I breathed a sigh of relief as the door to the supply closet closed behind me. With the door closed, the music in the hallway was reduced in volume, from deafening to merely loud. I thought that in the supply closet I would be able to wait for things to quiet down without constant pounding on my door. An hour earlier, a few of my “friends” had decided I needed to join the party and had knocked until I emerged. Once they foisted a few beers on me, they had decided I was adequately partying and had lost interest. I had taken that as my opportunity to sneak away.

It was only after I slipped away that I realized I didn’t really have anywhere to slip away to. As soon as someone realized I was gone, they’d probably be back to pounding on my door. It was then I’d remembered the supply closet. It held vacuums and other cleaning supplies, which meant that all of the other frosh ignored its existence.

I fervently hoped our RA never went home for a weekend again. Up until she left, I hadn’t realized that she was the only thing stopping our floor from descending into complete and utter madness.

“Um, so are you going to attack me or something?”

The voice surprised me so much that I let out a high pitch squeak.

The speaker giggled. From the pitch of the voice, I assumed the speaker was a girl, probably another student from this floor.

Once my eyes began to adjust to the dim light, I was just able to make her out in the back of the closet. She was sitting down against the wall, in between a pair of vacuums. She wore glasses and had ear buds in.

With a start, I realized I knew who this mysterious girl was, although this was the first I’d ever heard her speak.

She was Cindy, the quietest girl on my floor. Rumour had it that she came from a very religious family and was scared stiff that secular life in the dorms might corrupt her. After tonight, I was suddenly sympathetic to her point of view. I wasn’t scared of corruption – as a virgin, I figured I was ripe for a bit of sexual corruption. But drugs, alcohol, and loud music held no appeal for me. I was fine to let others indulge in them, but I was quite annoyed to have been forced into partaking myself.

I was suddenly aware that we were alone and that she was still afraid, despite my squeak. She was sitting too still, like a rabbit sensing a fox and terrified to move lest it give itself away. Normally, I would have fled rather than try and make an explanation. After all, I was still shy around women due to being bullied at the start of high school.

The interest a few girls had started to show in me just before graduation hadn’t quite cured me of my fears. But surprising even (especially?) myself, I didn’t run. I felt brave and confident – I expected to be able to put her at ease. This was a new feeling and I relished it.

“No, I’m not here to attack you.” Thinking quickly, I stepped into the room a bit, standing away from the door and out of arms reach of it. I figured she’d find me less threatening if she didn’t feel like I had her trapped. “I think I came here for the same reason you did. A few a–” I cut myself off. If she was religious, she might not like swearing.

“–A few jerks knocked on my door and tried to make me drink and party. Well, more than tried, they forced me to have a beer or two. I didn’t like it, but I realized I couldn’t hide in my room. So I came here. I figured I was the only one who even knew it existed, first years not being big on vacuuming.”

“I’m Jeremy,” I added as an afterthought. I waited for the wave of anxiety to come. Normally I felt it whenever I spoke for more than a few seconds. Tonight, it was strangely absent. It’s the alcohol, I realized.

Cindy seemed to relax. Her shoulders fell and her head leaned back a bit to rest on the wall. She looked tired. I looked at my phone. It was after 2AM. Realizing this, I felt tired too and had to fight back a yawn.

“Oh. I was pretty sure after you yelped like that, but it’s good to know for certain.”

There was a brief silence, before I surprised myself by asking “do you mind if I hide here too? I can probably hide on one of the other floors if it’s a problem.”

I could see Cindy better now. She looked surprised by my question. She pulled her headphones out. She looked at me and I felt a jolt as our eyes met. With her short dark hair, sharp cheeks, and pale eyes, she was striking. I had never realized it before, but I was attracted to her. I was glad for the darkness. It hid my sudden flush.

“Oh, of course you can stay. I don’t think I have any really good claim on this closet.” She looked around as if surveying her domain and finding it wanting. “Or at least, if I do have a claim, so do you.”

“I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” I did actually. Want to make her comfortable, that is. I felt a generalized good cheer and wanted to make her feel the same warmness if I could. Alcohol? I wondered. Or is it the start of a crush?

She smiled at me.

“That’s sweet, but honestly, I’m fine. I was just surprised is all.”

There were a few moments of silence. She fingered her earbuds. I flinched internally. If she put them back in, I’d lose my only chance to talk with her. I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But nothing came out. My mind was blank.

She was looking down at her hands while she fidgeted. She appeared to come to some sort of decision. She put the earbuds into a pocket. My mouth closed with a soft click. She smiled up at me.

“I’m Cindy, by the way.” She offered a hand. I scooted over and shook it. With a bravery I didn’t normally feel, I moved aside a vacuum and sat next to her. I was careful not to sit too close and I was sure to place her between me and the door. I may have felt unusually brave, but caution still came naturally to me. I didn’t want to frighten her again. My heart beat quicker despite the foot between us.

She stared at the opposite wall for a second, as if steeling herself for something. Then she turned to me.

“What do they say about me?” She asked, face carefully neutral.

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently, despite knowing exactly what she meant.

“On our floor. What do the other students say about me?”

“I…”

Her face fell. “Forget I asked.”

I waited a minute. I thought I saw a tear track down her face. I breathed in deeply and she looked at me.

“They say that you’re religious. That you’re terrified to hang out with anyone, lest they ‘corrupt’ you. The boys…” I wondered how to tell her that the boys fantasized about popping her cherry. “Are assholes.”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “Present company excluded, I presume?”

I nodded in the affirmative, even as I sighed and explained. “I don’t know if there’s any virtue in me not joining in their talk. I can’t… No one would believe it coming from me. I can’t pull off swagger. Swag. Whatever it is.”

“Virtue comes from practice, ” she intoned. “If you no one would believe that you’d treat me like a piece of meat, maybe it’s because you have no practice treating women like pieces of meat. That’s not a mark against you in my book, by the way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

She looked down at her lap.

“I was. Religious, I mean. But I stopped believing here. It was building and building and finally I just couldn’t anymore. I just couldn’t lie to myself.”

She shook her head.

