Prologue
1829 Words
“Repeat after me” Leilani says, holding my shoulders firmly.
I nod vehemently, my eyes set with a determination I have never possessed.
That’s right, I can do this. I can certainly do this!
“I am going to lose my virginity tonight” she starts.
Hmm, or not.
I gulp and my gaze lose its firmness, my bravado lucidly faltering.
God, this was so hard. This was way too hard.
It was just a silly fold of mucous membrane!
Why the hell was I so scared? I was Twenty six years old and it was so embarrassing to admit but well, I was.
A virgin.
A violent shudder rolls down my spine as I repeat the word over and over again in my head until I find myself repressing the urge to throw up.
Virgin, virgin, virgin!
Maybe that was why Victor broke up with me and moved on with my frenemy. Maybe that was why-
“Come on!” Leilani cries out, shaking my shoulders frantically.
“I’m trying!” I shout, clearly frustrated and panicked.
“You’re not!” My best friend spits and scowls at me, her precious prudish friend.
“I am! Let’s do this again,” I fist my hands and look into my friend’s similar brown eyes.
“Alright, you got this hermosa amiga. Remember how good this dress looks on you as you repeat after me” Leilani frowns.
I glance back at the mirror behind me and admire the red dress I am wearing. It’s a short body con dress that stops at my mid thigh.
A provocative slit rises from my hip and dangling strings of sequin hang from it. The beautiful design makes a subtle curtain effect for the flesh of my exposed thigh.
With the zero to negative amount of confidence I have, I would never wear this but considering I am going to a high end club that requires masks, I relent and lose all sight of my common sense.
This is my plan.
Meet a handsome stranger, have a one night stand and forget I had ever been a virgin.
Twenty six years on God’s green earth and the only constant in my f.ucking life is my virginity. Obviously, I’m growing tired of it. That and my friends’ relentless teasing.
They all have active and amazing s.ex lives while All I can boast about are my loser boyfriends.
Loser, cheating boyfriends.
“Yes,” I turn back to my beautiful friend.
“Repeat the words. You have to manifest it for it to happen!” Leilani warns.
I roll my eyes at her chatter, clearly disbelieving her Manifestation nonsense.
Leilani is obsessed with Astrological signs, zodiac, crystals and some things that were borderline fetish to me.
She claims I haven’t lost my virginity and never had a stable relationship because the lines on my palm indicate a witch had tampered with my destiny.
Of course, my atheist ass believed that was bullshit.
The only thing she was right about was Victor being a dishonest Pisces that would cheat on me, the passionate Leo.
‘Leo and Pisces aren’t compatible’, she’d say over and over.
It took me watching his sleazy d.ick screw into Victoria before I finally mustered up the courage to dump him.
“Ow!” I cry out as she pinches my arm.
“Focus Halima! If you don’t do it tonight, you’re never going to clear out those cobwebs in your Vahjayjay.” She clicks her sassy tongue, staring at my crotch in disapproval.
I want to dispute any claims of cobwebs in my lady parts but I let her off with a simple grumble.
“I am going to lose my virginity tonight” her warm eyes glow with a sliver of hope as she holds my shoulders.
“I am going to lose my virginity tonight” I repeat, nodding my head.
“If he has big d.ick energy then he can have my big ass”
“Do you have to be so crass?” I wrinkle my nose.
But one menacing glare from her has me holding my temper.
I wonder how Leilani and I are friends when we have such contrasting attributes.
“If he has big d.ick energy then he can have my big ass” -even though it’s not.
“And he has to be hot. Very hot. Sticky wet hot. Drool s.exual appeal. Be a walking aphrodisiac. Have clean-“
“I get it,” I cut her off, rolling my eyes.
“Repeat after me biatch!”
“You offloaded a lot on me,” I scowl.
“It’s going to be hard to cram and repeat that. I’ll show him to you when I decide he’s the one for me. Is that fine?”
Leilani’s mouth twists in an ugly pinch that makes her look like The Grinch That Stole Christmas.
However, I find myself suppressing a cry of victory when she finally nods her head and lets go of my shoulders.
I pick my bag up and strap the shining black purse over my shoulder.
When I turn towards my friend, she is staring at me in amusement.
“What?” I ask.
She flashes the screen of her phone into my face and my eyes are met with the horror that is my Tinder profile.
