It was weird times. I mean, great. But weird and great to my half-cooked, traumatized, and hormone-addled teenage brain.

She was my sister’s best friend at the time and, well, physically she was like the girl who’d molested me as a child, which definitely had (and still has) an impact on my physical preferences.
I don’t exactly know what her deal was, but I think it was that any male attention just short-circuited her. I recall her telling me she loved me after a few weekends of sneaking around, and after about a month, spinning a yarn as pretext to try to move in with us.

It’s probably a good thing we got caught a day or so after she moved in. Stupid football game. It pushed some TV show back, and my mom/sisters stayed up late to watch it. My sister (her best friend) came downstairs to check in on her and caught us in bed.

As for the how - I don’t know. I was an awkward gangly teenager, and she was honestly a pretty attractive girl. She had some self-confidence issues, I think.
It was like the first day she’d come over for a sleepover. I had never met her - my sister befriended her when we were in foster care, so this was not unusual - and I was instantly into her. I have no idea if she picked up on that or not. We were watching movies (me, 2 of my sisters, and her). The couches were occupied, and so I had a pallet on the floor. So did she. Our feet were under the big couch, hidden by the little skirt that all couches had back then, heads pointing toward the TV. I thought I felt her foot touch mine (but it was probably wishful thinking). I edged my foot over, discovering the distance between us was way too far for her to have accidentally touched me, and sort of bonked her foot with mine while awkwardly exploring. I pulled back just slightly and she immediately pressed her foot against mine. Footsie lead some sneaky suggestive glances, then surreptitiously bridging our blankets together and doing our best to conceal our roving hands. At one point during a bathroom break everyone had left the room, she told me her intentions, and I was very okay with them. We made a plan - I was going to go to bed, and she was going to find me after everyone was asleep. (She was sleeping in a guest room that was conveniently located - my bedroom was in the basement.) And that was that.

She used to page me with “143” (code for I love you - which I don’t think either of us could know what that actually meant) and I used to page her back with same. We were so dumb and teenager-y. It was fun, but unhealthy. I didn’t get enough positive attention, and this sort of reinforced a belief that I could only be of service to someone sexually. If I wasn’t serving someone sexually, I wasn’t of value emotionally - another formative belief that was maybe not the best and is still hard to shake.

It's not about money, it's about altering reality.