I will never forget that afternoon. Her name was Lucy. We lived around the corner from each other, went to the same school, and were mostly in the same classes. I was a bit older than she was by a couple of days, but we were both fourteen. It was July, and we had been dating for a bit more than a month. Our formal dates had been dinner and a couple of movies. Our informal dates involved meeting at one of the local playgrounds that had some woods behind it. It was in those words that she said the fateful words. She had kissed me gently. We had not kissed much in the past, so every kiss resonated with my memory. But I remembered this kiss because of what she said next.
“I like you, John, but not that way. I like girls.”