“It still fucked me up. When I was questioning, I couldn’t tell anyone. I went on pretending everything was fine, going through the motions. When it came to important things though, I couldn’t tell anyone. Slowly, I pushed away my friends. Until silence became a habit. So here I am.” She gestured expansively around her. The shelves full of cleaning supplies seemed to loom over us. It was not the biggest closet I’d ever been in.

“I should be able to talk to people here, of course,” she continued. “No one is expecting me to be a good believer or anything. But I haven’t unlearned all my fears. I’m still scared that the boys might hurt me. I’m still scared that secular society will ‘corrupt’ me. So I guess the others on the floor are right, after a fashion.”

I still didn’t know what to say. I felt like she was handing me the fragile gift of her trust and I didn’t feel worthy of it. When she talked about faith, there was a wistfulness in her voice. Throughout the rest of her story though, I heard a pain that reminded me of my awkward adolescence. She wiped aside a tear that I pretended not to see. I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew she had given me something of herself. I repaid her with the only currency I had close to hand – my own pains and secrets.

“When I started high school, none of my old friends were interested in me anymore,” I said in a whisper. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded thick with emotion. “There were some other kids, but I quickly learned that they only cared about making a fool out of me for their own amusement. They declared themselves my friends and acted hurt when I tried to avoid them, but it felt like an act. Eventually, I was nasty enough to make them go away. It wasn’t until the end that I started to make real friends. Now they’re all at different universities. I’m scared to start again.”

She looked at me, her eyes bright with her tears. I blinked past the moisture in my own eyes.

There was a horrible momentum to my story now. I had to tell her why I was hiding here, why this story had felt so close to the surface. “When people knocked on my door, I thought that maybe they wanted my company, or something. I guess I’m still playing the fool. When they made me drink, it reminded me so much of that first year of high school. I had to get away.”

I choked back a sob. My emotions felt closer to the surface and my brain felt slow. If this was the price I had to pay for the courage alcohol gave me, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

She moved closer to me and put an arm around me. We cried together for a long time.

* * *

I woke up in the darkness and was confused. I was sitting up. My back felt like a troop of dwarves were attacking it with picks and my head felt little better. There was something soft in my lap. In the thin ray of light coming under the door, I saw it to be Cindy’s head. She looked very peaceful when asleep.

I gently touched her shoulder.

“Cindy… Cindy?”

She woke up with a start. She shied away from me for a second and rolled out of my lap. I saw her entire body tense. Then she relaxed.

“Oh. It’s you.”

The way she said it made me want to dance. She said it like she trusted me. Like she was glad to wake up with her head in my lap. I suppose after last night, I trusted her too.

She brushed herself off and got to her feet. I followed, groaning. I had to hold onto the wall for a second as my vision went black. Slowly I recovered.

“Are you alright?”

“I think drinking those beers without any water was maybe a bad idea. If this is what a hangover is, I never want to feel one again.”

“Do you need me to get you something?”

“I just need a drink –” she glared at me and I quickly amended “– of water. And maybe some Tylenol.”

She nodded. “I can help with those.”

She threw open the door and trooped into the hall. Sunlight streamed in and stabbed deep into my eyes. Through my bleary tears, I could see her glance back and realize what was happening.

She returned to my side and grabbed my hand.

“Here, you keep your eyes closed, I’ll guide you.’

I tried not to hyperventilate, or sweat too much on her hand. I remembered how attracted I was to her and I felt terribly awkward. Was it alright to be holding her hand, feeling as I did? I tried to put these worries aside and I more or less succeeded.

She guided me kindly, with quiet directions and gentle tugs on my hand. Soon she was ushering me into her room. The walls were bare, except for a periodic table and a list of Murphy’s Laws. I read that as she grabbed me water and painkillers.

One aphorism, ‘If you try and please everybody, no one will like you’, jumped out at me. Reading it, I silently resolved to focus on making friends with people who liked me for me; people I wouldn’t have to try very hard to please. I hoped that Cindy could be one such friend. Or more?

Cindy tapped me on the shoulder, breaking my reverie. I turned. She was holding a water bottle already dripping with condensations and a couple pills. I gratefully took them from her, drank half the water bottle, took the pills, then finished the rest of the water. I immediately felt a little bit better.

“Would you like to get breakfast?” I asked.

She smiled. “You sure you can keep it down?”

I smiled back.

“I think I can manage.”

* * *

I hadn’t realized that I was sad until I met Cindy. Or maybe I’d realized that I’d been sad, but I hadn’t realized it had been because I was lonely. Cindy reminded me that loneliness could afflict people while also offering an antidote to it. After that first night, we saw to making each other less lonely.

We were gawked at on that first morning, when we sat together and smiled and swapped stories. Cindy even laughed loudly twice. Her laughter was high and light and filled up the whole room. I immediately knew I’d do anything to hear that laugh.

Together we were more functional than either of us alone could be. I reminded Cindy to be social and seek out people and she helped me avoid anxiety attacks when I was around others. Soon, we’d gathered a few other misfits from the residence and forged them into a group that played Dungeons and Dragons twice a week and monopolized the residence TV to watch bad movies every Friday.

I made the plans and Cindy implemented them. She was a gifted story teller and it was her who ran the D&D games.

In addition to myself and Cindy, there was Sam, an androgynous femme who used gender neutral pronouns and played a vicious fighter; Gilles, who understood English perfectly well but spoke with a thick Quebecois accent and made us all watch hockey and cheer for the Habs; and Sara, a shy girl from a small town who’d never so much as ridden a city bus before.

My parents noticed the change in my attitude. Suddenly I was coming home less and seemed to be more excited for school. I’d have thought that my grades might have suffered, but we all worked on homework together, even though we took different classes. Studying felt less lonely when I was surrounded by my friends, so I found myself motivated to do more of it. It also helped that a few of them had a lot more homework than me; I ended up studying a lot.

The first time I got a perfect score on a test, I almost didn’t believe my eyes. Once I showed that to my parents, they became fawningly approving of our group. Whenever they were in town, they took everyone out for dinner. They even managed to Get Sam’s pronouns right, which made them the cool parents. For obvious reasons, Cindy didn’t really introduce her parents to us.

