‘Hey,’ Gehna said. ‘How come you’re not curious about the guy?’

‘The guy. What guy?’

Gehna pointed at her stomach.

‘Oh. That guy,’ Eram said. ‘I was. I mean, I am. Curious. But I figured you’d tell me if it was important.’

Was it important? Gehna couldn’t tell. Was it important that the guy was just a boy, a year younger than her at school and as inexperienced when it came to sex?

They had both been on the editorial team of Pulse, the junior college webzine. He was as funny in print as he was shy in person, blushing if Gehna so much as smiled at him. They had spent a few late nights together when the entire team had gone into overdrive trying to meet the deadline for the year-end issue. Gehna hadn’t fallen for him or nursed a secret crush, but she had taken a liking to him. She had liked him well enough to kiss him at the post-publication party. Gehna would have been content with the kissing, but someone had spiked that sweet, shy boy’s punch with a whole lot of white rum. He had made a move he would never have dreamt of making had he been sober. Gehna had felt a soft hand at her waist and an even-softer whisper against her ear. I want you, he had said. Had he grabbed a boob or her butt, Gehna would undoubtedly have pushed him away. Instead, she had taken him outside the party to where the Yam’s car was parked and climbed into the back. The boy, his alcohol-fuelled confidence fading, was squirrelly with nerves by then. He hadn’t known whether to make small talk first, or undress her, or take off his jeans. When he finally tried to lie down on top of her in that cramped backseat, thumping her head into the door in the process, Gehna had taken charge. She had made him sit upright and handed him a condom she found by rummaging through the glovebox. She then quickly slipped off her panties from under her skirt and straddled the boy’s lap. Earlier discussions with the Yam had revealed that this position would allow her to get used to the alien feeling of a penis pushing into her at her own pace, instead of a sudden, possibly painful, thrust that she would have no control over. She had waited impatiently, while the boy figured out how to wear the condom, before gently lowering herself on to him.

In hindsight, after she had seen him try to roll the wrong side of the condom on, it might have been better to insist that he use a fresh one instead of letting him flip it over for a second attempt.

‘I just wanted to get it over with.’ Gehna sighed. ‘Popping your cherry’s built up into this whole big thing, y’know? You don’t want to be the easy girl who does it first, but you also don’t want to be the loser who—’