Mel grabs my hair like she’s going to stop me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she pulls me closer.

She wants more. Even if she can’t admit it.

I stand straight and kiss her, freeing myself from my basketball shorts just as I remove my fingers. She’s got her eyes closed, just enjoying it, and pouts when I stop. Until she sees why.

“Blake, I....” She stares at it. Bites her lip. “I still don’t think I’m ready.”

“For sex,” I ask, “or sex with me?”

“Both, I guess,” she blushes. She still hasn’t looked away.

“That’s okay,” I tell her, putting it back into my pants and pulling the waistband up. I kiss her again. “No rush.”

Truthfully, it’s not okay. I want to rush it. I’ve wanted this for six years. But I’m not going to pressure her, especially when I can still see traces of doubt on her face that she wants me at all.

“I feel bad, though. You didn’t get to...you know.”

I laugh. “Mellie,” I say, looking at her from under my brow, “do you not notice I’m wearing new shorts? I was rubbing myself against the couch the entire time. I came as soon as you did.”

A small smile upturns her mouth. “You did?”

“How could I not?” I help her off the dryer. “Let’s go up to my room. We’ll be more comfortable.”

She gives me the side-eye. “Right.”

“I promise,” I say, holding up my hands, “I won’t try and talk you into sex if you don’t want to do it. I mean, I get it. It’s a big deal, both our first times and all. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do other stuff.”

She looks skeptical at what “other stuff” might mean, but follows me out of the laundry room, across the kitchen, and up the stairs to my bedroom, all the same.

Blake keeps his room crazy clean. I’ve never seen so much as a rogue sock on his floor, and he always makes his bed with hospital corners. His dad is kind of a slob, so I’ve always figured he inherited it from his mother, but I’ve never asked.

“Do you want me to do you first,” he asks as I sit on the bed, “or…the opposite?” I feel his tongue on the sensitive skin behind my ear, tracing all the way down my neck to my collarbone. “I’m good with either, so don’t say it’s up to me.”

He knows me too well. Whenever he lets me pick a movie or place to get lunch, I hem and haw and leave it up to him, only to shoot down every choice he comes up with.

“Um...I’ll do you first, I guess,” I say quietly. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing as I pull down his shorts, but I’ve read enough Cosmo to get a vague idea.

He sits on the bed while I kneel in front of him. My heart’s pounding, but I can’t decide if I’m scared or excited. Both, probably.

“Do you want me to tell you what to do?” Blake blushes when I look up at him. “I mean, not that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t,” I confess. We laugh, and then I just start. Learning as I go doesn’t sound so bad when it’s with him.

First, I just lick the tip of his erection and tease my lips around it. I’m not sure if he likes the teasing or just wants me to get on with it, but he seems patient.

Next, I practice taking the first couple of inches into my mouth. It’s easier than I expect, so I get brave and take a couple more.

But what about the rest of it? I don’t know how big he is—I’ve got nothing to compare him to. But I can tell my mouth isn’t going to fit all of it.

Girls in school always talked about deep-throating, but in a jokey, “so gross I gagged” kind of way. The guys said it more, locker room talk spilling into the gym after we’d dress out and march to the lines for warm-ups. The way they talked about it, you’d think it’s the Holy Grail of sex acts. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I hate the thought of gagging and throwing up in his lap.

“You don’t have to go deeper,” he chokes out, like he’s reading my mind. “This is good too. Really, really good.”

I’d smile if I could. I find myself enjoying this, a gentle bob of my head and a swirl of my tongue, the tightening of my lips driving him crazy. His hands rest on top of my head, but he doesn’t push me down, or even guide. He just lets me do what feels comfortable.

I can’t help myself. Once he tells me he’s close, I stop and stand, kissing him so hard we both fall back against his bed, kicking up one of the hospital corners.

“Sex,” I breathe against his mouth, both of us panting. Okay, so it’s not the best dirty talk, or any kind of dirty talk, really. But I’m new at this. We both are.

He looks startled, but thrilled. “Let me get a condom.”

Dad’s condom drawer, like the porn, is something he either thinks I don’t know exists, or we just never talk about. Maybe he assumes I’ll be a virgin forever, so why bother.

I grab one at random. By the time I get back to my room, Mel is curled up under the covers, waiting. I trip on the pile of clothes she left on the floor. She laughs, the sound tinny and nervous.

I toss the condom onto the bed and undress. She picks it up, studying it.

“‘Her Pleasure,’” she reads. “What’s that?”

“I think it’s ribbed.”

“And that feels better for the girl?”

I shrug. “You tell me.”

She laughs again, more relaxed this time, and carefully tears the packet open.

“Gross,” she says. “It’s like a wet balloon.”

“You’ve never seen one?”

“No. Why would I?”

“I don’t know. I mean, don’t the girls in Sex Ed put them on bananas and stuff? For practice?”

