Page 1 of Sparks Fly
One
Stella Renee Johnson was going to lose her virginity in a sex club.
Maybe.
Currently, she was standing in line outside a sex club, but still. If you would’ve told her past self (meaning the person she was twenty-four hours ago) that she’d be in the skimpiest black dress she owned with a black-and-gold feathered mask that covered half her face, waiting to get into New York City’s most elite sex club for its annual Valentine’s Day masquerade party, she would’ve laughed in your face. The only believable part of this whole thing was that it was her best friend Chelsea’s idea, and naturally Chelsea was running late.
Chelsea was supposed to meet Stella at their shared apartment after work, but when Stella got home Chelsea was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a note telling Stella to go on ahead and Chelsea would meet her in line. Now Stella was getting incredibly close to the entrance and Chelsea was stillMIA. Every time the line moved forward an inch, Stella considered stepping out of it, but then she felt that the minute she finally did give up, Chelsea would come and they’d have to get on the back of the line.
So she stayed.
Now, though, there were only four or five couples ahead of her and she could see the large bouncer flipping through the guest list. Stella could feel a bead of sweat rolling down her back, and she began shifting from foot to foot and tapping her hands across her thighs as if she was doing an impromptu step routine. It was a nervous habit that always drove her mother crazy. Stella couldn’t help it, though. When she got anxious, she got fidgety.
Deciding to give her hands something else to do, Stella pulled out her phone to call Chelsea for the hundredth time, and it started vibrating in her hand.
“Where are you?” Stella hissed by way of greeting.
“Okay, please don’t hate me.”
Stella heaved out a sigh, already knowing where this was going. Chelsea was Stella’s best friend and she loved her, truly, but Chelsea was quite possibly the flakiest person she’d ever known.
“You remember that hot tattoo artist I’ve been kind of seeing,” Chelsea started. She didn’t wait for Stella to respond before continuing. “Okay, well she hit me up because she has an extra ticket to see Ari Lennox tonight. ARI! LENNOX! Anyway, we’re here now and I thought I’d be able to see her and run over to the club after, but she’s late and hasn’t gone on yet so I’m not going to make it.”
The line moved forward again, and at this point, Stellacould make out the creases in the bouncer’s forehead. It was time to get out of line, but after having been here for half an hour with nothing to show for it, Stella wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“Chelsea, I swear to God, just leave the concert and come here now,” Stella said. She knew she was whining, but she was frustrated and nervous. She had no business going into a sex club tonight, much less on her own.
When Chelsea had barged into Stella’s room last night, talking about how she got two free tickets to a party at Red as Sin, her favorite sex club, Stella was confused about what that had to do with her. Then Chelsea insisted Stella should go with her and “get the whole losing-your-virginity thing over with.” As if Stella had been holding herself back from having sex this whole time and not actively trying to find “the one” for what felt like her whole life.
It wasn’t that Stella felt she had to wait to be married to have sex or anything like that. She’d gotten past that part of her religious upbringing when she realized she was suspiciously born three months after her parents’ wedding. No, it was more that Stella wanted to love, or at the very least like, the person she was going to sleep with. A random casual hookup had never appealed to Stella.
This wasn’t the case for Chelsea, however. Both the idea of needing to love someone before having sex with them and not being able to find a quick hookup with just a few swipes on Tinder. Every so often, usually when Stella was ovulating, she’d dare to consider just getting it over with and meeting up with the hottest person who showed a speck of interest. Unfortunately, while Chelsea got ten matches a day, Stella waslucky if she got ten matches a month. Or rather, tengoodmatches. If Stella wanted to hook up with a guy who started their conversation with “Nice tits!” she’d have plenty more options.
But anyway.
In truth, this whole debacle was really Stella’s fault. At the start of the year she’d made the mistake of telling Chelsea that she was officially giving up on love. That the next time she had the opportunity to have sex, even if it was with a rando who was only interested in her “nice tits,” she would just go for it. That way, even if she couldn’t have love, she could at least find out if sex was really worth all the hype.
While Stella would tell Chelsea and anyone who listened that having or not having sex shouldn’t define a person because virginity was a concept created by the patriarchy, at twenty-seven years old, Stella was tired of feeling like she was missing out on this big thing everyone else had experienced. Sure, she had her toys and porn and romance novels, but she wanted to actually know what it was like to get horizontal (or vertical) with an actual real-life person.
Moreover, she wanted to know what it felt like to be the object of someone’s desires, if only for a night. She wanted to know what it was to be attracted to someone and have them be so attracted to her, too, that they could barely keep their hands off each other.
In other words, as her therapist had put it, Stella was craving intimacy, and she was tired of trying to find the perfect person to give it to her, because quite frankly she was beginning to believe that person didn’t exist.
Much less inside a sex club.
Still, if there was one place she should be able to, without a doubt, get laid, it would be Red as Sin and so she stayed in line.
“I can’t just ditch Tattoo Artist!” Chelsea said, pulling Stella back to their conversation.
Stella almost pointed out that by not ditching the tattoo artist, Chelsea was ditching Stella, but Chelsea pushed forward before Stella could get a word out.
“Look, I’ve been there before and it’s totally chill,” Chelsea said. “Just go in and try to have fun. Meet somebody! Or multiple somebodies! And you can drink whatever you want, on me. They made me put my card info down when I RSVP’d.
“Just tell them your name is Cherry, and everything will be taken care of. Trust me!”
Chelsea had yet to provide Stella with a reason to trust her tonight, but Stella really didn’t want to spend another night alone in their apartment until Chelsea came home with a new stranger and did ungodly things with them until the wee hours of the morning. Just thinking about it made Stella feel lonely and bitter, and she abhorred those feelings.
“Name?”
