A few more minutes. She wiped her tears, using the sleeve of her blouse, and returning to rest against my shoulder.
“I’m sure that you don’t want to hear all of the details.”
“Not particularly.”
“A week after I broke up with you, I had to tell my mom. Well, let me just say that my mom was beside herself. Didn’t understand, how you and I went on for so long and nothing like that had happened, even when I came back from visiting you. So she blamed the guy. That it was his fault that I got pregnant.
“We didn’t know what to do, any of us. At that point, I hadn’t told him. I couldn’t do the adoption thing. Abortion was out of the question. Worse case, I would live at home, with my parents, and my mom, dad, and I would raise the baby together. In the end, John stepped forward, and asked me to marry him.
“Did I love him, then? I don’t know. Do I love him, now? Let me just say, that he’s good to me and my son, and leave it at that.”
Pausing, “So, why did I feel the need to tell you all of this? I don’t know. Besides what I told you before, maybe to ease my conscience about what I did to you… what I did to us.”
Michelle took a deep sigh. Her head still resting on my shoulder. Her hand had unconsciously moved back to my thigh. I still held her in my embrace. I don’t know why, I just held her.
“We were supposed to be each other’s ‘first’. I was picturing the same things as you were. You finishing school. Get a nice job. Raise a family. But, I ruined all of that.”
“Michelle. I don’t know what to say. This is a lot to take in. It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when I told my mom that I would get her vitamins for her.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t something that I expected when I opened the store earlier today either.”
I could hear a bit of sad humor in her voice.
“So, what do you want to do?” I quietly asked, as I continued to hold her.
Michelle was quiet for a bit. Her head still comfortably on my shoulder.
“I think we have three choices. You leave and we each go on with our lives, like today never happened. I don’t know if I can do that. Today did happen. I just shared something very personal with you. I could tell that you felt my pain. That was very comforting. Thank you.
“We could become friends, again. But, that would be difficult for me to explain to a lot of people, and uncomfortable for a lot of people. And I don’t know if we could just be friends. I think that we would each want more, and that would not be good, for either of us.”
She cuddled closer, and brought her face up to mine. Our eyes and lips only inches apart, “Or… or you… we… could make love to each other, right here and now.”
“Michelle…,” my voice made a hushed ‘questioning’ sound.
She put her fingers to my lips, and pulled back a bit. Our faces inches away from each other’s. I felt her soft fingers, again, brush against my cheek. It was a soft and soothing touch.
“Bill, I’m not looking to start an affair. That would not be good for either of us. While you can’t be my first, like we had wished, if I can be your first, it would mean a lot to me. And maybe that’s being selfish on my part, and it’s not my way of saying ‘I’m sorry. To forgive me, for what I did to us’. But, if you don’t want to. I understand. But, then again, maybe I won’t be your first.”
“Yes, Michelle, you would be my first.”
“But, maybe you don’t want your first time to be with me. Maybe you want your first time to be with someone who you truly love, and who loves you and can love you back, in the way that you deserve. You’ll always remember your first time, of being that intimate with someone. I know that some of my girlfriends wished they could forget their firsts. All I can, and will say, is that mine was… kind of OK. Nothing like what I had dreamed it would be like, with us.”