by Doyle, S.
He was right there, and it stung a bit so I bit down hard on my bottom lip. Then his hand was on my ass and he thrust his hips toward me and…
“Ahhh!” Fuck! That hurt. Like, way worse than the first time I used a tampon. But it was done. He was inside me.
He rolled his body so that he was on top of me, then he started to do what guys did, I guessed. It didn’t hurt as much after a few pumps of his hips, and when I opened my eyes and saw his face above me, his eyes closed, I thought that this was good. This was who it was supposed to be.
I lifted my head and kissed him. That feeling of his tongue in my mouth while he still continued to push inside me, that felt really good. Like we were connected along all the parts of our bodies.
Yes! This was sex. I was having sex.
“Ethan,” I panted, my hands on his ass, feeling it contract as he worked inside of me even deeper than he had before. So much it was almost uncomfortable, but then he thrust hard once and groaned into my neck.
“Jules.” A ragged sound dragged from his throat, almost like he was hurting as much as I had.
He slipped out of me then and rolled onto his back with a moan.
Okay, so it wasn’t the best first time. They probably never are, I thought, even as I pulled the blanket over us. I turned toward him and rested my cheek on his chest. We usually didn’t cuddle when we slept together, but now, it was different.
We’d had sex so it was okay to touch him.
My last coherent thought was that we were in Nicki’s bed. We should move over to mine, but I was so drowsy I couldn’t make myself do it.
Just a quick nap. Then we’d move.
* * *
The next morning
I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I sat in the tiny powder room dressed only in my T-shirt and thought about how bad my head hurt. Crying would only make that worse. Then I thought about the dull ache between my legs and tears threatened again.
“Shit, fuck, shit,” I whispered. Hoping desperately Ethan didn’t wake up. Knowing, eventually, he would.
And he would know what I’d done. I’d been drunk. Did that work as an excuse for practically raping a guy? After all, guys got away with it all the time.
“Shit.”
He was going to be so mad. He was going to say he’d been out of it, that he didn’t know what he was doing. He was going to say it was wrong and that I shouldn’t have pushed the issue. He was going to say I took advantage of him and he’d be right.
I hadn’t been thinking. I’d just been feeling.
I’d barely admitted to myself that I thought of Ethan like that and I know he didn’t think of me like that at all! Which was going to make him even madder knowing that I’d tricked him when he was drunk. Taken the choice out of his hands by pulling on his dick.
He had a really thick penis—
STOP THINKING ABOUT HIS PENIS!
I needed to get out of the room. Maybe he would wake up and we could both just laugh it off as being drunk and stupid. My first time getting drunk, something had been bound to happen.
Like, who didn’t lose their virginity that way?
I dropped my face into my hands and groaned. Then I heard a soft knock on the bathroom door. Shit, this was it. He was up and now I had to tell him what had happened because I doubted he would realize what I’d done.
“Julia, are you in there?”
Nicki!
I opened the door and let her in, quietly closing it behind her.
“Why is Ethan passed out in my bed?”
He was still asleep then. Saved for now.
“We got drunk. We came back here and…and…” Then I couldn’t keep the tears at bay.
Awkwardly, Nicki patted my back. “It’s okay. So you guys had sex? I didn’t think you two were like that. I mean, I knew you were tight, but I thought it was just…one of those weird things.”
“We’re not like that,” I admitted. “He was so drunk and so out of it, I don’t think he realized it was even me. I’ve ruined everything!”
Her eyes got wide. “Oh shit. You really think he was that drunk?”
I nodded even as I reached for some toilet paper to blow my nose.
“He’s going to hate me. He’s my best friend here. I don’t want to lose that, but now everything’s going to be different. I know it. He didn’t even want to have the conversation… I fucked up. I fucked up so bad.”
“You should leave. We’ll both go.”
“Leave?” I couldn’t leave. I had a confession to make. A friendship to destroy.
“Look, you said he was so drunk he might not even remember. He’ll wake up hungover and probably not think anything of it.”
Not think anything of it. The night I lost my virginity. The first time we kissed. Ethan and I having sex. All of those things seemed too important to forget.
“And when I’m not here when he wakes up?”
“Just go crash in his room. Again, you were both trashed. Nothing makes sense after a night of drunkenness when the pieces don’t line up. Trust me, I speak from experience.”
I looked down at my feet. “I need clothes.”
“I’ll get them. Wait here.”
Quietly, she opened the door and stepped outside with the experience of someone used to sneaking in and out of rooms where drunk guys were sleeping it off.
A moment later, she opened the door and handed me some clothes. Would Ethan see me today and realize this wasn’t what I was wearing last night?
I huffed out a breath. Doubtful. Like he ever paid that much attention to me.
Quickly, I slipped the clothes on and walked into the room. Ethan was still out cold, snoring, his arm flung over his head.
This was wrong. I should wait for him to wake up, explain what happened.
