How to Be a Virgin

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When I pulled curbside of Noah's driveway, I noticed the curly haired boy was sitting on the porch steps right outside the front door with his head buried in his hands and his brown curls falling over his forehead. He seemed to be in deep thought and I was semi-reluctant to disturb him, but I did so anyway by pressing my car horn to alert him of my presence. He looked up immediately, eyes wide in shock, and jumped to his feet, practically sprinting across the lawn so fast that he tripped over a sprinkler nozzle and fell face-first onto the grass.

I watched the scenario unfold before my eyes, miserably trying to hold in my laughter. It was when Noah tried to recover from his embarrassing fall that I burst into full-on hysteria, eventually having to clutch onto my stomach to soothe the pain that was soaring through my insides. Soon enough, the boy retreated to the passenger side and slumped in his seat, a scowl prominent on his face. "It's not funny," he spat.

"Oh, God. It's so funny! Were you that eager to see me?"

Noah sunk further into his heat with the apples of his cheeks growing red with embarrassment. His eyes fell to the mud stains on his t-shirt and he frowned.

The laughter continued as I pulled out of my parking space. With my eyes fixed on the road, I kept one hand on the wheel and reached into the backseat to search for my soccer jersey with the other. Once I finally grabbed a hold of it, I tossed it onto his lap. He looked at me in confusion. "You can wear that."

"Why would I want to wear this?"

I shrugged. "I mean, you could just stay with a mud stain on your shirt if you're okay with that."

Noah's mouth fell open, almost like he had just realized the purpose behind my actions. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him pull the jersey over his head and tug it down to cover his current shirt. "Wow, it's really big."

I smirked. "That's what she said." Glancing over at Noah to see if he had caught onto my joke, I noticed that he was staring back at me with just as much, if not more, confusion. "Never mind," I dismissed with a sigh.

He didn't say much else after that. In fact, for most of the drive, he just nervously played with his fingers and absentmindedly peered out of the window in hopes of finding something interesting in all the trees we zoomed past. Even when we arrived at our destination—the school's soccer field—he didn't speak to me. Every time I thought about making conversation, I would always think better of it because I didn't want to interrupt his thoughts—I just wanted to know what he was thinking about and why it was making him look upset.

Shit, it was me, wasn't it? He was still mad at me.

"Hey, Noah," I cleared my throat to grab his attention. "I'm really sorry about what I said about your parents and I'm really sorry for pushing you into doing that stuff last night. I should've respected your boundaries."

He shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded, refusing to look at me. "I forgive you." I was seconds away from asking what was seeing, but he changed the subject by asking, "Are we allowed to be here? Why do you keep taking me to places where we'll get in trouble?"

"We won't get in trouble, trust me." I plopped down onto the fresh turf and waited for Noah to do the same before I unzipped my bag to retrieve all the food I had prepared for us. "The coach gave us all a key just in case we wanted to shoot around on the weekends."

He nodded. "Cool."

There was an awful feeling rising in the pit of my stomach with every curt response that Noah gave me. He wasn't really the talkative type, but I expected him to, at least, call me that stupid name he always called me. He didn't even have the strength to do that of all things. There had to be something wrong.