#writeLGBTQ: Context Is Key

"Accident" - 2019 May 23

She blinked at him, as if she'd just realized what she was saying and to whom. "Anyway, he did the same type of shit when I broke up with him. Emails with subject lines all about how he 'knew what he'd done wrong' and 'would do anything to be with me again.' Trying to make his friends talk to me when I stopped answering his messages. 'Accidentally' running into me outside class."

"Restraining order time?" he asked in a hopeful voice.

"I wish," she said with a snort. "No, he did take the hint eventually—but he also spread it around that I was a..."

She struggled with a word on her tongue, and he was pretty sure he knew which one. "Puritanical?" he asked, to give her something in place of another "p" word he heard bandied about to refer to anyone who wasn't a hundred percent on board with sex.

"Something like that." She relaxed a little against him, and he propped himself up to take more of her weight. It was his turn now. "It was amazing," though her tone said it was anything but surprising, "how many people stopped hanging out with me after that."

#SelfDefenseRomance