Unfortunately, he could not.

Ted had hoped that when Anna left for college, his feelings for her might torment him less, but they didn’t. Indeed, with Anna’s physical presence in his life so diminished, Ted could see with greater clarity the astonishing amount of space she took up in his head. In the morning, as he waited for his alarm to go off, he imagined holding her in his arms and nuzzling her neck; the first thing he did when he got up was check his email to see if she’d sent him a message overnight; all day, he filtered his experience for amusing bits and pieces that he could turn into stories to write to her about. Whenever he was bored or anxious, his brain distracted itself by worrying at the question of whether he could ever make Anna like him, like a dog working the last bits of marrow from a bone. And for hours at night, his bedroom turned into the set of an imaginary porn film starring the two of them, with the occasional movie star or classmate as a walk-on guest. Given how little contact Ted had now with actual Anna, it was like he was in a relationship with an imaginary friend.

Ted would have preferred not to live like this, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. He supposed the answer was to develop a crush on someone else, someone who might like him back. As it happened, that wasn’t as wild a prospect as it might have been a year earlier — while Ted was still short and nerdy, his braces had come off, he’d gotten a decent haircut, and there was this girl he tutored in biology, a sophomore named Rachel, whose crush on him even he wasn’t oblivious enough to overlook.

Ted wasn’t remotely attracted to Rachel, who was thin and frizzy-haired and abrasive, but he was 17 years old and had never even held hands with a girl, so who was he to keep his standards high? Maybe if he and Rachel hooked up, he’d start to develop feelings for her. Stranger things had happened. Besides, he had to admit that dating Rachel couldn’t hurt his chances with Anna — after all, how many stories had he heard about girls who didn’t realize the love of their lives was standing right in front of them until the moment he fell for someone else?

So, one afternoon after tutoring, Ted, mumbling, asked Rachel what she was doing that weekend and if she wanted to hang out. As soon as the words escaped his lips, he regretted them, but it was too late. Rachel took charge immediately, acquiring his phone number and giving him her own. She told him what time, precisely, she’d be expecting him to call her, and when he dutifully phoned, she let him know what movie she wanted to see that weekend, what time it was showing, and where they should eat dinner beforehand, and then she gave him directions to her house so he could pick her up.

As they walked out of the theater, she was already making plans for future hangouts, chattering about how much she wanted to try the new Thai place on Seventh, and how they shouldn’t forget to go see that romantic comedy they’d watched the trailer for, and did Ted have any plans for Halloween, because she and her friends were putting together a group costume and he’d be welcome to join.

Ted was wildly uncomfortable. He wasn’t quite sure who Rachel was on a date with, but it didn’t seem to be him. He’d contributed nothing to the outing; as far as he could tell, she could have brought an inflatable doll with her to the movie and had an equally good time. As he drove her home, he resolved to politely make it clear there would not be a second date. Rachel would hate him for dumping her, obviously, which meant he might need to drop out of the tutoring program, but he figured it’d be worth it to avoid the awkwardness that would otherwise follow. They didn’t have any other activities in common, so if he played his cards right, he might never have to see her again.

When they reached Rachel’s house, Ted put the car in park but left it running.

Rachel unbuckled her seat belt. “Good night,” she said, but she didn’t move.

“Good night,” he said, going in for a hug. What, precisely, were his responsibilities here? Did he even have to explicitly break up with her, since they’d only been on the one date? Could he just quit tutoring and hope she got the hint? He was patting Rachel’s back in a way that he hoped signaled Please don’t hate me, I’m sorry about what I’m about to do to you, when she took his cheeks between her palms, held his face steady, and kissed him on the mouth.

Ted’s first kiss! The shock of it briefly drove all other thoughts from his head. He froze, jaw slack, and Rachel plunged her tongue into his mouth and wriggled it around. Just as his brain caught up with his body and he remembered he was supposed to be kissing her back, she broke away and started covering his lips with light little pecks. “Like this,” she said breathily, and he realized she was taking it on herself to teach him how to kiss her, because he obviously didn’t know how. A hammer of shame swung down and flattened him. Dorky, know-it-all Rachel, condescending to teach him how to kiss!

