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Love y(our) choice of w(or)ds. The 1 4 you is not the 1 4 me. Paradigm shift, sister—Now 1 + 1 = 4—Math is hard. You + Heath = Good, Me + Isaac = Bad, You – Me = ?

I look at my sister’s response on Saturday night and sigh. I’m going to have to make some hard and fast rules about punctuation if we’re going to continue to communicate like this. I can feel my GPA slipping as I read her embarrassingly inaccurate blocks of text. I minimize the doc and scroll down on the browser to discover that my crack about the GPA isn’t just a turn of phrase.

The Faulkner paper I turned in and subsequently crumpled before dissolving into a hot mess and hiding in the bathroom did not do me any favors. Neither did the take-home government test where I answered the essay section with a series of exclamation points and unhappy faces—or, somebody did. If my sister insists on sharing this body she’s going to have to agree that it’s going to Oberlin next fall, or else.

My phone vibrates on the laptop, mercifully sliding across the touchpad and relegating my grades to a folder labeled To Improve, alongside an app I’d downloaded to brush up on my Italian and an online course covering the musical history of the baroque period. It’s a text from Lilly, whose been monitoring my relationship status like she’s a cardiologist and it’s got a pacemaker.

So you and Heath are back together?

Don’t know that we were ever apart.

What does that mean?

And while I acknowledge the inherent bitchiness in my statement, it’s also technically true. I didn’t break up with Heath, I simply told him he could choose to not have me for a girlfriend and then never read the texts that may have held his decision.

And then I had sex with someone else.

“Shut up,” I say. Unfortunately my fingers are working in tandem with my mouth and I end up texting exactly that to Lilly, who for once didn’t deserve it.

WTF?

Sorry. Not for you.

She texts me back but I ignore it, the low purr of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway drowning out the vibration of my phone. It’s one in the morning, and I should be asleep, reading, studying, improving—doing anything other than what I’m doing, which is pulling on a pair of shoes and a jacket and sneaking downstairs to talk to the boy who I lost my virginity to last week and haven’t spoken to since.

I put on my pissed face as I walk out the door, considering if I’ve got it in me to slap him. Even if I do, most of the anger that’s fueling me has morphed from steam in my head to bubbles of anticipation in my stomach. I don’t know whether I’m going to hug him or hit him until I see him leaning against his bike, the bobbing ember of a cigarette in his hand.

And it’s a hug. A full-out, body-to-body, squeeze-me-please hug. One that goes from soft squishy to hard angles in a second, our mouths finding each other and his cigarette dropping to the ground. A tendril of smoke finds its way to my nose as my heel crushes it out, and I pull away.

“Hi,” we both say at the same time, breathless. I swear he’s blushing.

“So, uh . . .” His eyes go to the crushed cigarette. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“I was mad,” I tell him. The words sound funny coming out in the shape of a smile, the dichotomy of my sister and I fighting for control. “I still am.”

“You don’t look mad,” he says, thumb tracing my lips, which are stuck in a grin I can’t wipe off until I summon the image of my bloodstained sheet.

“Looks can be deceiving,” I say, taking his hand away from my face but leaving our fingers intertwined. A little for me, a little for her. 1 + 1 = 2, sister.

“Why didn’t you call me? Text? Something?”

He looks away from me again, like the broken cigarette might be able to offer up some sentence structure that’s escaping him. I squeeze his hand, aware that I’m going to have to wash mine later in order to get the lingering nicotine smell off.

“Thought you might be pissed. I mean, I’ve never—”

Twisted bodies under moonlight, capable hands, my breath caught in my throat. “Yes, you have. You’re no Virgil, remember?”

“But you were,” he snaps. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it. Or . . . her, or whatever.” Isaac’s other hand goes to my chest, finger drawing a small circle. Her heart leaps to meet his touch.

But it’s my skin that gets goose bumps.

“What I’m trying to say is, I’ve never . . .” He actually blushes, and I finally get it.

“Deflowered anyone?”

“Um, is that like popping a cherry?”

“That’s a slightly more violent metaphor for the same action, but yes,” I say.