Before I tell you the whole thing about last night, I should give a little background on Ace, the girl I’ve been seeing a little bit.

I genuinely didn’t think our first date was a date until I was putting my makeup on right before meeting up with her for drinks and paused for a moment to think, “wait a second, is this a date?” The thing is that I’ve known Ace since I started going to play parties and munches in this city, but mostly peripherally. She hung out with people I knew, she dated people I knew. Every so often we’d have a really good conversation or I’d see her while I was out. Back in the summer, she invited me out clubbing with her and I didn’t take a hint at all and said I was busy. Right before the December holidays, we agreed to get coffee and then I had to cancel. 

So in the first week of January we’d rescheduled coffee and it somehow turned into drinks. And sitting there across from her, I was stuck puzzling over how to even distinguish where the line was. What’s the difference between two women talking and laughing and having a good time and two women going on a first date together? How can you tell?

I tested the waters that night after making a terrible joke. “Sorry,” I said, “that was awful. I guess you’ll never take me out again.”

Ace grinned. She has this smile that is borderline wicked, always a little scheming. “No, I’ll take you out again.”

Our next few dates were pretty chaste, as I mentioned. And then, Friday night, I went to her place to watch a movie. She made popcorn. That was about as far as we got into watching a movie.

We made out on her bed for a while until she got up abruptly and walked towards her kitchen. She lives in this sweet little studio, and so the kitchen was just through a little doorway beside the bed. “I’m getting my knife,” she explained.

Not a knife. My knife.

By this point, we’d mostly undressed each other. I removed the remainder of my clothing – my panties, my socks – and laid back. She returned and climbed back onto the bed, swinging a leg over me so that she was straddling me. “I want you to hold still,” she said. She took my hands one after the other in her free hand, moving them up to the headboard. I held onto it at her prompting. “Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll try,” I replied, a little nervous laugh lingering in my voice as she leaned down and kissed my neck. I felt the chill of the knife press against the side of my breast.

When I went home that night, I peeled off my shirt and discovered a faint red line up the side of my stomach. I’d only been sliced once before while playing with knives – another accident. But I’ve always relished these marks. A reminder of what had happened.

And an indication, I suppose, of the fact that I can’t keep still.