In eighth grade, my best friend had a massive crush on this tenth grader. I also liked him, but I didn’t want to get in the way of her happiness, so I said I wasn’t interested in him and encouraged her to go for it. Eventually, the summer between eighth and ninth grade, she finally started dating him.

Cut to Halloween a couple months later. He had invited both of us to his house party, and it was all-around wild, at least from what I remember (I was 14 and this was my first house party). At some point during the party, I broke off from the group my best friend and I were chatting to in order to greet a couple other friends of mine who barely knew my best friend. I was surprised to see them show up to the party, actually. They didn’t go to our school or anything. Best friend’s boyfriend joins our group, and apparently the four of them all attended the same summer program and were quite close. But then the three friends of mine wandered off and it was just me and my best friend’s boyfriend, engrossed in conversation. It’s hard to remember every detail, as I was rather drunk at this point, but I know one thing led to another and we ended up making out in his laundry room.

I acted as though nothing happened to my best friend, but I started messaging her boyfriend and we pretty much sexted behind her back. I thought I was in love with him, that I was truly the right one for him, and that if anything I was doing her a favor by putting a damper on their doomed relationship. Neither of us ‘fessed up to her. Things went further, we started finding times to discreetly make out with each other at school. I got hickeys on my neck and breasts that I’d have to cover up around everyone. He once went as far as to finger me in the janitor’s closet. He told me he’d had a crush on me since he himself was in ninth grade, and that he figured I wasn’t interested so he went for my best friend. He told me he wished he could show me off to everyone at school, that I was the most beautiful and intelligent girl at our school, and that the only reason he wasn’t breaking up with my best friend was because we both didn’t want to hurt her. I was absolutely smitten. This had been my first love, if you could call it that. That drunken kissing at the Halloween party had actually been my first kiss ever.

He was always offering me to hang out at his place, and I knew why. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not I was ready to lose my virginity, especially to the boyfriend of my best friend. I once told him it would be weird to have s** with someone who was having s** with my best friend, to which he replied that he and my best friend had never had s**. My best friend herself had told me she never went beyond light kissing with him because of her religion, but given that this was HIM, a part of me always wondered whether or not she secretly had s** anyway. I on the other hand wasn’t religious at all, and as time passed and our little secret escapades involved more and more s** acts (mostly he ate me out a lot, and didn’t even demand anything in return; he genuinely enjoyed eating me out), I realized how badly I wanted to have s** with him.

I finally agreed to come over to his place this one weekend when his parents weren’t in town. I almost hesitated to do so after hanging out with my best friend this afternoon, because the guilt was getting to me, but I knew it was my time to become a woman.

It didn’t take long for things to heat up. We were in his bedroom practically devouring each other, I must’ve gotten about ten hickeys, one of which was in my inner thigh. This boy had a damn talent for giving head, he was much better at it than I was. To be fair though, he was 17 and wasn’t a virgin, whereas little 14 year old virginal me was just trying to keep up.

I almost chickened out at the last second, afraid of it hurting me, and to be fair it did a bit. He was gentle, though, and by the end of it all I was convinced we were meant to be together.

We started regularly hooking up at his house behind my unsuspecting best friend’s back. It felt like pure ecstasy, but left me feeling dirty whenever I would remember that he has a girlfriend, and that his girlfriend was my best friend of 2 and a half years.

About a month before the end of the school year, I cracked and came clean to my best friend. She was rightfully horrified, confronted him (he confirmed it was true), and refused to speak to either of us ever again. She basically campaigned for none of our friends at school to speak to me, which I don’t blame her for in the least. One of our mutual friends who was much closer to her cursed me out on her behalf. Our years of being best friends went down the drain just like that.

I made it official with him shortly after. There was a bit of buzz about it at our school and in our neighborhood, but the situation blew over surprisingly quickly. My best friend never willingly spoke to either of us ever again.

About a year later he and I decided to break up for reasons unrelated to my best friend. We would still occasionally hook up, but it would just be for the s**. He got accepted to some prestigious university overseas and I never saw him again after his graduation.

I’m 18 now and finishing up high school myself, and looking back, I don’t think I would actually change a thing that happened. All the good and (very) bad decisions led me to become the woman I am today.

I guess the moral of this story is…taxation is theft.

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