I was still crushing on Cindy. I think maybe if I’d asked her out in that first week, it would have worked. But now we’d settled into a comfortable rhythm and I was too scared she’d say no. Sometimes I caught her looking at me while we studied, or I noticed her reluctance to leave my room after we finished watching a movie together and I wondered.

If it hadn’t been for that one terrible movie, wonder is all I would have done. So despite the brain cells I lost watching Frozen Assets, I can’t regret it.

* * *

The plot of Frozen Assets is idiotic. An executive from Los Angeles takes a job at a bank in Oregon, without realizing it’s a sperm bank. Unfortunately for him, it’s running low on donations, so he holds a contest in the town, getting men to abstain from sex and “save themselves for the bank”. This is protested by a local brothel and …

Look, it’s abysmal. Roger Ebert described it as akin to a natural disaster and said it was too bad to call the year’s worst film. I agree with him.

All of this hate made it an obvious choice for one of our bad movie nights. We watched it and dutifully mocked it, but were a bit disappointed overall; despite the plot, it managed to be mostly childish.

There’s just something about watching terrible movies with others that brings you together as a group and this one was no exception. Gilles lamented the drinking age in Ontario, like he did every time we watched a bad movie without the anesthesia of alcohol. Sara hit him, like she did every time he made fun of Ontario. I sat next to Cindy, my heart aflutter, whispering the occasional comment to her in the hopes of hearing her laugh. The movie may have been awful – but the camaraderie made it worth it.

We discussed the movie and laughed and joked about jerking off for an hour afterwards. We only headed off to our dorm rooms when Cindy started to yawn every other minute. It was after 1AM, a time she had never really got the hang of.

I was the only one who lived on the same floor as her. Given this, it made sense that I walked her back to her room. It made so much sense that I did it after every movie night. I wasn’t trying to be a gentleman or anything. There was something about our new friendship that made us reluctant to part, some strange attractor that kept us talking in whispers in the hall long after we should have split up for bed.

Tonight, something was off. I could sense it in Cindy’s rapid eye movements and her pauses before each sentence. My anxiety flared up and I wondered what I’d done wrong. Had I made her feel uncomfortable? Something was definitely making her uncomfortable. Could it be me? What else could it be?

After several minutes of waffling, I decided it had to be me. I wished her good night one last time and then turned to leave. I made it two steps down the hall before I heard her plaintive whisper.

“Wait.”

I turned on my heel, my heart lifting. Maybe it hadn’t been me after all. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Can we talk about something? In my room?” She looked scared, but I was getting the feeling that it wasn’t me she was scared of.

I nodded and she opened the door and ushered me inside. A map of Mordor and a Dungeons and Dragons poster had joined her periodic table and list of Murphy’s Laws on her walls. The stuffed dragon I had bought her for her birthday sat on the folded covers of her bed. Her desk was strewn with papers. I quickly identified them as the defeated remnants of the math assignment she’d complained about earlier.

She closed the door behind us and went to sit on her bed. I looked into her pale eyes and tried not to fall into them. I wanted to run to her, to push her into the bed and kiss her. But I restrained myself. Her tight dark turtleneck didn’t make things any easier. I don’t know who declared turtlenecks modest, but I see them as anything but. Sure, they might cover everything. The problem though is that they cover everything so tightly that I can’t help but get ideas about what’s underneath.

I pulled out her desk chair and sat astride it, facing her. This had the advantage of hiding the bulge my boner would soon be making in my pants. It was hard to focus around my fantasies of kissing her, rolling with her on her bed, exploring everything that I could see hidden just underneath her shirt. I wanted her, but not just her body. I wanted to lay with her afterwards and whisper secrets that I’d never told anyone. I wanted to talk about the next D&D game. I wanted… too much, I suspected. Far too much.

Finally, she drew breath to speak. I was startled by the volume of her inhalation in the still closeness of her room.

“I’ve never masturbated.” She blurted out. Then she covered her mouth.

My eyes widened in surprise. I’d had no idea where this conversation was going when she brought me into her room. I had expected to have some idea where it was going after she started talking. It seemed I was wrong on that count.

“We were all talking about it and joking about it and I feel like such a fake. I’ve never done it. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t bear to be lying to everyone. I especially couldn’t bear to be lying to you.”

Her cheeks were flushed a bright red. I wanted to lay a cool hand against them. I wanted to reassure her.

“Um…” The problem was, I didn’t know what exactly to say to reassure her. I decided to seize on the first thought that came into my head. “That’s not exactly a moral failure or anything. It’s unusual sure, but not, like, unheard of.”

Except by me, up until now. Since I’d been old enough to realize that I wasn’t the only one who masturbated, I assumed that everyone did it. Evidentially not.

“Is this a religion thing?”

She nodded and explained.

“I remember my mother telling me it was sinful when I was younger, so I never did it. When I stopped believing… I dunno, I was always a bit scared to do it. The thought made me feel guilty.”

I nodded. “You don’t need religion to feel guilty. There’s enough generalized shame about sex in society to make even secular kids like me feel guilty while doing it, sometimes. It’s so private, so not talked about, that you get wondering if it’s something bad.”

“Ohhh…” her breath whistled out between her teeth. “I hadn’t realized that.”

I smiled ruefully. “That is what happens when a thing isn’t talked about, yes.”

She gritted her teeth.

“Well, let’s talk about it now. How do you do it?”

“Errrr.” It was my turn to stumble over my words and blush. “Well I don’t know how much good it would do you to hear me talk about how I do it. Our anatomy is rather different.”

She laughed at my discomfort. I was just glad she couldn’t see how hard I was. It was difficult not to grind into the chair as I thought about her getting herself off, mouth open, cheeks flushed, hands moving furiously between her legs.

“I know that our bodies our different. I’ve looked at Wikipedia once or twice since becoming an atheist; I understand the mechanics. But I don’t know how to get in the right mindset. Whenever I think about it, I just feel guilty.”

