Gloria had never experienced anything quite like it before.
She'd had a few ideas of what to expect, of course. Virgin or not, you didn't get to nineteen without having some idea about sex. Over time, she'd heard many of her friends give detailed - occasionally too detailed - accounts of their First Time(tm). She'd heard that no other time would be quite as good, she'd heard that it would be awful and she'd only really enjoy it later. None ofthe stories, however, gave the impression that she'd be as she was now - confused.
Yes, that was it - confused. She repeated it aloud.
Skye slid back up the bed towards her, a slightly puzzled expression on her own face.'Who's confused, cariad?' she asked. Puzzled or otherwise, she wasn't going to forsake a Welsh term of endearment.
'Me,' returned Gloria.
'Hmmm,' hummed Skye. 'I was just going to ask you what you had thought of it.' She toyed with Gloria's hair.
Gloria let out a deep breath. 'I don't really know,' she admitted. Well - not admitted, really. If she couldn't say that to her own girlfriend, who could she say it to? 'It's just...well, don't take this wrongly...'
Skye smiled. 'Better I know now.'
'It just...how can I put it...uh...'
Skye decided to put her out of her misery. '...wasn't anything like you'd heard?' she trilled.
Gloria nodded. 'That's it. I mean...I enjoyed you. I liked being so close to you, but the actual physical part...didn't seem so important to me.' She turned over slightly so she could face Skye properly. 'Is that right?' She couldn't understand why everyone made so much fuss about theactual use of bodies if that wasn't the most important thing.
Skye let out a breath of her own. 'You're worried that the way you feel about sex isn't the same as everyone else.'
'Not how I'd want to put it, but...you're right.'
Skye let out one of her shrill little giggles and flopped back on the bed. 'Then that's completely normal!' she let out, about twice as loud as anything said until this point. 'Ohh, welcome to the human race, cariad.'
Gloria smiled and laughed herself. Hearing Skye say it like that, all her uncertain feelings dropped away. 'Was that how you felt?' she asked.
'My First Time?' Skye mused. 'Would you believe me if I said I didn't remember?'
'Get off!' Gloria mock-punched her. She had to be joking. No matter how she felt about it, Gloria didn't expect that she'd forget doing that for the first time in a hurry.
'Hey, it was when I was fifteen...' Skye tried to excuse herself.
'That was only four years ago.'
'Four years is a long time for a fifteen-year-old!' Skye laughed. 'No...what happened was,when I was sixteen or so, I went into a stupid phase...I had sex with a few more people than I would've liked to...Somewhere along the way, I ended up getting confused...it wasn't until much later that I realised that the time I thought was my First Time wasn't really it.' She looked at the expression on Gloria's face, remembering that she was about as comfortable with the notion of casual sex as a frog was with the notion of getting steamrollered. 'Don't worry, cariad,' she reassured her. 'I've long grown out of that.'
Gloria was still slightly incredulous over the first part of the story. 'You honestly don't remember?'
'Please try to remember how focussed I am most of the rest of my life,' reminded the woman who habitually forgot where she lived.
Gloria nodded vaguely. Come what may or may not, she would remember...