body cells
virgin
‘I’d like to take something back.’
What, your virginity?
‘What I said earlier.’
Astrid stared blankly at Kyle as he spoke nonsense.
‘About what?’ She really didn’t remember. Between her proposal, his acceptance, and three minutes after it had starded, many hours had passed. They had gone to bed after everyone else—bed meant a sofa in the living room of the rented beach house—but it had still been way earlier than the usual—apparently, seventeens couldn’t handle that much partying in just three days straight. She noticed the sky had a tinge of brightness already.
‘About sex,' he cleared it up. 'I take back what I said about it being overrated. Sex is underrated.'
* * *
Astrid blinked. Then, she felt a blowing wave coming out of nowhere, something between a small electric shock and how it would feel like to be a rippling sound effect, like shivering from cold but all warm up inside and out, the thing was spreading, reaching her fingertips, her face was what burnt for last.
No, no, no, she realized what it was. Not Kyle. We’re such good best friends please don’t be it please don’t happen please go away please stop please
Silly Kyle who was never the leader of the pack, had little talent in what he was applying for in university, still lives with his parents—and still hated his parents? Like a teenager? Astrid would later on in life think back to this part and realize she too was a teenager who hated her parents under the roof they paid for, but right now, she was discussing her feelings with all the Astrids inside her mind.
The pretentious one was sure Astrid would stop teasing Kyle for his poor drawing skills—and begin resenting him for it.
The independent one sushed the reasonable one before it could argue that most kids don’t get to have their wealthy parents pay for an apartment so they can have a taste of adult life without all the costs—and was aided by the resentful one, whose argument broke logic to state the fact that her crazy parents owed her for all the years of psychological torture and negligence.
The conservative voice said that maybe Mika wouldn’t forgive her for it... But it finished it’s opinion in such a small tone that the others ignored it, as they usually do when Conservative says something.
The one who nobody knew by name, but feared and respected the most, suggested that this new beginning was fated to end, as do all beginnings, they’re called beginnings for a reason, they end up ending. And it went on to recite a list of past events in flesh-and-bone Astrid’s life to sustain its argument... It had just reached the topic of Luna when it was interrupted.
Maybe this way we get to keep him longer.
‘Keep him?’ The voices were suspicious of the way This One spoke. It always sounded mischievous and child-like innocent at the same time, and nobody knew whether to feel scared of or sorry for it.
Yes, we usually lose them at some point—come on, you must admit, none of us likes it when it happens—and they always leave us for someone who can give them what they want the most.’
This time it was sounding a tinge lunatic. But the others were interested. They all listened on.
It’s a win-win situation. He can get the orgasms, we can get the loyalty of his friendship. When someone else comes along, we won’t be abandoned for a sexy new girlfriend.
‘We’ve been feeling unwanted anyway,’ Reasonable answered.
‘Mika lost her privileges when she chose that stupid rich coke-head gossip girl over you’, Resentful encouraged, obliviant of how Gossip Girl-like Astrid would turn seven years in the future.
‘We can have sex in my apartment when I move out,’ the Independent caught on. Many times it had pictured an eighteen-year-old Astrid, short hair, tank top (side boobs), an elastic wristband on the arm she pushed the front door open to someone leaving in the next morning. Usually it was a pretty girl, but Kyle could do for now.
‘Boys are way easier to date,’ said Conservative, satisfied with how ways things turned around in her favor. ‘They’re easy to please, and you can always tell when they are being pleased.’
Oh come on. Like you’re such an overachiever. You were hanging from a thread throughout High School and barely reached the minimum score required for college. Where was that selectiveness when Jenny came along? Maybe it’s because you think it’s hip and cool to be a lesb—‘
The tone was no longer mischievous, innocent, or crazy—it was outright agressive. It was going for it, with all its weapons, with such confidence, right where it hurt...