“Ah, that…” I paused for thought before continuing. “Well, I normally start in my bed, or somewhere private. I let my mind drift towards something I find hot, like one of my fetishes or something. I touch myself a bit, just to see how it feels, to see if I’m enjoying it. If I am, I get more serious. I imagine a more fleshed out story on the theme. I try and come close to finishing and back off a few times, to make it feel better at the end.”

She looked like she wished she was taking notes. Her hand drifted towards her skirt. She looked down and noticed. Stopped.

She bit her lip. Crossed her legs. I could see her squirming. Belatedly, I realized she was as turned on as I was.

“Could you talk me through that again? More slowly?”

She pulled off her turtleneck in one quick motion, revealing her pale chest and plain, practical bra. It was black – her bra that is – just like her shirt. I tried not to gape. Mostly I failed.

“Um?” was about all I could manage.

“I want to get over this. Can you help me through it?”

I nodded. Swallowed the lump in my throat. I must have been blushing something fierce. I began to rotate the chair, so I wasn’t looking at her. That felt safer.

“I’ll just turn this around then? So you have some privacy?”

She hesitated. I could just see her out of the corner of my eye. Was she frowning?

“Can you sit behind me and hold me?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded again. She pointed at her bed. I sat up against the headboard, legs spread. Thinking quickly, I grabbed one of her pillows and put it between my legs. She stepped out of her skirt. Her underwear matched her bra in colour and in style; both were simple and practical. It was hard not to look at her underwear. Hard not the imagine the lips of her pussy glistening beneath.

She clambered onto the bed, giving me an excellent view of her cleavage. I didn’t know what the protocol was for this. Was I allowed to stare?

She cozied up against me. We hadn’t cuddled since that first night. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and she melted into me for a moment. Then she struggled against my arm. I hurriedly let her go.

She glanced back at me. “Sorry, I just wanted to take this off. Her hands fumbled behind her back and her bra fell forward. She leaned back into me. Very carefully, I put my arms back around her.

I looked down at her. I could see the tops of her breasts, her dark brown areola, her erect nipples standing out a from her chest. Her back was warm. I tried to think of something, anything other than throwing her to the bed and fucking her. I ended up taking refuge in the instructions I was supposed to be repeating.

“Think of what turns you on,” I prompted, “and play with yourself a bit.”

She nodded. Under her breath, I could hear her whispered fantasies. “Held down with my hands above my head and fucked; riding someone else’s dick while my partner is tied down watching and getting blown; my legs tied open and my clit teased until I’ll do anything…” One hand drifted into her panties. The other played with her nipples, pinching them until they became truly erect.

I was extra glad for the pillow. Watching this was making me incredibly horny.

She pushed back into me and moaned as the hand playing with her vag began to move faster. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I was pretty sure she’d figured out the physical mechanics of it. She seemed to be enjoying whatever she was doing quite a bit.

I had nothing to do but finish my instructions. “Find what feels good and fantasize about it while you touch yourself.” My voice had become a hoarse whisper.

Part of me desperately wanted to grind into the pillow, but I quickly realized I didn’t have too. Cindy began to rock back and forth, moving into her hand. The movements transferred to me, providing some relief from the agony of watching without being to get off myself. Her breathing quickened. I felt sweat begin to cover her skin in a fine sheen. She let out a soft moan and then another.

She sucked on the fingers she’d used to play with her nipples. They joined her other hand, inside of her underwear. I could see her juices soaking the front of her panties now. I thought I could even smell her arousal, sweet and musky. She threw her head back and rested it on my shoulder. Her eyes were squeezed tightly closed.

I looked over her almost naked body. Her breasts were bouncing in time with her ragged breathing. I wanted to touch them, to hold them in my hands. I didn’t though. I didn’t know what I was allowed to do. I was turned on, but confused. I could almost see inside her panties, but a fine mat of hair blocked any view I might have had of her slit. I was disappointed, but also almost glad. I knew I’d never be able to get her vag out of my mind if I could see it.

Instead of stroking her breasts, I gently stroked her hair. Her whole body was so tense and warm, that it felt like the right thing to do. As turned on as I was, I also felt tender towards her. I knew it was silly to love her, but I did nonetheless. I loved her in the careless way you can love someone you’ve just met, someone you’ve confided in quickly, right from the start.

Her breathing quickened. Her moans came closer together. She was bucking into her fingers.

I expected her to yell or something as she came, but she just let out a long series of moans, each higher and sharper than the last. It went something like: “ohhhhh-ohhhh-ohhh-ohh-oh!” Her whole body tensed and trembled around her fingers. Her legs shook like mad. Then she collapsed back into me. Her hands stopped their frantic movement.

She lay on me, motionless like that, for a couple minutes. Then she turned to me. She wasn’t at all self-conscious; she seemed to give no thought for her bared breasts and stained panties.

“I can’t believe I’ve avoided that for eighteen years. It felt amazing!” Her eyes were afire and her grin almost contagious.

“I guess that would be your first orgasm, wouldn’t it?” If she was going to play it cool, so would I.

“I think it may have been.” She smiled at me. “Thank you. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to get the courage to do it on my own.”

“I’m happy to help.” There must have been a note of confusion in my voice. She looked at me again. Something in her face fell.

“Oh crap. That was probably really awkward for you wasn’t it. I didn’t even think. I just felt so safe…”

She looked like she was about to cry. I put a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was hot to the touch. I felt the shock of our connection again. I hadn’t realized what it would feel like to have my hand on her bare skin.

“I really am happy to help you. With anything.” I managed something like a smile. It was better than the suggestive leer my face kept wanting to break out in.

I got to my feet, to hug her goodnight and make my escape. It wasn’t that I wanted to get away from her per se. It was just that I was incredibly horny and really needed to get off myself.

As I stood up, her eyes fell to my crotch. For the first time, she noticed the bulge.

“That looks uncomfortable.” She said matter-of-factly. I could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment. This was where she would call me a pervert and banish me from her –

“I should have realized that would happen to you. It’s not something you have much control over, is it?”

– or not. I was still embarrassed, but my panic subsided. I was back to playing it cool, or some facsimile of that.

“In the interest of not treating this as taboo and hidden, yes it’s uncomfortable and yes I don’t have much control over it. I was actually about to run back to my room and take care of it.”

