You believe firsts are important. Firsts are what you will remember later on. Firsts matter more than seconds. So you decide to live your life for those first times. They'll be what you'll hold on to when you think you can't do this anymore.

“Oh, come on,” they told you. They said it like they thought you were a pussy for not doing it. They were looking at you with their heads cocked to the side and a hand on their hip and they were rolling their eyes like you shouldn’t have given it a second thought.

But you were giving it second thoughts. It was more than second thoughts—more like third thoughts or something, if such thing existed.

They’d dragged you to a club even though you were underage—you still didn’t know how you hadn’t gotten carded. It would have ended this nightmare pretty quickly.

“You’re ridiculous,” your best friend said, although she didn’t act like your best mate at the moment, didn’t act like she was supposed to be your favourite person. “It’s nothing—it doesn’t even have to mean anything. I mean, look at all of us—”

You snapped at her, “Yeah, look at all of you. I don’t want to look.”

And you told her the truth. But she just rolled her eyes and didn’t listen to you and then she went to the bar and ordered you a drink—or three drinks—which she persuaded you to down. At some point, you didn’t remember what you were doing or why you were doing it. Everything was fuzzy around you, like nothing could come into focus.

You remember your friend dragging you to some dark corner where sat a few boys. They were older than you were—it was easy to tell—and they smirked at you as you approached.

You don’t remember what your friend said, all you remember is that she held you by the elbow as if she feared you would run away if you could. She was right—you probably would have. She pushed down on your shoulders so that you would sit down next to one of the boys. He smelled like alcohol and like smoke and like mint and also like your brother’s shaving cream, which was a weird thought to have.

He probably told you his name—you don’t remember. But you do remember your friend eyeing you and widening her eyes at you and jerking her head toward the guy sitting next to you. You tried telling her, only using your body, that you didn’t want to do it, that you didn’t see the point in doing it, that you didn’t believe in such thing, that you didn’t want to get rid of it, unlike what she seemed to be convinced of.

But she wouldn’t listen to you. She gave a very big smile—and a very forced smile—to the guys before she pushed herself from the seat and grabbed you by the arm to drag you alongside her. She didn’t let you go until you found the quietest corner you could find—and you still had to shout to be heard by her.

“Why not?” she asked. “They’re hot—and I’m sure he’d be interested. C’mon, don’t be such a pussy. It’s just—”

Your speech was slurred when you spoke, “B-but j-just because he-he’s hot is no reason f-for me to-to . . .”

“Don’t you want to be part of our ‘club’?” she pushed. “Don’t you want to be like all of us?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing,” she shot back, pushing her hair back. “It doesn’t even have to mean anything, okay? Just because you do it doesn’t mean you’re tied to him your whole life.”

She didn’t get it, though. She didn’t understand. In a way, she had a point—just because you were to do it didn’t mean that something else had to happen afterward with the said boy, but that was beside the point. You would always remember it—nobody forgets their first. So you would be tied to that boy your whole life, in a way.

But the real reason why you wouldn’t do anything, why, despite your eagerness to be like all of them, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it—it was because you didn’t want it not to matter. You wanted it to matter. You wanted it to mean something. And if you did something tonight, it wouldn’t mean anything—and you didn’t want that.

“Okay,” your friend said, striking a pose. “What’s the real reason? Afraid you won’t know how to do it properly? Trust me, babe, I’m sure he won’t even mind. Did you take a look at yourself in the mirror? You’re gorgeous. He’d want to sh—”

“Stop it,” you told her, raising your hand to silence her.

You wish things would be easy—easier. You wished someone had asked you out before, so it wouldn’t have to come down to this, to this . . . pitiful event, to your best friend dragging you to some club so you could get on with it and stop moping about it.

“You haven’t even looked at the guy!” your friend argued. “Maybe you’d like him if you did.”

“Fancy,” you corrected. “Maybe I’d fancy him.”

“Like, fancy, whatever.” She brushed you off. “Are you coming, now? I’m doing this for you, remember. I’m doing this for you, so you better be grateful about it and act on it. C’mon! Just do it, and then we can go home and watch this movie you’ve rented for us. Deal?” she offered with a smile.

It was tempting to say yes. You wanted to say yes. Maybe she was right after all. Maybe you were making a big deal out of nothing. You remember how all your crew of friends were gushing about guys and how good kissing felt and how it would make them lose their heads to feel their lips pressed against theirs and their hands tangled in their hair and to see how they’d look at them afterward.

But that’s what you wanted. You wanted them to press their lips against your forehead and put their hands on your neck and rub it and stroke your hair the day afterward as well. You didn’t want anything that wouldn’t matter. Everything in your life you wanted to matter.

Your friend, however, had other ideas in mind. She dragged you alongside her again and stopped by the bar so you could have two more shots. You barely realized you had downed them before you were seated beside the boy again. And this time, you looked up at him. And the minute you looked into his eyes, he ravished your need to wait. He took it and threw it away.

You thought you could hear your other friends cheering a little and pushing you to do it. Never before could you have imagined yourself doing such thing. You kept remembering what your friends had said before they dragged you here—It’s wonderful, You’ll love it, They’ll make you feel like the prettiest girl in the room, Once you kiss one you can only get better for when the man of your life comes to sweep you off your feet, It’s just a kiss, You’ll be like us, Nobody can be nineteen and still haven’t kissed anyone, and so on and so forth.

He smiled at you and you lost your ability to think then. You think you can remember his hand brushing on your thigh and his gorgeous and sparkling eyes.

But most of all, you remember—always will, now—the feeling of his lips against yours, how he pressed them against your mouth, how he teased you with his tongue and his teeth and how his hand gently stroked your neck.

The rest of the night, you can’t remember all the details.