"I..." Kathy shook her head, her hair brushing over his skin. "It was different in high school. It was practice. Anything I screwed up there didn't matter. I had the whole rest of my life ahead of me. Now--now this is the rest of my life and I already screwed up once. This isn't practice anymore, it's for reals and for keeps and if I screw up again, I might not get another chance to make it right."

And there was so much more than that, but it was all ambiguous feelings that she wasn't sure she knew how to put into words.