Well, since it was too late not to humiliate himself, he might as well take the opportunity to learn. After a few minutes, he decided that kissing wasn’t that hard, really, although it certainly wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. Overall, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but there was nothing particularly erotic about it. Rachel’s glasses kept bumping up against the bridge of his nose, and it was weird to see her this close up. She looked like a different person, paler, more… vague, somehow, like a painting. He tried closing his eyes, but it made him uncomfortable, like someone was going to sneak up behind him and plunge a knife into his back.

So this was kissing. He had to admit Rachel seemed into it. She kept kind of rolling around and sighing. Would he be enjoying himself more if he were kissing Anna? Frankly, it was hard to ever imagine being turned on by this activity. Two boneless slabs of flesh, flopping around, like a pair of slugs mating in the cavern of your mouth. Gross, Ted thought. What was wrong with him? Rachel’s breath smelled like popcorn butter: slightly metallic, with a hint of the burnt grease that stuck to the bottom of the machine. Or was that his breath? He could think of no way to tell.

Rachel was basically on top of him now, moving her hand in an exploratory way, like maybe she was trying to figure out if he had a boner. Needless to say, he did not have a boner; he actually felt like his dick might have snuck up inside his body to hide. Was the fact that he didn’t have a boner going to hurt Rachel’s feelings? Should he try to fantasize about Anna so that he could get a boner so that Rachel wouldn’t feel bad about the fact that he hadn’t gotten a boner for her? No, that could not be the right course of action. But what did Rachel want? She was full-on straddling him now, grinding her hips against his knee and groaning. Did she want to have sex? Surely not. They were parked outside her parents’ house, and she was only a sophomore, and besides, he was Ted. It was one thing to accept that Rachel might have developed a minor crush on him during biology tutoring, another to think that he’d made her so wildly hot for the D that she was ready to bone him in the front seat of his car.

Still, she really did seem to be absurdly into this. It was almost existentially unsettling, that two people in such close physical proximity could be experiencing the same moment so differently.

Unless… she was faking her enthusiasm? Or, if not faking, entirely, then exaggerating. A lot. But why would she do that? Pretend he was turning her on with his clumsy tongue fumblings when he wasn’t?

Oh.

As soon as it occurred to him, he realized the answer was obvious. She knew he was nervous, and she was trying to coax him through it. His ineptitude and discomfort were probably visible from space. She was pretending to enjoy herself so he’d relax and stop being such a bad kisser. She was faking sexual excitement out of pity.

If before he’d felt like his dick had crawled up inside his body, now he felt like a two-ton lead slab had dropped on his crotch from the heavens, paralyzing him for life.

Kill yourself, Ted, a voice in his head said. Seriously.

He might have done it, too — just leaped out of the car and pitched himself in front of the nearest oncoming vehicle — but then Rachel picked up his hand and pressed it to her breast. He felt the no-thoughts shock again. Rachel’s breasts were small, but her shirt was low-cut, so he was touching a lot of very soft skin. Tentatively, he squeezed, and then he rubbed the spot where he was pretty sure her nipple would be. Holy shit, it was there, and after a second of rubbing, it popped up under his thumb.

Whoa.

Closing his eyes like he was jumping off a diving board, he plunged his hand under her shirt and bra, and then he didn’t have to worry about the no-boner problem, because the bare nipple he was pinching was the dirtiest, sexiest thing in the world, and it was somehow only dirtier and sexier for being attached to a person he barely knew, whose breath smelled like popcorn and whose transparent parody of arousal was an insult to them both.

He pinched it again, a little harder. She yelped, but then quickly recovered. “Oh, my God, Ted,” she moaned, fakely.

They dated for the next four months.