V is for Virgin (2 page)

I knew he wasn’t going to be too thrilled with that confession, but I was still surprised by the look on his face—anger mixed with hurt.

“Why?” he asked, stung. “Do I, like, suck at kissing or something?”

“It’s not the kissing,” I assured him. “I love the kissing. The kissing is very good.
Too
good.”

I shivered as I recalled how I felt not even two minutes ago.

“Then what is it?”

“Well, um…” I gulped. “It’s just that…” Why was this so hard to say? “I’m a… a…I’m a virgin.”

“Oh.” He seemed pleasantly surprised by this. “Really?”

When I nodded, his face softened back into a sincere smile.

I blew out a breath I’d been holding in my lungs without realizing it. It felt good to finally have it out there.

“Baby, why didn’t you just say so?” Zach asked, taking my hand in his again. “You don’t have to be scared. We can take it slow. Or, if you’re not quite ready, there are other things we can do first. We can ease into it.”

“No, Zach, you don’t understand. It’s not that. Well, it is, in the sense that I’m not ready for sex, but it’s not because I’m scared. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting?” He had no clue what I meant at all.

“You know, waiting until I’m married.”

“You’re
what
?” This time he understood, he just couldn’t believe it. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious.”

“Val, nobody waits until they’re married anymore.”

Something in his tone of voice stung. It was so condescending that I felt like a small child.

“It’s not a bad thing, you know,” I said, though I was so nervous that I’m sure I didn’t sound all that convincing.

“But, why? What’s the point?”

My hand once again drifted to my necklace. “I’m not going to end up like my birth mom.”

Zach knew about my birth mom. He’d even seen the letter that came with the necklace, so I thought he would be a little more supportive of my decision. That’s why it hurt so much when he got angry instead.

“Come on, Val, don’t be stupid. There is such a thing as birth control.”

“I’m not being stupid!” I snapped. “I know there’s birth control, but it’s more than that. My birth mom didn’t even know who fathered me. Do you know what that feels like? I promised myself a long time ago that I would never be like her. My first time will mean something to me. It will be special.”

I didn’t realize what that sounded like until a deep-rooted hurt etched it’s way across Zach’s face. “And if we did it, it would mean nothing?” he asked. “I’m not
special
enough for you?”

“No!” I gasped. “Of course you’re special! I didn’t mean that how it sounded. Zach, I love you, I just…I want my first time to be with my husband.”

Zach looked furious, which made it even harder to think. Eventually I just panicked and gave up trying to express how I felt.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not explaining it right, but this is important to me. I’m not changing my mind about it. Can’t you at least try to be a little supportive?”

“We’ve been together for three months!” Zach yelled. I guess I had my answer. “Don’t you think you could have mentioned this sooner?”

“Would it have made that big of a difference?”

“My girlfriend is telling me that we’re never going to have sex? Yeah, I’d say it makes a huge difference. We could have just saved ourselves the trouble from the beginning.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. I figured this wasn’t going to be easy, but I never dreamed he’d react like this.

“Are you
breaking up
with me?”

“Well there’s not much point in staying together anymore, is there?”

Zach mumbled under his breath something about a waste of time, and as great as it felt to realize that the boy I cared so much about only ever wanted to get into my pants, it actually made our breakup easier.

“You’re right,” I agreed, getting to my feet. “This was a
huge
waste of time. You could have told me up front that you were completely shallow. Have a nice life, Zach. We’re finished. Don’t expect me to cry over it.”

I slammed the door on my way out.

That last line was just saving face, of course. I started crying as soon as his house was out of sight, and I cried all the way home.

I gave myself the weekend to be brokenhearted, but I sucked it up come Monday morning. I promised myself I wouldn’t let anyone see me cry.

Dumb move. Crying in front of people would have been much easier to deal with than what I ended up doing instead.
So
much easier.

Zach was a starting forward for the varsity basketball team, and ran hurdles for the track team in the off-season. I was a weak-side hitter on the girl’s volleyball team, and the senior class vice president. We were both really busy, both very social and each extremely tall, so we were kind of an ideal couple.

We weren’t the It couple or anything, but we weren’t hurting in the popularity department either so the rumors of our split spread through the halls of Huntington High like wildfire. Not that anyone would say anything to my face, but the whispers and stares suggested that there were at least a dozen different stories going around as to how it all went down.

I, for one, was not interested in hearing any of the stories any more than I was looking forward to all the pity hugs that go along with being dumped. Luckily, my best friend Cara is in most of my classes and doesn’t have a sympathetic bone in her body. I had no doubt that she would get me through the day somehow.

Just as I’d suspected, when Cara plopped down next to me in homeroom, instead of a sad smile, she greeted me with a scowl. “We are
so
fighting right now.”

Thank the stars for best friends. “What did I do this time?” I asked.

“You had
The Talk
without consulting me!”

“So the rumors are pretty close to the truth then?”

“Oh, no.” Cara laughed. “They’re not even close. But I know you. I told you not to have The Talk until we’d properly planned it out.”

