“My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”

I looked at Richard.

Only a few hours earlier, I had almost run away from him.

Now he was sitting across from me, barely holding back his own tears.

“So that’s why you were acting so strangely?”

He gave a quiet laugh.

“I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.”

Then I remembered something.

I looked at him.

“And why did you ask me if I was a virgin?”

His face immediately turned red.

For a moment, he looked completely embarrassed.

“I was trying to ask whether you were serious with someone, whether you were building your life around another person, whether you were making your own decisions.”

I stared at him.

“And somehow that became, ‘Are you a virgin?’”

Richard covered his face with one hand.

“I know. It may have been the worst question I’ve ever asked in my life.”

For the first time that day, I laughed.