Then Nicki started shooing me silently with her hand. I grabbed my sneakers and coat and left the room as quietly as I could. I didn’t ask Nicki where she was going to go but none of that seemed to matter in the bigger picture.
I’d screwed up and running felt like the coward’s way out, but if he woke and didn’t realize anything had happened…then who did it hurt?
Cringing, because apparently I was a foul human being, I skulked across campus to his dorm. He’d had a spare key made for me. I let myself inside and closed the door behind me knowing, absolutely knowing, this was fucked up.
But I knew something else, too. If he did wake up, if he did remember, that was going to be the end of us. Ethan wouldn’t be able to handle the emotional impact of taking my virginity, let alone the idea that I’d wanted to have sex with him in the first place. Both of those things would push him away.
I couldn’t lose Ethan. But more importantly, I knew he couldn’t lose me.
I crawled into his bed, smelling his scent on his pillow, then I let myself cry.
* * *
“Jules. Jules, wake up.”
I could feel someone shaking my shoulder and it took me a second to put all the pieces into place. Drunk, sex, lying to Ethan.
I sat up and saw Ethan sitting on the edge of his bed. He looked…
Wrecked.
“Hey,” I said, not knowing what was going to happen next.
“Hey.” He swallowed and sighed. “Remember when I said I would do something to fuck us up…I think I did it.”
He knew. Shit. I shook my head. “No, you didn’t do anything. It was my—”
“I did,” he snapped. “I’m just going to say it. I fucked Nicki last night. It must have been after the bar. I remember leaving with you but nothing after that. Do you remember?”
“Nicki?” I asked. That didn’t make any sense. “No. It was—”
“I know. I’m an asshole. But it happened and you’ll get over it. You have to.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head.
“We were drunk. You’re here, so I’m guessing we came back to my room but, at some point, I left?”
“I…I don’t know.
”
Nicki? He thought he’d slept with Nicki. Because he woke up in her bed?
He nodded then ran his hand through his hair. “How pissed at me are you right now?”
“I…I’m not pissed at you, Ethan.” That much was true. I’d done the awful thing and I needed to tell him. If for no other reason than he thought he’d slept with Nicki.
“Nicki said you would be. I agreed.”
“Nicki said? You’ve seen her today?”
“Jules, are you not fucking paying attention? I told you I fucked her last night. I woke in bed with her and the condom was still on my dick if you want specifics. I don’t remember shit about it, but I can’t deny it happened.”
Nicki. Who liked Ethan and had tried to hook up with him all last semester. Nicki, who told me to leave the room and just hope Ethan wouldn’t remember.
“That bitch,” I whispered. She’d done this. Told me to leave then gotten into bed with Ethan. Why wouldn’t he think he’d been with her?
“No. It’s not her fault. It’s mine.”
He was wrong. It was mine. I’d done this. I needed to tell him the truth. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make the words come out.
This is what I’d wanted. For him not to remember. For us to go on like we were.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled.
“Okay?” His eyebrows scrunched together like that bothered him. “You’re okay with me fucking your roommate in your room?”
I blinked. And then it came to me in a flash. Because I wouldn’t be okay with him fucking my roommate. It would force me to change how I thought about him. How I felt about him. I was sure of it.
“You should date her.”
“Date her?”
“Yeah, she likes you.” Obviously enough to be super deceitful. I swallowed. “And you need to do more than just hook up or you’re never going to figure out how to be in a relationship.”
“Hello? Have you met me? Since when did you get the idea I wanted anything to do with a relationship?”
“It’s like learning anything else. You have to practice, Ethan. You should date her.”
He frowned at me and I, not for the first time, wished I could see inside his head. “I guess since I can’t really remember what happened, I owe her at least being sober the next time.”
The next time. He was actually going to date her and fuck her for real. Because of me. Because of my lies. I struggled to swallow, not wanting to hurl in his bed. I could stop this. I could tell him. I could say it was all a lie.
Oh shit. Oh shit. He was going to fuck Nicki! What had I done?
No, let him do it. It will end your feelings for him. Hard. Cold turkey.
“How does that make you feel?” he asked.
Horrible. Gutted. Jealous as fucking hell. None of the things I should be feeling if he was truly my friend. Which only made me more upset, because if we weren’t friends I didn’t know what we are.
“Fine. I’m good. I don’t have a problem.”
He stared at me.
“It’s not going to freak me out or anything if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean I don’t want to be…around you two. That would be awkward. Obviously.”
His eyebrows bunched together. “You’re really okay with this? Me and Nicki?”
NO! I WASN’T OKAY!
He could hear that, couldn’t he?
“We’re friends,” I told him, trying to hang on to reason. “Just friends. I can’t get pissed over who you decide to hook up with or date. I haven’t all year. Why would it be different with Nicki?”
His face was blank. I had no idea what he was thinking and I didn’t like it.
“Right. Friends. Okay. I’m going to take a shower and then Nicki and I are going to get breakfast. You want to come?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t sit across from her knowing what she’d done. What I’d done on top of that.
