Within no time, you had entirely blocked out your surroundings. Luke’s enormous body flying back and forward on the tiny swing set was being ignored by your mind and the twirps of birds in nearby trees and rustling of bushes against one another in the wind was absent from your thoughts. The text in front of you had you entranced. It was a critical scene. The main characters were in love, you knew it. But, oh God, the dramatic irony. Neither of them knew it themselves. And here they were, the two of them, about to do the do. And they probably still won’t realise. The boy was pushing her softly over to the bed, their fingers intertwined
“and her heart beating a mile a minute. There was nothing that he could think about except for getting her clothes off. Are you reading a sex scene?”
Your mind snapped into reality at the question. A broad figure had somehow slumped down right next to you on the seat, his shoulders almost touching your own, without you realising. With his eyes focused on the open white pages in your hand, he’d begun reading the text out loud and you must’ve passed it off as you reading it in your own head.
-
Earlier, it had been somebody’s niece’s, uncle’s, step-brother’s, grandmother’s birthday, and despite the array of coloured balloons floated up to the roof, strewn streamers dangling from lights and booming laughter bouncing off walls, you and Luke had sat still and emotionless. Swarms of adults buzzed and flew around the two of you, some sitting down on nearby seats because their legs couldn’t carry them any further, and others scattering between bodies to reach and engulf someone they hadn’t seen in months. But you were both idle icebergs in the raging sea.
Luke, sitting opposite you at the table, lifted his head in a snap movement, gaining your attention.
“Wanna go?” he’d asked loudly above the noisy room, tilting his neck quickly to the side and raising his eyebrows so they pointed towards the front door of the house.
“Thought you’d never ask,” you laughed, using your legs to push back your chair as you grabbed your bag and stood up.
It wasn’t the first time that the two of you had needed to escape such a scenario. More often than not, you were both dragged and dumped in the same scene where you were the only people under the age of 30. Believe it or not, Luke was not even a relative of yours. Your immediate families had somehow just managed to conglomerate after years or being neighbours, and then the rest was history. ‘Oh, we’re having a gathering? May as well invite the neighbours over!’ ‘Oh, we’re having roast for dinner? May as well invite the neighbours over!’ ‘Oh, it’s 4pm? May as well invite the neighbours over!’ Luckily, God planted Luke in your next door house so that you weren’t alone when your mother forced you to go to the neighbouring house for coffee and a biscuit.
Being trapped in so many boring circumstances with him inevitably led to both of you being quite close friends.
Of course, it wasn’t just these neighbour/family bonding times when you saw each other. In your suburban area, there was only one reasonable high school in near proximity, and, yes, you guessed it, you both attended there. Although you didn’t spend your entire school days attached to the hip, you were both happy to walk to school together, partner up in the lab, and snigger when one another did something stupid in class. Everyone knew you were friends. Good friends. But people considered it a brother/sister relationship. You stuck out for one another, relied on each other, could have free flowing conversation, knew everything about one another. Yet, there was no attraction. It wasn’t a situation of being best friends with intense crushes. Just mutual appreciation of having each other’s presence.
“Where are we going?” you inquired, stepping outside onto the porch, Luke closing the door shut behind you.
Cool air brushed across your skin, welcoming you to the spacious world outside the crowded house. Manoeuvring around you so that he could direct the way along the path on the side of the street, he sighed, “anywhere but in there.”
Side by side, you wandered in nice silence down the road. All that could be heard was the clip clop of your shoes on the cement and the chug of sole cars that drove past. Luke was one step ahead of you, and though he could be taking you anywhere, you had a feeling that the finish location would be the small, and always empty, parkland at the end of the street.
Turned out that you weren’t wrong. Like had happened before, Luke immediately went straight to the playground and jumped onto one of the swings. Pulling his phone from his back pocket, he tapped on the screen with one thumb and used his feet to kick off the ground. You went directly to the green park bench, dumping your bag next to you and slipping out the novel you were near to completing. But as you got lost in the scene, you’d missed him waltz over and peer at your book.
-
After a moment’s delay, you slammed the book shut, stammering, “what, no.”
“Pfft,” he smiled, “yeah right. That’s what it looked like.”
Blinking twice, you sought high and low for a response, your cheeks turning red, “well. There’s nothing wrong if I was.”
“I didn’t say there was something wrong with it,” Luke was now grinning, finding your dumbfounded expression humorous, “Trying to get some tips ‘cause you’re shit in bed?”
“Luke!” you screeched, hitting his bicep with your elbow, laughter now evident in your words, “shut up!”
There was no denying that you’d had sex before. Once. And a whole year ago.
It had been at an end-of-term party and although neither of you can use being munted as an excuse, you can’t ignore that you were both somewhat intoxicated. Originally, you were in the backyard with a group of at least 10 friends, but slowly they were losing interest in the discussions occurring and drifted away from the gathering, going back into the house to let loose on the dance floor. In no time, it was just you and Luke who had been ditched by everyone else. And neither of you can ever recall how, but the topic of virginity came alive, and somewhere between the alcohol levels increasing in your blood systems and the general ecstasy of having completed another term of schooling, the decision was made that it would be better to get rid of your virginities to each other and get it over and done with, instead of accidentally handing it to someone that may not treat it with respect.
Was it uncoordinated? Yes. Was it full of giggles and laughter rather than moans and kisses? Yes. Was it something that tore apart your friendship? No.
The event was barely even regretted by either of you. Despite the awkward question the morning after of, ‘did we really do that?’ there was no time when you had honestly felt awful about the ordeal. It was just something that happened in a fuzzy blur, and thankfully, the reasonably carefree attitude that you both held in the presence of one another helped it to become something that could be joked over, rather than being a stabbing knife of shame whenever it was mentioned.
“You know I was reading some article-“
“Excuse me!” you bellowed, “Luke Hemmings reading? This mustn’t be a real story you’re about to tell me.”
“Piss offfff,” he droned, pushing himself back onto the bench so that his spine was against the arm rest, and kicking his legs onto your lap, “I was reading an article thing and it was about, like, weird shit that people do in bed. And then there was this massive list, and for every letter of the alphabet, it had a different sex kink.”
“Mmmm,” you urged for him to get to the point of his story.
“And yeah,” he uttered, “some of them actually seemed kind of hot.”
There was a fragment of silence, before you stated, “so go get a girlfriend and try them all out.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend”
“Hence me saying ‘go get’ one”
“Harder than it seems,” he groaned before joking, “You’d think someone as brilliant as me would be able to find a girl at the snap of a finger.”
Rolling your eyes, you began to comeback, but he was too quick, “Anyway, I was thinking you could be my test dummy.”
“Um,” you retorted, surprised he’d even think of that, “can I just remind you that the last time we tried anything sexual, the most pleasure either of us got was laughing at how gawky we both are.”
“C’monnn,” he persuaded, “it’ll be good for both of us.”
Luke’s argument was strong. He used good reasons, such as getting sexual practice before both of you get into a relationship, and learning what you do and don’t like. His main tactic of convincing you was reiterating that whether this worked out horribly or not, it wasn’t like either of you had anything to lose. You already knew that trying out something different had no affect on your friendship.
“Okay,” you concluded, “how are we going to do this then?”
“Right,” he started, a grin now causing his eyes to squint, “well, since it’s in like alphabetical order, we should just do, like, a kink a day. And I think there was, like, some days missing, so we should have every kink done in under a month.”
“Shit,” you mumbled, “we’re actually going to do this?”
He laughed, “fuck yeah. If you want to, we can start tonight.”
A few heavy breaths later, you replied, “okay. Tonight we start.”