Chapter Fourteen
Gabby
Jonathan drops me off at my dorm after a long dinner together, where we talked and laughed the whole time, the conversation flowing like we hadn’t had our first fight this afternoon. We went back to his house and made out in his room for a while before I had to come back. He pulls me close and kisses me goodnight, groaning when I’m about to get out of his car, “I don’t want to let you go already. I wish it were the weekend.”
I pat his chest and kiss him once more. “It’ll be Friday the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s so far away.”
I can’t help laughing at him. “See you tomorrow after rehearsal?”
He nods, his eyes bright.
Another kiss. This one long and lingering with lots of tongue.
When I pull back at last, I wipe my lower lip and grin at him. “I do have to go. It’s already after ten, and I need to finish my homework.”
He lets his hand fall away from its place on the back of my head, his fingers running through my hair one last time. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Gabby.”
Climbing out of the car, I blow him a kiss before I shut the door, then turn and wave before going in the building. I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Floating up the stairs to my room, I barely register the other girls I pass on my way up.
Lauren’s sitting at her desk when I come in. She looks up, takes in my appearance, and squeals. “You have to tell me everything!”
She knew I was going with Jonathan after Strings Seminar. Apparently our activities are more obvious than I realized.
I give her a coy smile and run my hands over my hair, smoothing it down. “I don’t know what you mean. Everything about what?”
“Whatever, woman. You totally got laid tonight. It’s written all over your face. And your hair looks like you just had a wild night in bed.” She sits up straighter, making gimme motions with her hands. “Come on. Give me all the details.”
I laugh. “I don’t think I’m up for sharing all the details, but I will say that Jonathan clearly knows what he’s doing.”
“Oooh. That’s a good start. You gotta give me more than that, though.” She tugs me to her bed and makes me sit, shoving clothes, her throw pillows, and a stuffed animal out of the way to make room for us. “Now tell me everything. He knows what he’s doing. That’s good. So he was big enough to satisfy you? I know people say size doesn’t matter, and it’s not everything, but it matters to some extent. Comeoncomeoncomeon. I need to know so I can live vicariously through you. I kissed his poster goodnight for like a year when I was in middle school. Please tell me he was amazing and hung like a horse so you don’t destroy my fantasy.”
I give her shoulder a playful shove. “I should tell you that he’s terrible in bed and has a tiny dick just to ruin your fantasies. I’m not sure I like you lusting after my boyfriend.”
One of Lauren’s eyebrows arches high on her forehead. “Your boyfriend, huh? Last time we talked about him you were just ‘hanging out.’” She makes big, dramatic quotation marks with her hands. “So this is getting serious? Not just a little fling where you get to live out your teeny-bopper boyband crush?”
Looking away, I give a little shrug. “It feels serious. But surreal too, y’know?” I look her in the eye again. “I mean, I like him, like really like him. For who he is, not just because I had his posters on my wall as a kid. I mean, that’s kind of a fun bonus, but he’s sweet and funny and a really good kisser and he lets me talk about music the same way you do without making me feel like a crazy weirdo. Even though he’s not formally trained or anything, he gets it. In the way that only another musician can.”
Lauren nods. “Yeah.” Her face is serious as she takes me in, then a sly smile pulls at the corners of her mouth. “So he’s a good kisser, huh? What else is he good at?” She wiggles her eyebrows, and I can’t help laughing.
“Yes. He’s very good at kissing … all over.”
She claps again. “Yay! Gabby got head! That’s great. I won’t date a guy who won’t go down on me. Especially if he expects it. Quid pro quo, man.”
My mouth pulls to one side in a crooked smile. “I don’t have much experience with either the quid or the pro quo in that scenario, but I can definitely get behind not dating someone who expects things he won’t do himself.”
Lauren’s mouth opens slightly as she looks me over. “Um, so, was he your first?”
“Oh, no. Well, not really. But he’s the first who’s done … that.”
“Not that it’s my business, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, and I’m not judging, more curious. How many other guys have you been with?”
I look away, suddenly very interested in pushing back my cuticles. My fingernails are getting a little long. Maybe I should’ve cut them before I played today. Would that have helped? Probably not. Nerves were more responsible for my disaster of a performance than slightly-too-long fingernails.
“Gabby?” Lauren’s voice has that needling quality it gets when she’s trying to drag information out of me. While we haven’t known each other very long, she’s weaseled more of my secrets out of me than anyone ever has before. But she’s also shared all of hers. And while I know a lot about her sexcapades, as she likes to call them, I haven’t shared much of mine.
“Hmm?” I respond, knowing full well she won’t let me get away without answering her question. I’ve always just let her talk about her own experiences and not divulged much about mine. Or my lack of experiences. Which is why she asked if Jonathan was my first, obviously. Plus, I just admitted to inexperience with oral sex, so it’s not unreasonable to think I’m inexperienced with other things.
“You know I’m not going to let this go. It’ll be easier for both of us if you tell me what I want to know instead of dragging this out for hours or days like when I asked you if you owned a vibrator.”
