I lost my virginity to Nick when I was eighteen and for months I wondered what all the fuss was about.
He was my first proper boyfriend, the first one I'd brought home to meet my parents, and that first time in my empty home, with my parents out with my brother and sister, we had painful and awkward sex. It had been something he'd been pressuring me for months, and as time had passed I had gotten increasingly excited about the experience I was about to share. Friends had spoken of sex as this wonderful moment of bliss, of connection with the person you loved.
Instead I just remembered wondering whether that was it.
Reading stories online had told me that it was something that would get better, that lovers learned each others bodies as time went on. But while we kept doing things together, each time I didn't ever feel myself get close to orgasm, and that awkwardness never seemed to pass even as time stretched on.
Sometimes I wondered whether it was me. One time, after a session where Nick had finished in just a few minutes so I was left feeling unfulfilled once more, I had spent time looking in the bathroom mirror. My red hair cascading past the pale skin of my shoulders and down to my perky handful of breasts. A constellation of freckles spread across my cheeks, blushed red from the limited exertion of coupling with my boyfriend.
I had spent minutes there, looking at myself and wondering whether I was the problem, whether I should be the one making more of an effort. Wondering whether anyone else was out there thinking the same about themselves, or whether it was just me that was broken.
If Nick was aware of my self doubt then he didn't show it. After every session he would act as if he'd taken me to nirvana and back, had spoken with such confidence during sex that I was sure that I should have felt something close to what he was describing. But even when he went down on me he would spend a few minutes fumbling his tongue around where he thought my clit was before I would drag him back up my body to kiss me. Because almost anything was better than him performing oral.
This went on for a few months, our time in college coming to an end and our future at university together rapidly approaching. We'd both, in the midst of young love and naivety, picked and taken offers from the same university about an hour north of our hometown. It was far away enough that we could spread our wings, but close enough that if anything went wrong that our parents wouldn't be too far away.
While how I felt about Nick felt eternal, I did also feel a little unrest growing within me. Going to the same university suddenly felt stifling, and I worried that with us both living in each others pockets we wouldn't make new friends, and would just live in a little bubble together. I shared these fears with Nick but he just dismissed them as if they were nothing. However, the city we were moving to had two universities, and without telling another soul I made enquiries about enrolling there rather than the one I knew my boyfriend was going to.
It didn't change much as the summer started to wind down. We made plans to spend more time with loved ones, and with such plans to leave came parties with our respective families and friends. Two weeks before I was due to move into halls, I had a relatively small affair with my parents, siblings and Nick where we ordered in pizza and played a few board games. I had everyone I loved with me, and it was just the kind of night I loved at the time.
Nick's was a little different.
With his friendship group splitting apart and moving to different parts of the country, it was one last chance for him to spend time with the three of them before it became harder to see one another. I couldn't begrudge that, even if I was mostly ignored by him and almost everyone else.
Thankfully his older brother kept me company. Ryan was four years older than Nick and was a personal trainer at a local gym. He wasn't a big man, but there was definitely a tightness to his clothes that made my eyes linger longer than necessary. It wasn't like Nick wasn't in good shape, but the few years gap gave Ryan a more masculine look - simply, he looked like a man, while his younger sibling was still in that awkward period between boyhood and manhood.
Because he was a bit older, with a little more money to spend on good clothes and nice things, I found it easy to spend time with him when I was around their family home. It was incredibly shallow, but at the time he was like no other man I knew - older than my peer group, but younger than adults I worked with, or knew through my own parents. It gave him a quality I could quietly admire that I couldn't get anywhere else.
This would sometimes lead to some light flirting from him, and I would respond awkwardly with a smile. There had been one time when we'd all sat on the sofa together watching a film, with me sat between the two brothers, and he repeatedly brushed his leg with either his foot or his hand. Too many times for a simple coincidence. I thought nothing of it, justifying it in my head as something pretty harmless. Still, I didn't mention it to Nick.
Then the night came where everything happened. I can close my eyes and recall it all like it's all happening again.
It was approaching midnight during the party and Nick and his boys were involved in some kind of fighting tournament on the PlayStation, each huddled around the tv and hollering at what was transpiring. Occasionally I would watch from the small window in the kitchen that overlooked the living room in between cleaning up the mess of the party with Ryan.
"Is he winning?" I hear Ryan ask behind me after I'd clearly watched too long. I turn to look at his easy smile and return it with one of my own. "I think so. Its winner stays on, and he's not really stopped playing yet. Not that I understand these things."
Ryan chuckles softly and steps behind me, placing the tea-towel on his broad shoulder. He watches his younger brother yell as another friend fails to beat him, and then steps away from me to continue drying crockery.
"Do you not fancy a game?" I ask him, and he just laughs and shakes his head. "Kinda grew out of that shit when I was his age. Prefer seeing friends now, have a few drinks with them y'know?"
I don't really know, not at this stage of my life, but I nod and smile anyway just as a loud shout comes from the living room and I turn to watch as a friend of Nick's gives his him a rude hand gesture after losing another bout to my boyfriend.
"Bit shit he isn't spending more time with you." Ryan says, voice suddenly close behind me.
I pause for a moment, steadying my breath after the surprise of his sudden proximity. "He'll see me plenty at uni. Not so much the lads. Better he spends time with them now."
"You're a good girlfriend, you know that?" Ryan breathes, body pressed close to me now.
It's too close, really. I should have stepped away right then and told him quietly that he was being inappropriate. Not doing so probably changed me, because that evening probably had more of an effect on my life than any other night that I can think of.
Instead I let him continue to press against me. And that seemed to spur Ryan on further.
