I kiss him harder, and his mouth answers mine, and then his hands are on my face and my hands are on his back, and now I’m unbuttoning the sky-blue shirt. And I tell myself: There is only Miah and me and this room and these hands and the two of us. We are the only ones here.
At some point, my brain switches off and my body takes over, but unlike my first time, I’m here. No mental narration, just completely and totally one hundred percent on-the-bed here. The song that’s playing is “Tennessee Whiskey.” And I’m glad it’s not some stupid song I’ll be embarrassed to remember one day. It’s perfect, actually. Just like we are in this moment.
It’s this feeling of my heart being safe for the first time in a long time. And I know enough to know this isn’t always how it will be, but this is how it feels right now with Miah as we fall onto the bed and undress each other until we are just skin against skin everywhere.
At no point do I leave my body, the way I always thought I would. I’m not watching us from above the bed or from the bookshelf or the rocking chair by the window or from outside the window looking in. I am on that bed with him. I don’t wonder if my body is a disappointment. I don’t worry about where to put this arm or this leg. I just move with him, and at first it’s just us moving together but separately. He’s touching me, and the room starts to spin with light. All these fireflies of light swirling and sparkling around me. When I touch him, he groans in my ear and pulls away.
I watch as he reaches for the condom. He hesitates and I know he’s not going to do anything until I say, “Okay.” So I say, “Okay.” And I watch as he rolls it on the same way he did the first time.
And then he’s back and kissing me. And a moment later I feel the tip of him, and even though this isn’t the first time, it feels like the first time. Maybe the way the first time should have felt.
He is going slowly, watching my face, reading my face. I run my hands over his back and arms, which are taut from the way he’s holding himself up and over me, and I want more of him. I want all of him.
But first he leans down and kisses me, and I kiss him harder and more urgently to let him know it’s okay. It’s yes. It’s now. My body is wanting his. And I am burning up, head to toe, little fires everywhere.
Then I can feel him. All of him. And it hurts a little, but that’s more the surprise again of having another body in your body, the getting used to something new.
But it’s funny how fast my body adapts. It’s like, Oh, hello there. Why haven’t we done it like this sooner?
And I’m into it. And he’s into it. And he’s literally in it, as in my vagina. (Vagina, really? I mean, penis? Like, why are these words so completely unsexy?) And then, oh my God, I laugh out loud at this. And he pulls back and looks at me and goes, “Uh. Captain?”
And I say, “I mean, vagina? Penis? Could they have come up with less sexy words?”
And then he’s laughing too, and he kisses my forehead and mumbles something into my neck like, “God, that brain of yours.” And then the laughter falls away onto the sheets, into the mattress, and we are done talking. There’s only music and the sound of our breathing.
It takes us a moment, but then we hit this rhythm, and for a couple of minutes it’s not like a second first time. I know he feels it too because of the way he’s looking at me, and then the way he’s kissing me, and then the way he stops worrying about hurting me and is just moving with me and not holding back, and I tell myself not to hold back either. Which for me means letting go of this summer and my parents and Saz and everything familiar, including my virginity. The way he’s touching me tells me that he’s remembering what I said about sex not being just about him.