“You can do it here if you want. I’m actually kind of curious what it looks like in real life.”

“You’ve seen it at all? Where else other than real life would you have seen people jack off?”

I wasn’t thinking as I said this.

“In porn.”

That should have been obvious, but I didn’t really think of her as watching porn. I really tried not to think of her as an ‘innocent religious girl’, but often my brain went there without any conscious approval

“You’ve watched porn?” My exclamation was automatic. She didn’t seem to understand my surprise.

“I wasn’t masturbating, but I also wasn’t living under a rock. When I ditched religion, I made sure to understand the mechanics of sex.” She looked down for a minute. “I even got an IUD as soon as I started school. I knew sex was a thing I wanted to do eventually but I didn’t want to risk pregnancy, at least not while I was in university.”

I couldn’t help but smile at her preparedness. “That might be the most engineering student thing I ever heard.”

“What, because I took reasonable steps to be prepared? I don’t see how that’s an engineering thing. That’s just a person thing, right?”

“I’d like to have sex someday too. But I’ve never gotten around to getting condoms or anything. I guess I haven’t needed them and I’d feel bad if I bought them and then always saw the unopened box.”

“You haven’t had sex?”

I didn’t know what to feel in response to her surprise. Ashamed? Heartened? I could make an argument for either. Suddenly I understood how my surprise just a minute earlier could have been hurtful to her. As much as I viewed her as “innocent”, I bet that wasn’t how she viewed herself. In fact, I realized she was fighting internally against that perception and all it entailed. I wanted to hit my head against the wall.

She also realized her mistake. She put her hands in front of her mouth. “I’m sorry…” she breathed.

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I just realized how my surprise a minute ago must have hurt you too. I guess we didn’t know each other as well as we could have.” I paused and smiled at her. “But now we know each other better. So I think it was for the best.”

Her mouth quirked up in answering smile. We grinned at each other like fools for a second, before we both realized that she was mostly naked and I was still visibly rocking a boner. I saw her cheeks colour and felt my own burning. For a second it had seemed a normal thing. But now it felt odd again. Forbidden.

She looked down. “So, would you like to?”

I gathered my courage. Maybe she wasn’t into me. Maybe this was the closest I’d ever hold her. If this was all I got, then I wanted as much of it as I could hold. I told myself this would be enough. After tonight I’d be satisfied and forget about my crush. It was a lie of course; but I’ve always found self-deception terribly tempting whenever I contemplate it.

“Sure. It only seems fair.” My voice did not shake, as much as it wanted to.

She arranged herself on the bed, with the pillow in her lap. I took off my shirt and my jeans. I didn’t think I could do the same thing she had. I’d have to take off my boxers as well. I figured she deserved some warning of this fact.

“I have to take off my underwear to do this. Is that okay with you?” She blushed, but she nodded. I stepped out of them, releasing my erect cock. For a second, this felt natural and normal. Then I remembered where I was. I felt self-conscious. I darted a glance at her. I found her expression unreadable. Hunger? No, that couldn’t be it. Whatever her reaction was, it was beyond my understanding.

With a nervous laugh, I grabbed a handful of Kleenex from the box by her bed, then clambered in. I crabbed back to where she was sitting and leaned into her. Her breasts were soft against my back and her skin warm. I leaned my head back into her shoulder and relaxed. She wrapped her arms around me. It did feel nice. I felt safe. In her arms, the world seemed less scary.

I touched my cock gently. It was already hard and sensitive and I revelled in the feeling. Behind me, Cindy adjusted herself slightly. I pushed into her a bit more.

My advice to her had been to think about what turned her on. For me, there was no question what I was most into right now. I imagined Cindy tied down to this bed, her legs spread. My hand tightened on my shaft and began to stroke.

I didn’t want to just fuck her. I wanted to make her need it, like she’d fantasized about. I imagined diving into her pussy and pulling apart her folds. I imagined finding her clit within the thicket of her pubes and sucking and flicking it. I imagined the noises she’d make as I tormented her and I groaned.

I imagined her begging me for my cock, but me holding it back. I imagined forcing it into her mouth. In my fantasy, she made me hard, so hard that I needed her as much as she needed me. This was all too much. I wanted to slow down, to make jerking off in her arms last longer, but I was too horny. I had to finish now. I needed it.

In my fantasy, I lay on top of her and pushed in with one stroke. She moaned and her pussy squeezed tight on me. I held my dick there and played with her clit with my hands until she was rocking back and forth, impaling herself on my throbbing cock. I imagined her making the same noises she’d made just now as she’d masturbated. I imagined myself spilling my load inside of her.

Back in reality, I was pumping my load out in spurts. I had the presence of mind to catch it with the Kleenex, at least. With a few final strokes of my hand, the last of my cum dribbled out. I wiped myself down and collapsed back into her, spent. I realized she was stroking my hair, just like I’d stroked hers.

I was used to rolling over and going to sleep right after jerking off. Here in her arms, I was content to lay back and let my mind drift. It wasn’t like sleeping or dreaming. It was more a sense of overwhelming comfort – a belief that everything was right with the world and everything in its place. I’d never felt it before.

Eventually I came back to my senses. Embarrassed that I had just collapsed in her arms (and even drooled a bit), I sat forward quickly. She held me back for a second, then released me quickly. “Sorry,” I apologized for nothing in particular. I put the Kleenex in the garbage. Found my clothes.

She remained mostly naked, her face unreadable.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. I hugged her good night and fled.

* * *

I didn’t talk with Cindy until lunch on Saturday.

It wasn’t entirely for lack of trying. I opened up Facebook to message her, but the text box stayed empty. I couldn’t think of what to say. How do you ask someone what masturbating in front of them meant?

I tried to do some homework, but couldn’t focus. I was so far ahead that nothing felt urgent. I opened a novel I’d been meaning to read, but I couldn’t get into it. I would read a bit, then realize that I had no idea what I’d read, then start over.

I resorted to reloading Facebook compulsively and pacing my room. Eventually hunger drove me downstairs to the cafeteria.

Cindy was sitting at our normal table, eating something from a bowl. She waved at me and I waved back. She didn’t get up.

