Sure, I’d had a few good times with exactly those wrong kinds of guys, always in and out of juvie, often with names like Junior Junior. My old friend Sarah Lutsky used to say nothing heated up a redneck romance like a run-in with the law. But right around the time I met Mike, I’d decided to turn over a new leaf.

It was September fifteenth, freshman year, and I had just transferred over to Palmetto. My mom had recently remarried, again, finally accomplishing her life goal of moving us over to the right side of the bridge — and into the Palmetto school district. So when my golf ball sliced through Mike’s bedroom window, it was — for a change — completely accidental. Not to mention the end of my very short golf career.

It’s crazy to think about it now, but I’ll never forget how, when Mike came out of the house swinging his baseball bat, wearing only a pair of crisp khaki shorts, my first instinct was to run. Sarah’s take on getting caught had always been, “When the going gets rough, swim home.”

“Hey, wait,” Mike had called out, jogging after me. “Hang on, I thought you were. . someone else.”

I froze, standing by his pool in my brand-new golf polo and pleated white miniskirt — a gift from my new stepdad and the most expensive thing I’d ever owned. Right then I realized, for the first time in my life, that I had a right to be there. All I had to do was choose to own it.

Mike still didn’t know exactly how influential that first meeting was. He liked to think our little make-out session by his pool shack was what made me remember the day so fondly and insist upon celebrating its anniversary every month. But we’ve been going strong for more than three years now (way longer than my mom’s third marriage lasted). At this point, I figured, when it came to certain parts of my past, the whole “total naked honesty” thing only really needed to go so far.