“I had to. His parents were out of town. It was either have The Talk or have… something else.”

Cara eyed me skeptically for a minute. I could see the exact moment that she forgave me because a new frown replaced her old one. “You should have called me.”

“Sorry, I was a little busy being heartbroken.”

“My best friend gets hard-core dumped and I had to find it out from my eighth grade brother?”

“Your brother knows?”

“Hello! Did you hear what I just said? Middle schoolers knew before me! Do you see how this is a problem?”

“I’m sorry, Cara,” I said, trying not to let a smile break through my mock sympathy. “That must have been so awful for you.”

Cara was still serious. “It was.”

I held out my arms, let Cara fall into them, and gave her the biggest pity hug ever. “You must be having a really bad day,” I teased.

“The worst.” Cara sniffled. Did I mention she’s the star of the drama club?

The next thing I knew, there were tears in my eyes and the fake pity hug turned into a real hug with nothing pitiful about it. “Thanks, Cara.”

“You’re my girl, V. I’d move mountains for ya.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, no, I guess not that. But I will definitely participate in any plans for revenge you might have—legal or otherwise. I’ve already got a couple of good ideas.”

I couldn’t help smiling anymore. “We’ll make it the main topic in today’s counsel meeting,” I offered.

“What are we talking about in counsel?” asked a voice behind us.

Cara and I both cringed from the high-pitched squeak of Olivia Lewis. Actually, that may have more to do with the fact that she’s the most awful person on the planet, rather than the actual sound of her voice. But still. When Olivia speaks to you it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

“Oh, nothing, Olivia,” I said, failing to muster up a smile. “We were just joking.”

“I wasn’t joking. We’re going to take him down,” Cara insisted, ignoring Olivia.

Cara’s one of the only people in the school brave enough to do that. Nobody really likes Olivia, but everyone’s fake nice to her, including me, because she’s beautiful, rich, popular, and, most importantly, a mega witch. We’re talking Spawn of Satan evil. You do not want to get on her bad side.

“Oh, that’s right!” Olivia enveloped me in my first official pity hug. “I heard about your breakup on Friday night.”

“Friday night?” This was kind of shocking, considering I didn’t get dumped until Friday night.

“Zach sort of told everyone at Will’s party what happened,” Olivia explained when she saw the look on my face.

“Zach went to Will’s Friday night?”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Cara spat. “The jerk dumps you and goes out to party while you’re at home bawling your eyes out?”

I elbowed Cara in the ribs for that one. Hard. Not that I don’t love how loyal she is, but did she have to tell Olivia I was
bawling my eyes out
? Did she have to use the word
dumped
? As it was, Olivia was frothing at the mouth to tell me the gossip to my face. She didn’t need to get any more pleasure from my pain.

“You don’t have to be ashamed about crying, Val.” Olivia’s sickeningly sweet voice nauseated me. “He should have been more sensitive about it. Yeah, being lousy in bed is serious, but to dump you right after making love because he wasn’t satisfied? That’s just mean.”

Cardiac arrest. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to my heart right then. That, and, you know, it got ripped out and stomped on by Olivia Lewis and her Prada stilettos. Well, anyway, what was left of it after Zach dumped me.

Cara was ready to stab Olivia with her fancy heels, and it was her lunge that snapped me back to the present. I grabbed Cara’s arm before she could do any damage, and found my voice. “What exactly did Zach say?”

“It’s not all bad,” Olivia promised. “At least now you know. And, maybe, if you can find someone willing to go out with you still, they can totally show you some things. Then you’ll get better. In fact, maybe you should thank Zach.”

My eyes filled with tears, which is apparently what Olivia was waiting for, because she patted my arm and walked away. But not before giving me one last tip. “You should try reading
Cosmo,
Val
.
It’s like the bible of sex.”

“I wonder if she’s going to use that as her yearbook quote,” Cara grumbled when Olivia was gone. “You know, one of these days I’m going to take one of those expensive shoes and shove it up her—”

“Cara.”

“I’m just saying….”

Cara gave me one more hug and then class started, thus beginning the worst day I’ve ever had.

You know that saying
sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me
? What a crock! I would have gladly taken the beating over all the words thrown at me that day. People laughed. People pointed and whispered—some didn’t bother to whisper—and I think I got pity hugs from every girl in the senior class.

That was just the first half of the day. The afternoon was worse. Much worse. Of course, I may have brought that on myself.

My schedule was as such that I didn’t have to see Zach until lunch. I thought I was strong enough to handle it, but when I walked in the cafeteria and the entire room went silent, I froze.

“Come on, V,” Cara whispered, giving me a gentle nudge toward the lunch line. “Don’t lose it now. Not in front of everyone. You know that’s what they’re waiting for.”

I looked around at the sea of faces and realized that the cafeteria was even more crowded than usual. Even the band geeks and the choir nerds that always ate lunch in the music room were huddled in a corner watching me. Cara was right. They were all waiting for me to crack.