‘Truth,’ I said when it was my turn to suffer. Hattie, who was leading the game, grinned evilly and selected a card from the ‘truth’ pack. There must have been about twelve of us, all sitting on the living-room carpet. Pip and Jason were sitting on either side of me. Tommy was opposite. I didn’t really want to look at him.
Pip handed me a crisp from the bowl for support. I gratefully accepted it and stuffed it in my mouth.
‘What’s the worst romantic or sexual experience you’ve had with a guy?’
A couple of people chorused ‘Oooh’， one guy whistled, and one girl just laughed, one short burst of ‘ha’ that I found more embarrassing than anything else.
Thankfully, I wouldn’t see most of the people at this party ever again in my life. Maybe on Instagram, but I muted most people’s Instagram stories and I already had a mental list of all the people I was going to unfollow after A-level results day. There were a few people at school that me, Pip and Jason got along with. People we’d sit with at lunch. A little gang of theatre kids we’d hang out with in school play season. But I knew already that we would all go to uni and forget about each other.
Pip, Jason and I would not forget about each other, though, because we were all going to Durham University in October, as long as we got the grades for it. This actually hadn’t been planned – we were a trio of high-achieving nerds, but Jason had failed to get into Oxford, Pip had failed to get into King’s College London, and I was the only one for whom Durham was actually my first choice.
I thanked the universe every day that it’d worked out like that. I needed Pip and Jason. They were my lifeline.
‘That’s too far,’ Jason immediately interjected. ‘Come on. That’s way too personal.’
There were cries of outrage from the rest of our peers. People didn’t give a shit about it being personal.
‘You must have something,’ drawled Hattie in her super-posh accent. ‘Like everyone’s had a terrible kiss or something by now.’
I was very uncomfortable about being the centre of attention, so I thought it’d be better to just get this over with.
‘I’ve never kissed anyone,’ I announced.
When I said it, I didn’t think I was saying anything particularly odd. Like, this wasn’t a teen movie. Virgin-shaming wasn’t really a thing. Everyone knew that people did these things when they were ready, right?
But then the reactions began.
There were audible gasps. A pitying ‘aww’。 Some of the guys started laughing and one of them coughed the word ‘virgin’。
Hattie brought her hand to her mouth and said, horrified, ‘Oh my God, seriously?’
My face started to burn. I wasn’t weird. There were lots of eighteen-year-olds who hadn’t kissed anyone yet.
I glanced at Tommy, and even he was looking at me with sympathy, like I was a little kid – like I was a child who didn’t understand anything.
‘It’s not that unusual,’ I said.
Hattie pressed her hand to her heart and stuck out her bottom lip. ‘You’re so pure.’
A guy leant over and said, ‘You’re, like, eighteen, right?’
I nodded at him, and he said, ‘Oh my God,’ like I was disgusting or something.
Was I disgusting? Was I ugly and shy and disgusting and that was why I hadn’t kissed anyone yet?
My eyes were starting to water.
‘All right,’ Pip snapped. ‘You can all stop being dickheads right the fuck now.’
‘It is weird, though,’ said a guy I knew from my English class. He was addressing Pip. ‘You’ve got to admit it’s weird to have got to eighteen without having kissed anyone.’
‘That’s rich coming from a guy who admitted to having a wank over the princesses in Shrek 3.’
There were cackles of glee from the group, momentarily distracted from laughing at me. While Pip continued to berate our classmates, Jason very subtly took hold of my hand and pulled me up and out of the room.
Once we were in the corridor, I was about to cry so I said I needed to pee and went upstairs to find the loo. When I reached the bathroom, I examined my reflection, rubbing under my eyes so my mascara didn’t smudge. I swallowed the tears down. I wasn’t going to cry. I did not cry in front of anybody.
I hadn’t realised.
I hadn’t realised how behind I was. I’d spent so much time thinking that my one true love would just show up one day. I had been wrong. I had been so, so wrong. Everyone else was growing up, kissing, having sex, falling in love, and I was just …