I am nineteen years old, I write, and I’m a virgin. I’m looking for the right man to claim my virginity, but only if the price is right . . . After all, this cherry is a one-time only deal.
I cringe at the last sentence, not least because it’s something my grandmother once said to me (she’s always been a little more-frank-than-feels-comfortable when it comes to discussing the birds and the bees). But hey, honesty and all that.
Besides, I tell myself as I click through the last steps of setting up my profile, adding a few of the cute selfies I have saved from my social media pages, along with a couple of full body pics of me dancing at a ballroom swing event and playing pool in Erin’s dorm rec hall. It’s not like this is going to actually lead anywhere. This is ridiculous. Those stories about other girls doing this have to be exaggerated. And even if a couple people did manage to get bidders on a site like this, nobody on here is going to notice me. There’s got to be about a zillion hot ladies on here, all ripe for the picking.
I take a second to swap out the pool hall pic for a better angle—one where my ass sticks out at just the right angle as I bend over to take a shot. Hey, I might be a virgin, but I know my assets. Then I hit post, and wait for the load screen to pop up.
Your profile has been created.
“Bonnie?”
I practically jump out of my skin, snapping my laptop shut. But it’s only Erin, yawning and tugging her closet-turned-bedroom door open. She’s still wearing her miniskirt from last night, and a top that looks like it should be consigned to the trash by now, seeing as how it’s more holes than fabric.
She blinks at me through raccoon-y eyes, and I hop off the holey couch. “Coffee?” I offer before she can ask what I was doing, because I can already see her eyes darting from my guilty, nervous expression to the closed laptop case and back.
That does the trick, luckily. “Oh hell yes,” she manages before another yawn overtakes her.
I set the water on to boil and pull out the teapot we’ve been using as a makeshift French press. “Rough night?”
“You don’t know the half of it.” But she’s grinning, even as she winces and eases herself onto the barstool in front of our kitchen counter, the only thing close to a table or eating space in our little 400-square-foot pad. “Remember Chaz?”
“The Art Institute’s only football jock?” I snort. “How could I forget. I’m pretty sure he singlehandedly hit on every single girl at the Halloween party last weekend.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Erin bites her lower lip, but fails to hide the sly grin that’s started to emerge.
“Oh my god,” I groan as I fish through the knee-high fridge for cream. “Tell me you didn’t hook up with him.”
She bats her eyelashes. “Okay. I didn’t hook up with him,” she says, laying hard on the didn’t part of the sentence.
“Erin!”
“What? You’ve got to admit, player or not, he’s a hottie.”
“Sure, he’s ripped and he has that whole . . .” I gesture at my face. “Easter Island thing going for him, but—”
“That whole what?” Erin bursts out laughing.
“You know, like his face is chiseled. And probably everything else, too.” I smirk. “But his head is probably also made of stone.”
“He goes to the Art Institute, it’s not like he’s a complete meathead—”
“You heard him at the party arguing with MaryAnn that having 5% alcohol by volume meant beer was stronger than vodka because the latter is ‘only 40 proof,’ right?” I raise an eyebrow.
“He was joking,” Erin replies, albeit in an uncertain tone. “Besides, who cares if he’s a math whiz? He knows his calculus, if you know what I mean.” She wiggles her butt in the chair, and I groan audibly as I pour the now-boiling water into our not-really-a-coffee-press.
“If you stop punning, I’ll stop making fun of you for banging the class musclebrain.”
“Brains are muscles, Ms. I’m A Nurse,” Erin grumbles. But she accepts the mug I pass her and bows her head. “But fine, no more puns. It’s too early for braining anyway.”
I glance at the clock over our two-burner stovetop. “It’s almost 3pm.”
“Exactly. Early.” She yawns again, and pours herself a sip of coffee, even though it hasn’t finished brewing completely. “Hey, isn’t it Tuesday?” she adds a moment later, and my insides turn to ice.
“Oh, shit.” How could I forget? I leap into action, racing across our living room to my own closet-slash-bedroom. It barely fits my little twin bed, and there’s not so much a closet as there is an open hole in the wall where I stuck a clothes rack I stole from a Macy’s dumpster. I yank my work uniform down—black skirt and black top, low-cut as per the manager’s request, of freaking course.