Virgin(74)

Midway through a particularly dry paragraph on imagery, my emotional levels dipped. Drastically. I needed Lara. I couldn’t go on anymore without her knowing the biggest thing that had happened to me in my entire life. Our horrible fight had been freaking me out since it happened, but I was no longer a virgin and she didn’t know. My medical records were now lies. I was a Post-V and my best friend had no clue.

I needed to tell Lara. This was ridiculous. One of us had to be the bigger person and reach out to cross the gulf that had appeared in our friendship. This time I would actually apologize to Lara; I would cross the Rubicon just like Alexander the Great. I would be a Greek hero. I started flinging my work into a folder, before I remembered the dissertation was due on Friday. I had to finish editing it, do the whole bibliography, print it out again and get it bound. I let out a very long sigh. I would have to postpone the Rubicon crossing.





 The next few days passed dismally. I texted Jack back, moaning about my work, but he replied with a simple Cool, good luck x. There weren’t even any questions to respond to. With each day that passed, my comedown got worse and I realized what it would be like to be a crack addict with no crack.

I’d been so ecstatic the whole weekend, but now, with the reality of uni, an AWOL best friend, another friend with a fabulous boyfriend and, most important, a semi-boyfriend of my own who wasn’t being as boyfriend-y as I wanted, things were officially shit.

I wasn’t a virgin. I was meant to be happy. So why wasn’t I?

Okay, I knew why.

It was because Lara and I weren’t speaking. Because Sergio happened. Because Jack wasn’t messaging me. He wasn’t exactly ignoring me, or cutting me out like men did on TV, but he was hardly being the dream boyfriend who should be making me mix tapes. Or at least a Spotify playlist.

I spent the next few days in exactly the same way. I woke up at eight a.m., I showered, I walked to the library and I stayed there till six p.m. finishing my dissertation. Then I walked back home, bought a reduced sandwich from the supermarket and ate it in bed while watching a crappy TV series on my laptop until I fell asleep. My pubes were growing back and they were itchy. They seemed to know I’d robbed them of more prime time in the spotlight, and were coming back larger and longer than ever. Even my pubes were on bad terms with me.

I had gone for one lunch with Emma, but our dreams of revising together with breaks were shattered by Sergio. Deep down, I was happy for her, but the timing couldn’t be more off. Double dates couldn’t have been further from my reality. Instead, I was a sad, spurned woman of the world living in a state of solitude. I didn’t even have my virginity to distract me anymore—all I had was a copy of my magazine column taped on my wall.

Sarah, the editor, had asked me to do another column for the following week. The theme was Romance. It felt like an ironic kick in the face. Initially I had wanted to write one based on Jack and me, but as the days went by and I still hadn’t heard from him, I changed my mind. Hours before my deadline, I cobbled together four hundred words on Jane Austen and the lack of romance in our modern lives. It was more “anti-technology” than “romantic” but luckily Sarah liked it.

The column was the only thing going well for me at the moment. I glanced over to the wall to look at Magazine Ellie, reminding me of my success, but my eyes caught on the clock. It was three p.m. and my dissertation was due in an hour. I jolted upright and grabbed my bag.



“TAXI!” I shrieked, waving my bound dissertation in the air. I probably had enough time to take a bus before the deadline, but on my tight budget I never got black cabs so it seemed like an opportunity to grab with both hands. All the black cabs ignored me but a dark red one pulled over. Great, the one time I wanted to take a black cab, a red one pulls over.

I climbed in, telling him where to go, and then on a whim, added, “And step on it!” I felt like I was in a movie. In a movie, he would have said “Yes ma’am” and slammed his foot on the accelerator. In real life, he spent the next eleven minutes giving me a lecture on road safety and following speed limits.

When he pulled in to Malet Place, I paid him a tenner and jumped out in relief. I ran up the stairs, pushing open the doors to the staff room, and dumped my finished dissertation onto a large pile. There were a couple of other students there, but I decided to make an early exit in case Hannah or someone worse came by. As I walked out of the door, I bumped into Luke, the painfully hipster guy who threw the Never Have I Ever Party.

“Hey, Ellie,” he said. “Just handed yours in?”

“Yeah, thank God,” I said, smiling way too much. God, why couldn’t I just be normal around men? “So glad to be rid of it.”