My cheeks go hot. I don’t blush often, but Lauren’s complete lack of filter or boundaries, has made me blush more in the last month than I probably have in my whole life. And my older brother isn’t known for self-censorship, so that’s saying something. Lauren hounded me for a week to get me to admit that I’d never owned a vibrator, and a week later, she gifted me with a shiny pink pocket rocket, saying, “This was the first kind I ever got, and it changed my life. Have fun!” And she gave me a wink and left for three hours.
Then she made me give her a detailed report about how great I thought it was when she came back.
I grab one of the pink pillows that coordinates with her comforter and toss it at her. “Fine. But only because I know you really won’t let it go. How many guys have I been with not counting Jonathan?”
“Right. Not counting Jonathan.” Her voice is neutral and even.
“One.”
She doesn’t say anything at first. Then, “Just one?”
I nod.
“And was it …?”
I shake my head. “No. Whatever you’re going to ask, the answer’s no. No, it wasn’t special. No, it wasn’t good. No, it didn’t last very long.”
“Oh, Gabby. Why not?”
I shrug, looking down at my cuticles again. “I just wanted to get it over with. He was a cute boy, and he was interested in me. We were at a party after graduation. The opportunity presented itself, and I took it. I didn’t even tell him I was a virgin. I didn’t bleed or anything, so he had no idea.”
Lauren looks appalled. “Why not? And even so, he didn’t take the time to make sure you enjoyed yourself? What a shitty lay.”
I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. The look on her face and her commentary about my first time is too much. “Yeah, well, Jonathan made up for it.”
“Good.”
I laugh again, but she doesn’t.
“I’m not joking, Gabby. I know I have a perverted sense of humor—“
“More like the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old boy,” I cut in.
She waves that away. “But good sex is not a laughing matter. I can’t believe your first time was with someone so … awful.”
“He wasn’t awful.”
She gives me a look.
“Okay, fine. The sex was awful. He did kind of try. But there wasn’t enough foreplay, I don’t think. And when he tried to rub my clit, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing, so I just pretended like it was good so he’d finish sooner.”
Covering her ears with her hands, Lauren lets out a groan. “Stop. Just stop talking. I can’t take anymore. That’s so awful.” She brings her hands down and looks me in the eye, her gaze serious and unwavering. “Let’s pretend that never happened. Jonathan was your first. He went down on you and made sure you came, right? Did you come with him inside you too?”
“Uh, no.” I can’t believe we’re talking about this. Like it’s totally normal. Lauren has zero boundaries.
“Okay. Well, still. It’s better than the other guy.” She holds up her hand to stop me when I open my mouth to supply his name. “No, Gabby. I don’t want to know his name. As far as I’m concerned he doesn’t exist. Jonathan’s your first in any way that counts.”
“Um, okay.”
“But you’ve never gone down on a guy?”
“No.”
Lauren gets up and grabs her laptop, muttering to herself as she hunches over it and types, clicks a few times, and then sits up straight. On the screen is a woman kneeling in front of an erect penis.
“Whoa! Why are you showing me porn?”
Lauren’s look is all business. “Dude. You need to know how to give a blowjob. Trust me. You’ll thank me later.”
She spends the next hour showing me different videos, educating me on a variety of techniques, pointing out variations to try. My cheeks are hot at the beginning, but her matter-of-fact approach and emphasis on the importance of this sex act sort of normalizes the fact that I’m watching porn with my roommate.
“Now, in porn, they pretty much always come on the girl’s face. Some guys like that, though I think it’s more because they’ve seen it so much in porn that they think it’s normal. Most guys find it really hot if you swallow, but that’s a personal choice. You can always spit it out if you want.”
I bite my lip, taking that in. I didn’t even think about that. She’d started off talking about it like it was foreplay. “You mean, he won’t want to just come … in me?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Guys are different. But at some point you may want to give him a BJ until he comes, not just as a prelude to intercourse.”
“Why would I want to do that? I mean, if he …”
A devilish gleam comes to Lauren’s eye. “What about you? Is that what you’re asking?”
Blushing again, I nod.
She taps a finger against her lips. “Well, I mean, I don’t know Jonathan, except by reputation. And everyone has their own kinks. But you might want to do something just for him at some point. Or if you forget a condom. Or the condom is ripped. Then you can sixty-nine or take turns on each other. There are lots of reasons. You might find that you enjoy it. It can be incredibly hot to focus on your partner’s pleasure. It sounds like he cares about your pleasure, so I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much.” She gives me a wink and closes the laptop. “Now, I need to go over the stuff for sight singing tomorrow. What about you?”
I nod, dazed by the quick subject change, but manage to get my book out of my backpack. We spend about a half hour singing through our assigned melodic and rhythmic exercises for class the next day.
When I climb into bed that night, my head is still spinning with all the events of the day. I’ve gone from giving what is probably the worst performance of my life to having great sex with my hot boyfriend and getting a lesson in oral sex from my roommate. The sudden changes lately are enough to give me whiplash and leave me wondering what will happen next. I guess I’ll just have to wait and find out.