I grabbed chicken nuggets and salad and joined her at the table. I didn’t know what to do. We were in the cafeteria, in the open. Could I talk about last night? Here under the industrial fluorescent lights, my memories of it felt dreamlike. Had it even happened? It had to have happened.

For her part, Cindy acted the same way she always acted. She talked about the homework she wanted to get done and the video game she wanted to start. Video games were her guilty pleasure. She’d never played them as a religious teen and was making up for lost time by playing through all of the best games she’d missed growing up.

I think she noticed that something was wrong with me, but Sam found us before Cindy could ask me anything. Sam convinced us that we should take advantage of what might be the last nice Saturday with some time outside.

I couldn’t quite lose myself in our game of Frisbee. There was too much waiting. Waiting meant thinking and thinking wasn’t the best activity for me right now. I was too confused.

It’s honestly a miracle that I didn’t get hit anywhere important by that Frisbee.

Sam bid us adieu after an hour. By that point, I was going crazy. Nothing made sense anymore. Cindy could sense my agitation.

“Are you okay?” She looked genuinely concerned.

“I don’t know. Can we talk somewhere private?” My voice sounded dreadful, like a frog had died in my throat.

Cindy looked alarmed, but nodded and led me back to the dorm. We walked to her room in silence. She gestured me to her bed. She took the chair and with a smile sat on it the same way I had the previous night.

“What’s on your mind?” She asked, ever direct.

“It’s about last night.”

“What about last night?”

Her tone was so neutral that I again worried that I’d dreamed the whole thing. I almost fled, but I resisted the temptation. I had to see this through.

“I thought… I thought last night meant something. I thought maybe you’d been thinking about me as much I had about you. I thought you–” my voice fell to a near whisper “–loved me.” I was trembling. “But now you’re acting like last night didn’t happen, or like it didn’t mean anything. I’m so confused.” I fell silent for a moment. I felt like there was something unknowable, suspended in the air between us; something I couldn’t grasp but desperately wanted to.

“What am I to you?” I practically yelled at her, anguish thick in my voice. I wanted to cry. I felt used, hollowed out. I’d thought we’d shared something special, but maybe it meant nothing to her.

She looked surprised and confused. “You’re my love of course. What else could you be?” The hidden became clear. The silence became pregnant.

And suddenly she was out of the chair and in my arms, kissing me. My anguish fled and my heart fought to burst out of my chest. She clambered onto to the bed with me. I shifted a bit, pinned her arms against the wall and kissed her back. She groaned and pushed her body into mine. I remembered how she looked, trembling and sweating last night. I wanted to see her like that again; I wanted it to be me who made her feel like that.

We came up for air. She had tears in her eyes and a radiant smile.

“When you left last night, I thought I’d pressured you into something you didn’t want.” Her words were spilling out, but her voice was thick with relief. “You seemed stiff today, so I thought you were uncomfortable around me. It didn’t occur to me that you wanted me as much as I wanted you.” She kissed me again and giggled. “I’m so relieved!”

One of the first things I’d loved about her was her laugh. She was laughing now. I didn’t want to hear it stop, so I held off kissing her for a minute and held her tightly. She squeezed me back. Eventually we broke apart, more or less, the better to look at each other. She still held my hands. I was glad. I didn’t want to let go of her either.

We just stared at each other for a second. I think we both looked like fools. I would have never, ever thought that she could have liked me just as much as I liked her. From the look on her face she was in the same boat. I took small solace in the fact that it hadn’t occurred to her either. Still, I had to be sure about something.

“So, just to be clear, you want to do something about us loving each other, right? We aren’t going to ignore it out of fear of hurting our friendship or something?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. Succeeded, likely.

She leaned in and kissed me thoroughly. When we broke apart again, her gaze was intense.

“I have no intention of wasting our good fortune like that.” Her voice was likewise steely.

“Oh. Well that’s good then.” I just sounded dazed.

We kissed some more. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, but it seemed to be fine regardless. It was quite a while before we broke apart again.

“I have some questions for you,” she pronounced determinedly, before softening it with, “if that’s okay?”

I nodded.

“You’ve never had sex with anyone? Not even oral?”

“If you don’t count playacting as a five-year-old, that was my first kiss right there. Last night was the closest I’ve ever been to sex.” So many people had made me feel ashamed of this fact. But I knew she wouldn’t. Being able to figure this out together, each of us equally new to it, almost made up for all the insults and heartache I’d endured. Almost.

She nodded. “Just checking. It would be a real pain if we had to wait for the results of an STI screen before having sex. If you wanted to have sex that is.” Despite her hasty backpedal, she sounded hopeful. She batted her eyelashes at me and I giggled.

I looked down. My dick was as hard as a rock. “I definitely want to have sex.”

“Excellent.”

She quickly took her shirt off. Her bra today was soft and grey.

“Now?” I asked.

“If you’d like, we can do it soon. I want to talk a bit more about it first.” She leaned in and kissed me.

“Talk about it?” I was confused. What was there to talk about?

“Talk about what we want to do and what we think we’d like. Set boundaries and that sort of things.”

I gave her a blank look. She sighed.

“I feel like this must be an engineering thing again. I read all about sex once I decided I wanted to have it. I was doing the research slowly, but then I met this cute guy on my floor –” a meaningful glance my way. I preened “– and that made me even more interested. Apparently talking about it first is how all the people who are best at it do it. Besides,” she added, with a look at my erection, obvious despite my jeans, “don’t you enjoy the anticipation?”

As I blushed, she fiddled with her bra. “It’s certainly making me wet.”

I figured if that was the case, I shouldn’t complain. Besides, she wore a mischievous look well. I was excited for the near future, when that would be all she wore.

“So what exactly are we supposed to talk about?” I asked. “I’m not sure I have boundaries or anything like that. I’ve never done it, so I don’t know what I like.”

“No, that’s true. But you can guess. For example, I don’t think I want you to play around with my asshole at all. There’s a boundary. I think I would enjoy it if you held down my arms a lot. I’m not sure that’s something I’d be into, but I fantasize about it a lot.”

