I shrugged my shoulders. “Your free spirit, your ability to pick a job path you’re passionate about, regardless of the amount of money it may or not make.”
“You could do that, too,” she said. “ Literally anyone can do that. I’m more jealous of people like you for being able to be disciplined about your education and ensure you have a secure future ahead of you. I'd love to be someone who could focus on my goals like that, but… I don’t know. I just can’t make myself care about security. I wish I could, but every time I feel inhibited by life, I just rebel.”
“Well, then, it seems like we could both get something out of spending time together, huh?”
She smiled. “I guess so.”
We continued to talk as we ate, dragging the meal on over the course of the next hour. She was so damn easy to talk to. And when we’d obviously finished all our food, I found it very hard to say goodbye.
“I guess we should probably get up and free up the table, huh?” Kaitlyn asked. “It seems like it's getting a fair amount busier in here."
“Yeah… yeah, you're right. We should probably go. I was just having so much fun talking to you.”
She smiled. “Me too. This has been nice. Don’t worry, I don’t want it to end either, I just don’t want to be rude.”
I was almost never bold in this way, but I decided to take a chance for once. “Maybe it doesn’t have to end, then?” I asked her.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean… you can come back to my place?" God, I couldn’t believe the words were even coming out of my mouth. I had never asked a girl that wasn’t a friend to come back to my place before! This was all new territory for me. “You don’t have to, of course, just if you're not busy…"
“I’m not!” she said quickly. “Yeah… yeah, let’s do that.”
I had butterflies in my stomach.
7
Kaitlyn
I’d been wanting to have a mindless hook-up ever since I’d broken up with Julia. You know what they say, to get over one person, get under another. It was usually how I dealt with my sadness when a relationship ended. At least temporarily.
But hooking up with Emily would be anything but mindless, and I was starting to doubt that it was a good decision.
Not that I didn’t like her or anything, I absolutely did! Which really was part of the problem.
Because I liked her, I found myself worrying about her. I was the first girl she’d ever had a crush on, and we’d just hung out for the first time ever, if you didn’t count the bar. Should I really be going back to her place?
I didn’t want to be the girl that took her virginity. At least not yet, not like this. I wanted it to be special and sweet because… I liked her. I actually really, really liked her. I couldn’t mindlessly hook up with her. I couldn’t have sex and not feel romantic about it.
Then again, maybe she wasn’t a virgin at all. She’d said that I was the first person she’d had a crush on, but that didn’t mean she’d never had a hook-up before. It was possible she’d had sex.
No, I just felt like that wasn’t true. That was wishful thinking. Just the way she’d talked about not liking other people before… she was inexperienced, I knew it.
It truly didn’t bother me. I didn’t care at all. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t rushing into anything with me. And I didn’t want her to feel like she had to do anything with me, just because I was experienced. I could wait for however long. It didn’t matter to me.
Maybe she didn’t want to wait. I mean, if I was her age and still a virgin, then I finally found a girl I was attracted to, wouldn’t I jump on the chance to lose my virginity immediately?
Or maybe all of this overthinking was pointless, because really she had no plans to sleep with me at all, and she was just inviting me over as a friend. That was always a definite possibility that I was refusing to consider.
We’d been driving quietly for a few minutes, and she’d said her place wasn’t far away. I decided to venture outside my head and stop over-analyzing the situation. We’d been very honest up until this point, and I didn’t want to be the one to break that streak. If I had questions about what she wanted, I would just ask her. I liked the dynamic we had played out so far.
But not yet, not when we were still in the car. It was too awkward of a conversation to have in advance. What was I supposed to say? Are you hoping to sleep with me once we arrive at your apartment? Yeah, I didn’t think so. I had to let things progress naturally, to a degree.
“Here we are!” she said eagerly as she pulled into a carport. “Sorry if it’s a little messy. Between my studying and Abby’s stress about her car, things haven’t been getting done like they should be.”
“Oh, trust me, it’s no problem,” I told h
er. “I’m a total slob. By the way, is your roommate home?”