Virgin(7)

Emma grinned through her thickly coated red lips. “Trust me, you’re not alone in this, babe. Anyway, we should go for cocktails and share our anal sex stories.”

I made a strangled, yelping sound and Emma looked at me questioningly. Oh God, to lie or not to lie?

I compromised with a half-lie. “Um. That part wasn’t actually true. I’ve never had anal sex. I just drank because I was choking on a pretzel and then it was too late to say no.”

She threw her head back and let out a throaty cackle. “Okay, wait, so why didn’t you just tell Hannah you accidentally drank and didn’t mean to admit you took it up the bum?”

I flushed at her very visual words. “I guess I wished I was the kind of girl who, uh, took it up . . . there,” I admitted. For a second, it had been kind of exciting to have Charlie look at me like I was shaggable.

“Babe, anyone can be that girl. I’m sure the guys are queuing up to do you up . . . there.” She grinned.

I looked at her doubtfully. “They’re not.”

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “You must be going to the wrong places. Next weekend, you’re coming out with me. Text me,” she said, blowing me a kiss as she turned back to the party, sashaying on her five-inch-heeled boots.

She left a trail of Miss Dior Chérie in her wake and I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be Emma. Maybe if I started wearing perfume instead of the strawberry body spray I bulk-bought two years ago, I could have casual sex stories and stand up to Hannah Fielding.

I looked down at the soggy pretzel I was still holding and realized I had a long way to go.





 I woke up with a loud groan as I remembered what had happened at the party. My eyes were still glued together with sleep so I groped around blindly for my mobile and called Lara, my best friend.

She was my first port of call whenever something humiliating happened to me. I turned my horrible luck with men into funny stories for her so we could laugh about them and help me forget how much it hurt deep down. The Bite Job had given us enough ammunition for years.

Lara had given up her V-plates a year earlier than the legal limit, at the age of fifteen. He was called Marc, went to a school near ours in Guildford, and it had only happened once. She was never exactly sure if it counted as sex, because even though he had penetrated her, it had lasted only a couple of seconds and he didn’t go fully in. Marc never called again.

Now she had moved on and was living my parents’ dream by studying law at Oxford. Although her Facebook relationship status was still single, she had been having an on/off thing with a guy called Jez for three years. They’d met at the start of her gap year and had been having casual sex ever since. I wished I’d taken a gap year.

She picked up the phone on the fifteenth ring. “Ellie, thank God you called. I’m having a crisis.”

I pulled the duvet over my head. “Me too. I played Never Have I Ever with the hipster crew and I told them I had anal sex.”

“Why would you say that? You haven’t even had real sex.”

“AND YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?” I yelled through the phone at her. She responded with silence and I sighed despondently. “Anyway, I give up on my life—it’s too depressing. What’s your crisis? I hope it’s worse than mine. I need major distraction.”

“Trust me, it is. I’m home for Easter and want to see Jez but, as usual, he is being a dick and won’t reply to my messages. So now I’m in central London just waiting for him to reply so I can see him tonight.”

“Wait—so you’re in London with no plans? Why don’t you come over to my place?”

“Well, I’m kind of already on my way.”

“I can’t believe you assumed I’d be home alone with nothing to do.”

“But that’s exactly what you are doing.”

“Okay, point taken. Anyway, I hope you’re willing to ditch Jez, because I have a proposition for you and it involves going out tonight.”

“But what if he calls and wants to see me? I don’t know if I can go out out tonight.”

“Lara, come on. He is ignoring you, which he does every few weeks, so you can’t just be at his beck and call. Embrace your inner feminist, stop being his booty call and come out with me tonight to help me lose my virginity.”

She started laughing. “Are you kidding? You want to lose your virginity tonight? To a stranger?”

“Yup.”

“I’m not helping you get deflowered by a one-night stand. You’ve held on long enough, so you may as well last a bit longer for The One.”

“I am so bored of that phrase,” I retorted. “Do you know how many websites have advised me to keep on waiting? WikiHow’s entire virginity page is full of Hare Krishna crap like that.”