“No, you guys do your thing. I’ll just head back to the room.”
I got out of his bed and thought about what this would mean. When he was in my room he’d be there because of her. And it wasn’t like we would be able to hang out, just the two of us. No matter how innocent he thought it was, I knew it wasn’t.
So I’d screwed us up anyway.
Tell him the truth. Just tell him and we’ll deal with it.
I considered what I knew about him and Nicki. There was no way that would last. She might try to hold on to him, but holding on to Ethan was like trying to catch mist.
Not like me and Ethan. We would make it through this. All I had to do was let the lie exist and tolerate whatever was going to happen between him and Nicki. Then any romantic or sexual feelings I had for him would be squashed like a bug. And in the end, our friendship would be even stronger.
What was a couple of weeks? Months?
What did it matter who he was with, who I was with, when in the end what we were going to have together was going to be bigger? Because that’s what he’d promised me.
For our friendship I would do this. For our future.
Biting down on my lip hard so I wouldn’t cry I made my way to the door and stopped.
“We’re going to be okay, right Ethan?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “We have to be.”
I nodded. That was right. That’s why I had to do it. So we would be okay.
“I’ll see you later,” I muttered. Then I left before I could tell him the truth.
9
Therapy
Ethan
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She was sorry. She’d just rewritten our history in a matter of minutes.
“I can’t…I can’t believe you would lie to me about something like that. This is a big fucking deal.”
I looked at her and it seemed as if she was having a hard time swallowing. That was Jules’s version of crying. Sucking all the pain and the emotion down her throat so no one would know how hurt she was inside.
Because, in her mind, she always needed to be the strong one. The one in control.
“I thought I was doing it for us. I thought if I told you… Back then, you wouldn’t even talk to me about sex. Do you remember?”
I gritted my teeth and clenched my hands into fists until they hurt. “Let’s start with this premise, Jules. Other than taking your fucking virginity, there isn’t anything about us I don’t remember. But do not pretend for a fucking second that’s why you told me to date Nicki!”
She flinched and I knew I was right.
“You told me to date her because you knew it would kill you inside. It was just one more way for you to build a protective wall around yourself. One you apparently thought you needed after I busted your cherry.”
I remembered how defensive she’d been the day after Daniel’s wedding. Like she’d been waiting for some punch I planned to throw at her. At the time it had pissed me off. Her immediate distance, her typical barriers up and at full strength. Now it made sense in a sick sort of way. She’d been waiting for my reaction for years.
I considered what had happened after that with Nicki and suddenly realized it had to have been Nicki’s idea to get into bed with me. “That bitch. She told me…”
Jules winced and I knew she was remembering it too.
“Jules’s roommate told me she’d been with me that night,” I explained to Carol. “Since I woke up in her bed and I’d obviously had sex…it made sense. We dated for a time after that.”
I shook my head. It hadn’t been dating. At first, I’d felt like I owed Nicki something. Because I’d been out of it, because I didn’t actually remember what had happened between us.
But that started to change the longer we saw each other and Jules showed no reaction to us dating.
I’d used Nicki like a weapon against Jules. Staying with her longer than I wanted to just because Jules acted so supremely uncaring that I was screwing her roommate.
I’d hated that she was okay with it. I’d hated t
hat any time I came to her room after that, she just assumed I was coming to see Nicki and not her. The more she tried to avoid us, the more I’d found ways to throw Nicki in her face.
Which was exactly what Jules wanted.
It wasn’t my proudest moment. And now I knew that the whole time Nicki had lied about what happened between us and Jules let that lie stand to…protect us?
“You weren’t protecting us,” I told her. “You were protecting you.”
“That’s not true,” she said over a broken sob. “I did think if you knew what I’d done it would break us, end us. God, Ethan, look at what’s happening. Neither one of us can deal with being that intimate. It’s why we’re ending now!”
“We are NOT ENDING!” I shouted, standing up and knocking the chair over. I clenched my fists harder and focused on my breathing.
“I’m sorry.” I apologized to Carol. Jules didn’t deserve it. “Sometimes my anger gets the better of me.”
Carol tilted her head. “I think you have a right to be angry. You just found out that your long-time friend lied to you and kept a secret from you all this time.” She turned her attention to Julia. “It makes me wonder why you confessed today.”
“Ethan said we were supposed to be honest,” Jules said dully. “And it makes sense, doesn’t it? We can’t be together…like that. I knew it back in college. He knew it three months ago. That’s what this is proving. Isn’t it? The point of therapy?”
“Only if you want it to work,” Carol said. “But you don’t really want that, do you, Julia? You said so from the beginning. You want out. Did you think telling Ethan about that night back in college would make that happen?”
Jules puffed out a humorless laugh. “Can I plead the fifth? Is that a thing in therapy?”
“No,” Carol said. “So what is it, Julia? What is it about Ethan that scares you so much you’re willing to end a twelve-year relationship rather than deal with that fear?”