Reasonable bit her lip when she saw that the Fearful-But-Feared one (that’s what she called it, for they hadn’t agreed on a single name yet) was grinning. Something in that sly smile suggested those two were in cohoots. Even so, when they called for votes, she raised her hand in agreement.
* * *
And there he stayed. He had not threatened to leave, unlike some before him, but there he was—next to her on group movie nights, on the mattresses at group sleepovers, outside her school almost everyday past mid-day. She hated going to his house—he still lived with his parents—and she didn’t want to make it official by inviting him over when their friends weren’t around. So, there were a lot of sleepovers for a period. They managed to keep it a secret for a while, but it was more like those secrets that are actually things everybody knows but they don’t tell you they do because, hey, why wouldn’t you get to keep your secret if you want it so much? Most of their friends were not the type to meddle. If they talked about them, they made sure Kyle and Astrid didn’t hear about it.
And that Jenny didn’t hear about Astrid and Kyle. That was mandatory. She didn’t deserve to know anyway—that rude, cowardly closeted sapphy who didn’t have the balls to own her feelings for Astrid. She also didn’t deserve to know because it would hurt her, even if she insisted it wouldn’t, that it would’ve been impossible to, because she didn’t love Astrid, it was just fun.
So fun it was—with Kyle too.
* * *
After his first time, plenty of others ensued, some of which Astrid shared. Her first time doing it in a fire scape stairway (the concrete floors hurt her knees), her first time doing it in a shared bed (the others were asleep and they barely moved, careful not to make a sound), her first time having someone try to fuck her from behind—
‘What are you doing?’
‘What? ... This?’ He pressed his finger.
‘Yeah’, she had always been self-conscious of that part of her body, as mostly everyone else.
‘So you don’t like it?’ He meant you as in you girls, all of them, including but not restricted to her.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Ok.’ He removed his finger. Years later, Astrid would think back of this and laugh. I wish I’d said yes. Wish this first time had been with Kyle too.
He wasn’t particularly good at it, although he learned to last longer than three minutes. But it wasn’t the purpose. All those sneaky escapades and little secrets and furtive kisses in elevators—that time he just had to have her on Jillian’s bathroom—they were all forming a bond of intimacy just like Astrid had earned for, longer for, and even idealized. They also shared the same values. When everyone else started drinking and smoking pot, they were proud to proclame themselves straight edges, and it had been such an important trait that later on it would become one of the reasons Astrid no longer felt like she was the same person he knew back then.
* * *
‘What was it like with Mika?’
‘Well, she was my first girlfriend.’ Astrid hoped Kyle didn’t mean anything with his choice of words.
‘But what was it like?’
‘I didn’t like going over. That spaniel kept leaping on the bed no matter how many times we shoved it to the ground.’ Astrid grinned. She too wasn’t very fond of Mika’s smelly dog.
‘Did you think it was gonna end?’
‘It’s not so much like I thought it was gonna end as much as I just didn’t think about it. I mean, I had been waiting for so long until she finally gave me a chance. I was just enjoying the ride.’
‘I remember you got pretty sad when she broke up with you,’ Astrid was deciding whether or not to tell him about last january. ‘Angry, even.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not like I hadn’t seen it coming.’
‘Why?’
‘She was too wild.’
‘She did hung out with Fay quite a bit.’
‘She teased me too much, but we never went all the way.’
Sigh. I have to tell him.
‘Maybe it was because of the dog.’
‘Maybe I didn’t make her cum.’
‘Did she use to fake it?’ Because I do.
‘She was a loud moaner.’ He didn’t answer the question.
‘What did she like the most?’ She tried to coax him into confirming what Mika had said in january.
‘Nothing in particular. Everything,’ he had no clue, ‘she really did moan a lot right from the start.’
‘So it was hard to tell.’
‘You’re making me hard with all this sex talk about Mika.’
‘Thinking of her makes you hard?’
‘Is this your kink? Picturing me with Mika?’
Astrid did get horny at the thought—or sight—of her lovers making other girls cum, but she didn’t know it at the time, or at least she didn’t admit it. If she knew, she’d say so, because she felt free around Kyle. He made things easy, light, fun, safe. She could trust him.
