Virgin (The Henchmen MC 16)

And then she gave it to me.EIGHTFreddieI wish I could say I wasn't your typical teenage girl.

There were girls like that in my school, unique for their own reasons. The compulsive overachievers, the ones who were in every single club in school to increase their chances of getting into the best colleges. Then there were the girls who, even at seventeen or eighteen, had decided to dedicate their lives to causes, who always had flyers or pamphlets they were handing out, spent their weekends at marches or rallies. Hell, there were even just the punk or goth girls with their dark makeup and 'fuck society' mindsets that set them apart.

I was not one of those girls.

In hindsight, I wished I had fallen into one of those crowds. Even if I very much doubted I would look good with thick black eye makeup or spiky, colored hair, and I didn't think I had strong enough arms to carry picket signs all the time.

But being a typical girl certainly didn't work out so well for me.

I didn't know at the time, though, that being average would lead me where it did.

All I knew was Thad and Colson had worked almost nonstop after they graduated the year before, got themselves a clunker of a car, then moved out of our aunt's house.

Left behind was a bit of a silly way to feel, I guess, since of course they needed to grow up and start their lives. But it was how I felt. My aunt's focus, usually cast in three directions, was suddenly squarely on me. All the chores that used to be split three ways were now my responsibility.

And I had no one. No brothers to sit with in those precious hours between when school let out and when our aunt came home to sit and commiserate, to make plans for the future.

I was, for the first time in my life, lonely.

Loneliness and a teenaged girl usually meant one thing.

Boys.

I wasn't allowed to date. It hadn't been a double standard in the household. Thad and Colson weren't allowed to date either. We'd heard the lecture a thousand times over the years.

There will be plenty of time to date after college and after you get your careers started.

We'd once even - maybe cruelly, I would think in hindsight - wondered if she had ever had sex. We'd never seen her spend the night out or have a man over.

It wasn't even that her advice was bad, to try to teach us to prioritize education and a secure future over dating.

The problem was, it was simply unrealistic. I mean, even our schools told us that abstinence-only approaches to dating and sex generally didn't work. Hormones were strong, primal drives. People as a whole wanted connections. Especially those with the opposite sex.

Maybe if my aunt had been more lax about it, had allowed me to date around, maybe I would have gotten a taste of it and decided it wasn't what I wanted, not really. I just wanted companionship, someone to talk to, share my time with, share my stories with.

What I got instead of some casual dates with a few different guys was Tanner.

"Tanner," Virgin cut in, brows raised, looking amused.

"Yeah," I admitted, wishing I was able to smile about it.

"Alright," he said, letting it slide even though there was a smile in his voice.

Tanner was everything I hadn't been at the time. Popular, outgoing, a little edgy. And older. Only by two years, but older was older, and when he used to come to pick me up after class, all the girls would tell me how envious they were.

Everywhere we went, he seemed to know everyone, seemed important. And as a girl who had felt altogether invisible and wholly unimportant, I thrived on being attached to that attention, on the attention it got me just for being at his side.

And Tanner was everything a lonely, needy girl could ask for. He made time for me. He called me pretty. He told me I was smart and interesting and that he couldn't wait until I finished school so I could move out with him.

To this day, I still wasn't sure how honest any of that was. If he, at the time, meant those words or not.

"Why was he so popular?" Virgin asked, dragging me back to the present.

"Hm?"

"He wasn't in school. Why was he so popular? Most people grow past that shit once they leave high school."

That was true.

But at the time, I hadn't given the idea much thought.

I never thought to ask. I was just charmed by it, by him, by our potential as a couple. Because, despite my aunt's best efforts to try to turn me into some girl hellbent on being a career woman, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, if I was going to college. So hearing from Tanner that he would take care of me, help me get on my feet, let me take time to figure out my future gave me a sense of security.