That got me thinking. I suppose there were a few things like that I had.

“Okay, I see what you mean. I’m with you on the asshole stuff, I don’t think I want to try that just yet. I would like it if you sat on my face and made me lick your pussy. I also like the idea of holding you down.”

She smiled. “See, now we have things we can anticipate. We know what we want, so if you get to a point where you don’t know what to do, you can hold me down and you’ll know that I’ll like probably like it. You don’t have to worry if it’s something I’ll like or not.”

That made sense to me. I could see how I’d have much less anxiety if I wasn’t always guessing if she liked something enough.

“What about penetration?” I asked. “Do you want to do that?”

She smiled. “I think so, but let’s do the face sitting thing first to get me really wet. Also, I’d want to start with me on top, just so I can control the speed and the depth and everything. I have an IUD, so there’s very little pregnancy risk. If you’re really worried, we could grab condoms, but then I’d have to put my shirt back on.”

She batted her lashes at me and played with her bra. I really didn’t want to leave the room right now.

“Uh, I think I’m good. You seem to have done your homework. If you trust it, I do too.”

“And the rest of it?”

“Good with that too.”

“Any other thoughts?” Cindy was bouncing a bit on the bed. She looked excited.

I looked down at my lap. “So you know I have anxiety?” I asked. Cindy nodded.

“Can we both promise if there’s anything the other does that we don’t like, we’ll say so right away? Then I won’t have constant anxiety about whether you’re really enjoying it.”

She nodded solemnly “I promise I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m enjoying things or not.”

I leaned in and kissed her slowly. My hands made their way up her body, until they were cupping one of her breasts. She moaned and pushed it into my hand. She stroked my face, played with my hair. I was grinning through the kiss.

“Your shirt. Off.” Her voice was hard, but her eyes were laughing. I was happy to comply. I liked her bossing me around. I told her so.

“Well that opens up many possibilities to explore in the future, doesn’t it?”

I imagined myself on my knees, licking her slit as she moaned. I imagined her stroking my cheek and calling me a good boy. I was eager to explore those possibilities, yes.

“Yes, yes it does.”

My shirt tumbled off the bed. She stroked my chest slowly. “You know you’re incredibly attractive, right?”

I didn’t. I couldn’t see it. But she was more qualified to make these judgements than I was. If she saw me as hot, her eyes would be the mirror I would use. I told her as much and she beamed at me. Then I made sure to tell her all the things I found attractive about her. Her eyes and hair and smile and laugh. The way she told a story. The way she put me at ease.

After a bit more kissing, I broke away from her lips and kissed down her neck. She moaned and threw her head back. I added in a few very gentle nibbles and her moans redoubled. When I got to her collarbone, I nosed at her bra strap. She got the hint and reached behind her back to undo it. For the second time in two days, I was staring at her breasts.

Gently, slowly, giving her plenty of time to say she wasn’t enjoying it if she wasn’t, I kissed down her chest. From her coos, I was pretty sure that she was enjoying it. I kissed her breast and drew it into my hand.

I trembled for a second. This was definitely uncharted territory for me. With a steadying breath, I leaned forward and wrapped my mouth around her nipple. She let out a quiet moan and ran her fingers through my hair. I felt her nipple hardening in my mouth. I played with it with my tongue. I bit it gently. I gave her a second to protest, but she didn’t, just tightened her fingers in my hair. I went back to my gentle nibbling and was rewarded with a steady stream of moans and coos.

Eventually, the nipple in my mouth felt as hard as it was going to get, so I switched to the other breast, prompting a fresh round of delighted noises.

After a few seconds on that one, she pushed me off of her and onto my back. I tried to sit up, but she pushed me back down. I heard a rustle of fabric and then she was looming over me, entirely naked.

I hadn’t realized it earlier, but her pubic hair was neatly trimmed. Her slit hung slightly open. Her lips glistened with her juices. I had my wish. The only thing she was wearing was a mischievous grin.

“You’ve made me too horny to wait. I need your tongue in me. Now.”

She crawled over me and rested her knees on my shoulders, before slowly lowering her pussy to my waiting tongue. I realized she was giving me time to say no if I wasn’t into it. I was very into it, even though I wasn’t really sure what I was doing.

After a moment’s thought, I figured I’d just go for it and so leapt at her slit with my tongue. Once my tongue was buried in her cleft, Cindy let out a long, low moan, leading me to assume I was doing something right.

Her juices were musky and sweet and for a few minutes I lost myself in my task. I licked back and forth and noted which areas made her moan particularly loudly or twitch or shake. I didn’t focus on them, not yet. I wanted to make her wait for her orgasm, so I played with her. I would hit those areas for a few seconds, then move on.

She ground her slit harder into my face.

“Please… don’t play with me. Just make me –”

I ran my tongue as fast as I could over the area just above her slit that made her twitch the most. I was almost positive this was the clit. If her incoherent moaning was anything to go by, it had to be.

Her twitching intensified. It was all I could do to keep my tongue in the same spot. She was stroking my hair again. I felt something building in her, like an earthquake.

Suddenly it was let loose as her whole body started to shake and her hips rocked furiously. She moaned my name over and over again. “Oh Jeremy, oh Jeremy, oh Jeremy.” For my part, I just kept up what I was doing.

It seemed to be too much for her. She toppled off me sideways and lay on the bed gently moaning. I clambered up next to her to make sure she was okay. Her beatific smile strongly hinted that was the case, but I figured there was no harm in asking.

“Are you okay Cindy?”

“Much, much better than okay. Take off your pants! I want to make you feel that good.”

I did what she said, finally revealing my erection. She gazed longingly at it – it had been hunger on her face the night before, I belatedly realized – and gently reached out a hand to stroke it. Her touch felt like a line of sparks down my cock and now it was my turn to moan.

“Lay back and let me make you feel nice,” she demanded.

I didn’t want to argue with that.

I put my head on her pillow, closed my eyes, and relaxed.

I felt her hand gently playing with the tip of my dick. It felt good, but I wanted more sensation, so I pushed into her gently. I heard amusement in her voice.

“You’re really eager, aren’t you? Well how about this.”

