rest of the night.
I settled at my desk and watched my PC monitor blare to life. My room was simple: a twin bed shoved in the corner to allow for more floorspace, an old 32-inch TV with a Kindle Fire stick shoved in its side, and my favorite spot in the whole room – my L-shaped computer desk. At one end was my work laptop, which was hooked up to two monitors that had been supplied by my employer. At the other end was my elaborate gaming PC, whose parts glowed in a variety of rainbow colors within its sleek white case.
I absentmindedly flipped through my gaming library, running into the common scenario of having hundreds of games but no idea which one to play. I eventually settled on a generic-looking platformer I had bought on sale a few weeks earlier. It was optimized for controller play, which meant I could lean back in my plush gaming chair and relax without having to be hunched over my keyboard.
I wrapped a fist around my long, curly brown hair, sweeping it up in a messy bun to keep it out of my face. I scrunched my face up at my reflection in the computer monitor, observing how my freckles twitched as my nose wrinkled. I was a bit odd-looking, having inherited my pale skin and plethora of freckles from my Scotch-Irish father, and my curly dark hair and petite figure from my Greek mother. I was no model, but most people considered me pretty, and I’d never had any trouble getting dates based on my appearance.
Maybe if I put on some makeup to cover my acne scars… or painted my fingernails…
Ugh, Avery, stop. Quit worrying about guys. Empty your mind and game.
That worked for a little while. I wasn’t usually a big fan of platformers, but this one had a cheery, vibrant art style, one that reminded me of a Disney movie. I was almost finished with the tutorial, my thoughts finally settled and at ease, when my phone rang and caused me to jolt out of my seat.
I flipped my phone over. MARIA & JAMES MURPHY.
No. Nonono.
I plopped the phone face down on my desk. I couldn’t deal with my parents right now. They knew little of my life in Orlando since I kept my distance and only visited them once or twice a year for the holidays. And even that felt like too much. It sucked me back into my former life, one of two-hour church sessions and cliquey youth groups and suffocating under the weight of my parents’ lofty expectations. The fact that I was almost twenty-seven and still unmarried was a heinous crime in their eyes. It was a major reason why I fled the Florida panhandle and settled much further south.
I clenched my teeth until the phone went to voicemail, praying they wouldn’t leave another two-minute-long message begging for me to visit.
My phone buzzed again a few minutes later, and I audibly groaned. Looks like my prayers aren’t going to be answered tonight .
But once I got the courage to pick my phone back up, I realized the notification wasn’t from my parents.
It was from my dating app.
The rational part of my brain told me to hurl the phone onto my bed and ignore it. For most of my twenties, I had been on a journey to find myself – to gain independence and figure out who I was outside of my controlling parents’ grasp. But last year, seeing the number 26 on a birthday cake hit me like a sack of bricks. I was an adult now. One who was officially closer to thirty than twenty.
After several years away from my family, I determined that I actually did want to get married. I wanted a handsome, sexy, sweet husband who I would wake up in bed with every morning. Who I’d cook all my meals with and who I’d kiss goodnight before I fell asleep. We’d play games until 2 a.m. on the weekends, compete in Creatures & Crypts events together, and spend hours debating our favorite TV shows and movies. I wanted a husband who I’d share my life with, build a home with, grow old with.
A long time ago, a different version of me thought that was Tyler. But it had been five years since we broke up, and I was more than ready to move on.
But I couldn’t.
Because there was always my big secret.
The reason why he left me in the first place.
I was yet to make it past the third date with any of the men I’d met, which meant I was yet to spill the ugly reality of my sexual history. For years, I had feared being a disappointment, being rejected for something I had no control over. But what scared me even more was ending up with a man who would violate me the same way Tyler did. One who wanted to solve my problem with force.
But I also had hope. Hope that the right guy would love me enough to look past my sexual problems. That he would be patient and understanding. That he would help me overcome this horrible obstacle without judgment.
I took a deep breath and unlocked my phone screen.
Sure enough, I had a new message in my app.
Hey, I saw in your profile that you play Creatures & Crypts. That’s so cool! Who is your favorite class to play?
I chuckled. My fingers hovered over my phone screen, ready to type out a response.
Maybe this guy would be it.