“Since Tinder isn’t working for your hopeless ass, we might as well as just put a damn advertisement board on your head” she chortles, amused with my awkwardness.
“I’m not photogenic” I defend myself, feeling sensitive about my failed Tinder trial.
It wasn’t my fault that my terrible eyes were sensitive to light and I possessed not a single decent picture.
Leilani might be absolutely ruthless when it comes to roasting me but she means well. If not, she wouldn’t even be my best friend.
She was as tall as me standing at a clean 5’9 with slender legs, had pin straight brown hair and soft curves her natural slenderness has made pronounced. I met her on my First day at Cornell University and immediately fell in love with the vibrance of her brown eyes. I grew even more excited when I realized that the beautiful and friendly Sweetheart was my roommate. It was like I had found my twin flame after searching my entire life. She was like the bubble to my gum, the Patrick to my Spongebob and the Tom to my Jerry (Come on, we all know by now that Tom and Jerry are besties and fake their fights to deceive Tom’s owners). With her deep Golden skin tone and flow of heated Spanish at every single inconvenience, we’d bonded over being amongst the 1% of non Cis white males in an Ivy League University. She was over the moon when she learned I was Nigerian and even traveled back more than twice with me to spend her Summer vacation on Lagos Island- mostly because her favorite Afro beat artists had a series of concerts there at the time. She’d introduced me to her other friends and we’d all become the closest friends but no matter what, Leilani would always be my favorite.
She was there when my first boyfriend broke my heart when he transferred to Oxford, watched sad movies and cried with me when my Second Boyfriend cheated on me and let me cry on her shoulders when my Third Boyfriend she’d specifically warned me about dumped me after realizing I wasn’t going to have s.ex with him.
Leilani might seem like she has only one function in my life but the thing is, I’ve had a lot of shitty boyfriends and she has a lot of patience to console me even after she warned me about the red flags I ignored. No one watched The Notebook with me each time I went through a Nasty break up, no one bought me chocolates and Icecream when I had nasty cramps and no one took me to the absolute worst frat parties after my lecturers had picked on and belittled my Research Projects without even glancing at it.(The parties were s.hit but hey, it’s the thought that counts). Hell, she’d even let me meet her family and attend a few Quinceaneras in her extended family.
The point is, Leila has been here for almost a decade worth of my life and would do everything to make me feel good, including taking the loss of my virginity into her hands.
Being a makeup guru, she’d poked and prodded my face out of my last heartbreak meltdown until she could whip me into the prettiest version of myself. But right now, after seeing the s**t that’s my Tinder I feel small and insecure once more.
I was just so hopeless, so ugly-
“What if I see Victor in the club-“
“Oh my God!” Leilani shouts, startling the tears that were already building in my eyes and forcing them back into my tear glands.
“I thought we agreed on never mentioning his name again!” She cries out.
“It’s Tiny Timmy, nothing else. After all, it’s his surname”
I huff, fall to the bed and hold the pieces of my broken heart together.
What was I even thinking when I dated a guy named Victor Timothy? His name was already a red flag!
But God, it really did hurt to see Victor banging -ironically- his namesake.
It has been a month since it happened and Leilani had taken her epic revenge by leaking his n.udes.
Even though my pride was hurt, I was glad that I didn’t have the displeasure of trying to slip back his tiny d.ick in after it slipped out countless times.
Yuck, tiny d.ick energy.
Might at as well as just call him Tiny Timmy like Leilani offered.
But if I didn’t want Tiny Timmy’s d.ick then why did my chest hurt so bad?
“I don’t think I can go-“
“You can” Leilani takes my hand and pulls me up from my bed.
“And you will. And if you see him at the club, grind that fat ass on another man and show him what he’s missing!”
“Alright, Alright” I mumble, letting her carry me off.
For the first time in a month after my breakup with Tiny, I had taken a proper shower and done my curly hair routine.
I had tried so hard to look hot today. I couldn’t let the effort go to waste.
Our Uber finally arrives and we meet with our other friends who were in the Living room.
In a span of seconds, we are maneuvering our way through the streets of Downtown Manhattan.
I clench my fists with a new found confidence, feeling buzzy from the excitement that radiates off my friends.
I will lose my virginity tonight. I have to.
- Writer
