Page 86 of See Me After Class

I swallowed. My mistake at Clifton Peaks was falling in love with the wrong boy.

And telling him I was a virgin.

It had meant nothing to me at the time. I’d actually told him because I wanted him to be my first. Because until then, no one had made me feel the need to be intimate.

Sure, I’d had my fair share of experiences in high school. They’d sucked.

When you’re that age—and especially if you’re a boy—you’re learning. And that means you’re a terrible kisser who thinks licking teeth is the sexiest thing you can do.

That’s what I learned from Dick, the first boy who ever kissed me. This was also the time I realized his parents had given him the perfect name.

He’d snuck out of home in his parents’ Range Rover.

At the time, these things were sexy.

Sneaking out of our parents’ places to meet near school or some out of the way dirt road.

Making out like we were pros at it, when honestly, none of us had any fucking idea what we were doing.

I couldn’t help giggling at the memory.

“Remember Dick?” I asked Chelsea.

“Dude, I am never going to forget him after what you described. It sounded like a baboon with their ass stuck up in the air, trying to go full Terminator on your mouth or something.”

That was as accurate of a description as could be, honestly. Dick won me over to this point because he acted like a literal Chad, always talking like he knew everything about girls.

Then he stuck his tongue in my mouth and poked around like a slimy alien cactus. It was like he was a renegade Tooth Fairy, looking for loose molars in my mouth.

What sealed his fate, though, was his trying to paw at me as if it were the sexiest thing in the world. I wasn’t having those sweaty, clammy hands scratching at my skin.

Heck, if I had an itch, I'd scratch it myself. What'd I need him for? I’d just jumped out of the car and run back home. Strike one. I’d been single all throughout my school days.

Boys stayed away from me because Dick made sure the whole school thought I was a stuck-up prude. That’s not the kind of chick you want around you when you’re learning about sex, right?

It should have been better in college.

And for the tiniest second, it was. I met this guy. He was three years older. An English Lit student. He could quote Rilke and Frost and make me see the world the way I wanted to.

I told him something he’d never expected to hear on one of our dates. It wasn’t big to me. It was just important. A tiny little quirk. It had to do with waiting until the moment felt right.

I never heard from him again.

So, I’d apparently graduated from being the school prude to being at that age where being a virgin was the biggest sin.

It meant I was too choosy. It meant I was an obligation, that I’d have “expectations” barely-old-enough young adults couldn’t cater to.

I never saw it like that, though.

To me, the only thing keeping me from going to bed with someone was connection. Say what you will, but I couldn’t get my mind around a night’s worth of dry heaving to wake up with no recollection of each other’s names.

No one had made me feel the heat the heroine experienced from touching her baker. There was no raging fire in the pit of my stomach.

Nothing of that thirst that could only be satisfied with hands and mouth and a hard body pressing into me, kissing my lips and owning my soul.

That’s what I want.

“Hey, you still here? Or are you dreamin’ about some hot professor you’re gonna meet tomorrow?”

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