She wasn’t so sure he could trust her back.
* * *
Yeah, she was a straight edge. Never even tasted a droplet of alcohol—before january.
It was summer, and they had a sleepover, only this time they separated into two groups: the guys spent the night at Sanjay’s, and the girls at Jenny’s. The guys were looking forward to try out his new video game. The girls had spent the whole week communicating in innuendos. Astrid was curious to find out whether they were for real.
‘There’s no ice,’ lamented Mika in a child-like voice. She pouted a lot because she knew it was cute. Mika had a long blonde mane of hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks, ivory skin, and thin lips that curled into a malicious smirk if you stared too long. Astrid always noticed how she touched things with the cushions of her fingers and wondered if it was a straight girl thing. Like Rihanna and Shakira in that music video—they run their hands across each others bodies, spalmed, as if touching the air just a layer of air above skin, unconvincingly hot for each other.
‘Then make some,’ Pammy’s tone towards Mika was always like that. She didn’t buy into the blonde’s fake cuteness. She knew her better. After all, they had been friends since kindergarten, and that was how long she had had to endure every guy and girl fall at Mika’s feet, never sparing a drop of attention to the much less pretty Pammy.
Astrid knew how Pammy felt about it. She didn’t fancy herself as a beauty queen, even though everyone said she was a good match against Mika. Feeling like her duty to all unnatractive girls was to choose Pammy over Mika that day—if things went as planned—she perched herself on top of the kitchen’s balcony, touching Pammy’s arm with her thigh. Mika’s eyes sparked red at them—could she be jealous?
‘You make some,’ Mika pranced towards the living room. It wasn’t personal—she just didn’t like not being the center of attention all the time.
Jenny’s family had not moved in to the new apartment yet, so there was next to no furniture, just a TV rack with no TV and a bunch of mattresses the girls tossed on the living room floor for the sleepover. Among other things.
‘Do your parents know you smoke?’
Astrid had just realized she wasn’t hot for Pammy enough to withstand her duty and entered the living room as Mika was leaning over the windowsill next to Jenny.
She didn’t like smokers—nasty habit—but Jenny sure looked cool taking puffs of that cigarrette, her long dark hair strands sightly moving with the breeze, blending with the dark color of the sky behind her, distinguishable through the white smoke. She wore a white tank top with something written in unreadable words—a band of screamo she liked—and a dark sportsbra underneath. She seemed to have small or no breast at all. Compared to Mika (face shaped like a heart due to baby fat), Jenny looked older than them, with her skinny flat hands, olive-skin, long dark eyelashes and deep brown eyes that stared penetratingly; a million things she didn’t say with words she said with her silent gaze.
‘They’d kill me if they knew.’
‘So that’s one more thing you don’t tell them,’ assumed Astrid.
‘That I think they know, but they pretend not to, and I’d like to save my cards for later.’
‘Why do you think they know?’ Jenny ignored the obvious nod to her blatant tomboy look.
‘My mom read my chat with Natalie once. She guessed my password. When I got home from school, she was crying in front of my computer.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She made me promise I wouldn’t do it again. She didn’t believe me when I said Natalie and I never even kissed in real life—we just talked about it—, she was so scared of becoming the Mother of the Town’s Lesbian.’
Jenny lived in a small beach town, unlike the others, who were all from the Big City, and had to stay over at her’s or their other friends’s houses when they visited, which usually occured during the summers, even though none of them used to actually go to the beach at the time. Astrid hated the feeling of sand against her sweaty skin, the salty sea water that made her itchy for days, the walk home all dirty and uncomfortable, the long wait for the others to finish shower so she could wash the discomfort away.
‘So you’ve never kissed a girl before?’ Mika and Jenny stared at each other. Astrid felt a lump of jealousy in her throat. Pammy entered the room right in time to be an inconvenience for them and a life saver for Astrid.
