There are moments where I stop and reflect on things.

At this particular instance, I am chilling in bed with Craftsmate.

“Do you know why people like to fuck around with you like this?” he asks.

I am tied up and blindfolded.

Craftsmate is lying behind me, one hand threaded into my hair. His knife is on my throat, teasing over the skin.

Outside my door, I can hear Sunshine open the door to her bedroom, step out in the common room, and walk off to the bathroom.

I suck in my breath and try to stay quiet.

In a few hours, I will need to be up for a meeting with my thesis advisor.

Craftsmate reaches the end of his explanation.

“And being pretty is such a sin.”

I try to reflect back on what the argument was in the first place, but my mind is the fuzz between radio stations.

I could be at the library or asleep or at some other school, living some other life, writing some other entry about something entirely different.

But this, in its triumphs and its embarrassments, is the way my life fell together.

And, one day, I won’t be ashamed.