Page 53 of Electric Blue Love
We ate and watched the movie in silence, save the occasional moan of appreciation that came from Bianca. Each little moan made me more acutely aware that I hadn’t gotten laid in… shit, weeks? Since before I’d met Bianca. That thought caused me to pause and I took a long drink of wine lost in that realization and trying to figure out what it meant.
Bianca’s laugh brought me to the present and I forced myself to relax into the couch and enjoy this time with her, knowing it might be the last time we’d do this. If she went back to school and things with Todd progressed, she wasn’t going to need me and even with the best of intentions to stay in touch, we were bound to drift apart without something linking us together.
When she finished her food, she grabbed her wine glass and tucked her feet under her on the couch and nuzzled into me. I stiffened without meaning to.
“Oh, sorry did I elbow you in the side or something?” she asked leaning away from me.
I missed the way her body felt pressed up against me immediately – more than I hated the way I was falling for a girl I couldn’t have and didn’t deserve. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her back into me. “You’re dangerous, 8B.”
And she was, but not the way she thought.
After the movie, Bianca dove right back into her quest to find out everything about me. I’d just confessed my first kiss was on the playground behind the art building sometime during third grade.
“Nine, seriously? I don’t think I would have let a boy anywhere close enough to kiss me when I was that age.”
We were still on the couch, TV off, wine glasses re-filled.
“How old were you when you had your first kiss?” I asked as I played with a piece of her blonde hair watching the way it coiled around my finger.
“No, it’s too embarrassing.” She covered her face with an arm.
“Come on. Tell me.” I tugged on the piece of hair I was holding.
She let out a sigh and moved her arm. “I was seventeen. It was at a party and I think the guy that kissed me was so drunk he thought I was someone else.”
“Always selling yourself short, 8B.”
“Seriously, about an hour later he was passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“Maybe it just took a little liquid courage for him to work up the nerve to kiss you. Ever think of that?”
“No,” she laughed. “I never thought of that.”
“And was this cowboy your first everything or just kiss?”
She took a sip of wine and when she finally comprehended my question, the look of horror and shyness played equal parts on her expression. “No, definitely not. I – he – no, he wasn’t my first.”
“No need to be shy. You’ve already admitted the men you were with failed to get you off, so whenever and whoever they were hardly matters.”
“Not men. Man.”
My hand stilled around the lock of hair.
“I’ve only slept with one person. My first semester of college. I met a nice guy during freshmen orientation. We hung out, dated I guess – although mostly it was hanging out on campus and dorm rooms. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t going anywhere but I was tired of being a virgin. I wanted to know what the big deal was. Ironic, huh, since he failed to show me what the big deal was.”
My throat was so thick, the fact that I managed to speak was no small miracle. A mixture of jealousy, rage, sadness, lust – to name a few, cycled through me. I was all over the fucking place and she was looking at me like my response, my reaction, meant something to her.
“Have to say, I’m sad you thought it was something you needed to throw away just because. And I’m pissed as hell that it went down like that for you - orgasm or no, your first time should have been something worth remembering.”
“Was yours?” she asked.
“Sure. I was young and wild and so was she. There was a lot of sneaking around to be together, which of course made it that much better somehow to my twisted teenage mind.”
Bianca looked down at her wine glass as she asked the next question. “Did you love her?”
“I loved the escape she gave me. I loved how I was able to forget about everything else and just feel when I was with her, but no, Bianca, I didn’t love her.”
The air had become charged and I just kept getting myself in this situation where my self-control was pulled so tight I felt like I would break.