I felt something warm and wet on the tip of my dick, before the warmth spread. It felt so soft, so right, that I pushed into it. The sensation stopped.

“You’re going to have to be a good boy and hold still for a minute. I don’t want you making me gag.” Cindy’s voice tried to play at seriousness, but I could hear the humour beneath it.

I opened my eyes and saw her crouched in front of my dick, her mouth open. As I watched, she gently enveloped the tip of my cock with her mouth, causing me to let out another involuntary moan.

She went agonizingly slowly, in what I guess was payback for earlier. She took just the very tip of me in her mouth, making me desperate for more sensation. I wanted to push into her mouth so badly, but I was held still by her admonition.

As she teased the head of my cock with her mouth and tongue, she began to massage my shaft and balls with her hands. I was feeling three separate things at once. The tightness of her lips on the head of my cock, the erotic friction of her hand on my shaft, and the gentle stimulation of her massaging my balls. I threw my head back and I moaned. When I looked back to her, she was smiling around my cock.

She tortured me like that for minutes. I twitched my hips forward a few times, which made her look at me sternly and remove her mouth until I was still. It felt amazing, but I was still far from coming.

Finally, she asked me to beg to be inside of her. I wasn’t too proud to.

“Please let me be inside you. I need it so badly.” My voice was a high-pitched whine. She smiled.

“Well, if you put it that way…”

She crawled up the bed, so her body was on top of mine. She kissed me deeply. She put my throbbing member between her pussy lips and ground back and forth on top of me.

“P-p-please?” I begged.

She kissed me one last time, then wrapped a hand around my cock. This time, it wasn’t just to play with me. This time, it was to guide me inside of her.

The wetness and warmth, the pleasure I had felt earlier, was nothing compared to this. As she moved down on to my body, I felt more and more of myself go inside of her. I let out a long, low, drawn out moan into her mouth as she fiercely kissed me. She was moaning too, I noticed past my bliss.

She stopped with me fully inside of her. The feeling was less intense now that the friction had stopped, but it still felt wonderful to have my whole member squeezed at once.

Cindy giggled and stroked my face. “It feels so nice to have you inside of me!”

I laughed back. “It feels so nice to be inside of you!”

She kissed me some more.

As we kissed, she began to move her body slowly on top of mine. I was careful not to move; I wanted to make sure that the sex wouldn’t hurt her. She sure didn’t sound like she was being hurt. She was moaning each time she relaxed her body on to mine. A tightening of her vag around my member accompanied each moan.

“Does this feel good to you?” I asked.

She impaled herself a few more times before answering “y-y-yes”. She drew it out as she slowly let herself down on me. She continued to move agonizingly slowly. After a few times, I couldn’t bear it any longer and pushed up into her. She moaned at that and didn’t ask me to stop, so I kept up with it.

We found a rhythm and began to move more quickly, with my thrusts starting halfway through each of hers. Our mouths pressed together as furiously as our bodies. It felt like sparks were travelling between us. It was the most insistently pleasurable thing I’d ever felt.

“Do you want to be on top and hold me down?”

I nodded vigourously.

There was a short, awkward break as we repositioned ourselves. Now I was kneeling between her legs, with my hard dick pointed at her soaking pussy. My dick was covered in her fluids, more of which leaked from between her legs. She saw the dampness and laughed. “Wow do you ever make me wet.” I grinned in satisfaction.

She grabbed my cock and slowly guided me into her. I was cautious with my first thrust, but I revelled in the fact that I could control the speed now. When I was all the way inside of her, I found her hands and held them above her head. She threw her head back and wrapped her legs around me.

I bit down her neck as I slowly pulled my way out of her and pushed my way back in. I was in charge of the speed and intensity of our fucking now, which presented the insistent temptation of a few frenetic thrusts and a quick orgasm. I restrained myself. I stuck to long and slow thrusts, burying myself all the way into her and pushing our groins together firmly.

She seemed to be into this and pushed hard back in to me. She kept her head back, allowing me to trail bites and kisses all up and down her throat.

I could only hold back so much. Slowly, my will began to slip and I began to move quicker and quicker. Our bodies began to make slapping noises as they hit and the bed began to squeak as I ground her hips beneath me into it. Her legs tightened around my ass and her mouth whipped around to kiss me with a desperate energy.

“Ohhhhhhh-hh”, she moaned, “you’re going to – OH – make me – OH FUCK – come again!”

I felt her vag suddenly tighten on my pumping cock and she again threw her head back with a loud moan. I felt her legs twitching behind me.

The tightness was too much. I felt like I’d passed the point of no return. I needed to come. I needed it with every fibre of my being, like I’d never needed something ever before. I thrust into her furiously. She gave an exquisite little moan at the end of every thrust. “Oooh, ooh, ooooh, please don’t stop!”

It seemed that with my dick in her, she wasn’t as sensitive as with my tongue.

I felt something building in my balls. The orgasm took me almost by surprise, as my cock spurted out bursts of cum into her in time with my thrusts. Each spurt hit me with a small comet of pleasure and it was my turn to moan in time with something. I didn’t really form the words properly, but I hoped that she was able to hear me declare that I too was coming.

I spurted out a half-dozen times and tried to keep thrusting, following Cindy’s command not to stop. I was surprised to find my dick suddenly incredibly sensitive. I felt each thrust so much more clearly than I had previously, in a way that was close to overwhelming.

I didn’t get to see if it ever would become too much. With my seed spent, my dick began to rapidly deflate. As it softened, I realized that I couldn’t go on thrusting. I pushed into her one last time, then collapsed, unmoving on top of her. Our kissing became more sedate.

She ground her hips gently into me one or two more times. Without the noise of our bodies, I realized just how loud our breathing had become.

I felt exhaustion tug downwards on my limbs. I hadn’t realized how much work sex could be. After my orgasm, I just wanted to sink into her and fall asleep. I felt her body relaxing under me. I guessed she was feeling the same lethargy.

She nuzzled my ear and I felt her hot whisper as much as I heard it.

“I really, really enjoyed that.”

I smiled.

“I enjoyed it too.” I whispered

We dozed.

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