Mel reminds me that she never took Sex Ed, and has no idea what the girls did or learned or practiced. I take the condom from her and roll it on. I’ve experimented with them a few times, in my younger days—curiosity getting the best of me—so I feel kind of proud, in a weird way, that I know how to do it. Which is probably a stupid thing to be proud about. So I know more about sex than Mel—who wouldn’t, when she’s never even given herself an orgasm?

“Okay, uh...should I be on top?” I ask. Mel nods.

I position myself at her entrance, the blanket draped over my back like a tent as I hold myself over her body. She has goose bumps all up and down her arms, her chest.

“Are you cold?” I ask.

“No. But I’m nervous.”

I kiss her. “Don’t be. I promise, I won’t hurt you.” Then I slip myself inside, just a bit, and watch her eyes flutter shut.

In movies, they always say your first time hurts. The girl winces and apparently there’s blood and it stings, and it takes a while for things to get good.

Maybe movies are lying, or maybe Blake is just that gentle, because this doesn’t hurt at all. It’s the opposite of pain. It feels…amazing.

“Blake,” I sigh, my fingernails digging into his back, pulling him inside me more and more until I can’t take another inch and he’s all out of inches to give. A perfect fit, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.

He’s breathing hard, the tequila on his breath sharp. “Let me know when I should move,” he says. “I mean, when you’re used to it.”

“Now,” I say, wiggling my hips underneath him. “I’m used to it, you can...you can move.”

He draws back a little, then sinks into me again. Both of us make a noise, his low and mine high, airy, like cotton candy.

“Can I go faster?” he asks, and I notice the strain of his neck muscles. He’s been holding himself back, I realize. I’m surprised at how sweet I find it.

“Yeah,” I say. “Harder, too. If you want.”

It’s a weird little dance we’re doing, here: flowing between Blake and Mel, best friends, and Blake and Mel...what, exactly? Lovers? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Just two horny teenagers?

I decide I don’t really care what we are, right now, as long as he keeps doing this—a deep, fast thrust, his hips rocking against me like the ocean. I have to shut my eyes as the pleasure grows, this electric pulse he’s sending through me. I wonder what it feels like for him.

“Touch yourself,” he says, suddenly. “It’ll make you come faster and...and I’m really close.” He swallows hard, clearing his throat. “I want to feel you come first.”

Once again, I’m reminded of how inexperienced I am. My face gets hot; my skin itches from the flush. “I don’t know how.”

Blake just smiles.

“Right here,” he says, pausing his thrusts to show me. “Just hold your...um, these, open with one hand, and rub around here with your other.”

“Rub...how?” I do as he instructs, but I feel like an idiot.

“However feels best,” he says. “I don’t think there’s a wrong way.”

I block out every mortified feeling I have, which is a lot, and start. He watches intently, those icy blue eyes of his pushing my heart rate sky-high.

It feels wrong and weird and awkward, but then, all at once, something clicks. I don’t know what changes—my finger shifts, my hormones spike, maybe the moon has just switched over to full or something—but it feels good now. Really good.

Maybe it’s because I’m focusing on his eyes, instead of myself.

“That’s it.” He moves his hips again. “That’s my Mellie girl.”

“Shit,” I sigh, the word chopped into pieces as the pleasure becomes unbearable. I start thinking, Yep, I’m gonna die, because there’s no way on earth someone can feel this good and live to tell about it. “Blake...call me that again.”

“What? Mellie girl?”

“Yes,” she breathes, touching herself faster. I watch the heave of her chest, the redness spreading across her neck.

I realize I’ve never called her that before. Not out loud. It’s the name I think of whenever I fantasize about her, all the nights I touch myself and pretend it’s her, instead.

I drop my voice lower and say it again. “My Mellie girl.”

“Yours?” she asks, eyes shut, lost in it all.

“Of course. I’m taking your virginity, I gave you your first orgasm.... You’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” She smiles. “I...I like that.”

I repeat it to myself, over and over as I add more force. She’s mine. I like the sound of it.

“Blake,” she says, and it’s like she’s drowning, the way she has to gasp before she speaks, “it—it’s happening, I think, it’s....”

“Look at me,” I tell her. My command seems to startle her, but she obeys.

Obeys. I like the sound of that, too.

“Look at me when it happens, Mellie...don’t close your eyes.”

She nods, her brow furrowing as it begins, mouth opening like she’s about to scream. Instead, she barely makes a sound.

I know she’s coming, though, because her walls quake around me, every pulse driving me closer. When she takes a breath and moans, I hit mine, too.

I fight to keep my eyes locked on hers. Harder than I thought.

My hips drive in with a mind of their own, my instinct telling me to go as deep as I can. Mellie chokes out my name as we ride it out together.

“Oh, my God,” she half-sighs, half-sobs, as I pull out of her and slip the condom off, careful not to spill anything as I carry it to the bathroom. When I come back, she’s got her eyes closed and one hand on her chest, like she can’t breathe, but she’s smiling.

“Hey,” I whisper. I slide under the covers with her and kiss her cheek. “We’re not virgins anymore.”

She laughs. It rises to my ceiling like a balloon, stuck there in the orange light. “Definitely not.”