I sobbed so much I couldn’t breathe, and my tears were no longer tears, but great heaving, ugly convulsions where hugging myself didn’t work, where lying to myself didn’t work, where promises that it would get better definitely didn’t work.
I’m sure you can probably guess what I did next?
If you can’t, then you’ve never been in love with someone who was off making a future with someone else.
Wiping away my grief, I crawled to my phone and went on the Facebook group listing campus parties in my area. There was one that a student at the local university that I’d considered applying at for their creative writing course was hosting.
It was late.
The party was probably winding down by now, but I stripped and climbed into the shower. I shaved every part of me. I styled and painted and slipped into the little black dress I’d worn on the night of my seventeenth birthday.
Unlike that night, when I wore new red lingerie that I hoped peeked out beneath the black straps, tormenting Ren at dinner, this time, I wore nothing.
I wasn’t playing games anymore.
I was done, and this was war.
I caught an Uber to the party as my killer heels would break my ribbon embroidered foot before I could arrive, and I sashayed my way into the tipsy crowd, looking for a particular kind of prey.
A boy of pretty origins, slightly drunk, single, and up for fun.
And when I found him, I pulled him to the side and told him the truth. I hid my cracked voice behind a sultry beg and said, “I’m in love with someone else who doesn’t want me. I’m a virgin who doesn’t want to be innocent anymore. I want to forget…about all of it.”
I’d pulled away, expecting him to run but needing him to understand that I wasn’t going to be an easy lay. I would be skittish and jumpy and most likely cry at some point, but I’d chosen him and all I expected him to do was relieve me of the one thing that I’d started to hate.
I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore because Ren most definitely wasn’t.
He’d waited until he was nineteen but on the cusp of my eighteenth, he’d well and truly ensured I had a fair number to sleep with before I caught up to him.
Any idiotic concepts I’d had of saving myself for him—of him waking up one day and climbing into my bed with words like how stupid he’d been and how much he loved me and wanted me and needed me and then he’d kiss me and touch me and fill me and…
I sighed, blinking with my freshly painted eyelashes and waited for this pretty stranger to save me.
To make his life easier, I opened my beaded bag and pulled out a condom.
The first condom from the box of twelve that Ren had bought for me. Inside my bag, all I had was some cash, my phone, and two more condoms. Because who knew if once would be enough to ease the agony in my soul?
“What’s your name?” the pretty stranger asked.
I paused, wanting to use a fake one to protect me from any future pain but determined to ruin myself as much as I could, to prove I was brave enough to survive anything. “Ribbon. Della Ribbon.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, disrupting his dark blonde hair, blinking with baby blue eyes, looking the exact opposite of Ren.
I was glad.
I wanted to look into this stranger’s face when he was inside me and have no doubt that he wasn’t Ren.
“And his name?” he murmured as he stepped closer, cupping my chin and studying me. “The guy who’s just thrown you away?”
My eyes burned, but I kept the sobs away. “Wild. Ren Wild.”
It was the first time no one believed we were related. Two different last names. Two different futures.
“Well, Della Ribbon,” the stranger said. “He just made the biggest mistake of his life.” Drawing me close with his fingers on my chin, he kissed me sweetly.
I suppose I should stop there.
I should fade to black and let your imagination fill in the blanks, but I’m feeling extra martyr-ish today, so I’m going to tell you what happened.
It was nice, really. Exactly what I’d asked for.
First, I kissed him back.
I willed my mind to blank and gave everything had into his control. The kiss was innocent to start with, warm lips and soft touches, but then he took my hand and guided me through the stragglers still lolling on couches and drinking against walls and led me upstairs.
My legs shook and the draft from not wearing underwear reminded me exactly what I was about to do.
Part of me screamed not to do this, that I wasn’t ready, while the other stabbed her pitchfork into the dirt of my soul and screeched that it was.