Pocket Full of Posies

Chapter Thirty-One

   Sex is such a big deal.

Some of like to believe it's not. It is. If you don't want to treat it like it, that's fine; it's your preference. But it is a big deal. You're sharing yourself with another person and they're seeing you be in a certain way you don't show the rest of the world.

I was always taught to save myself for marriage. Not everyone agrees with that. Personally, I did. To me, sex was the thing you shared intimately with the man or woman you were going to spend the rest of your life with. I understood completely why some people choose not to wait. It's tempting and it's fun and dangerous. You just wanna throw yourself at that person and have fun. I get that. Part of me wanted to be like that; not care.

So when I first started dating Isaac, at the tender age of thirteen, I told him I wasn't going to have sex with him. His face was pretty much priceless. We had just had our first kiss—very harmless and clearly not leading anywhere—and I just sprung this news on him. He wasn't expecting it at all. He went completely ashen and immediately started defending himself.

"I'm not trying to have sex with you!" he'd nearly screamed as he ran out of the room.

Maybe that should've been my first time.

Anyway, his mother heard his declaration and called my aunt. We all had one big discussion in which Mrs. Carter accused me of pressuring her son and almost ended our relationship right then and there. I'd admired my aunt for being so patient as she heard the other mother out silently. They got the situation sorted, but his mother was always careful around me for about a full year after the fact. Little did she know it was her son she would have to watch.

When we got older, it wasn't so easy holding onto my idea of saving myself. When you're young, you're convinced you're going to be with this person forever and it seems unfathomable that you'll break up. I'd binged enough romantic movies to understand that. I thought I knew a lot back then, as most of us do at that age. There was a point where Isaac talked about nothing but sex. I never got mad. I heard him out and told him if it was that important than he didn't have to stay with me, I wasn't forcing him to. Of course, I'd said this knowing I would be devastated if he did, in fact, leave me. He didn't, though. But he never really stopped trying to sway me, either.

I was much stronger when I was younger.

About seventeen, I started to wonder about my stance. It was a wonder I'd made it that far. By sixteen, I pretty much did everything Isaac did and liked everything he liked. I didn't even realize it, to be completely honest. I just thought our ways were merging together and we both liked the things the other loved. He didn't love a single thing I did, though.

We had very long discussions about sex. We talked about getting married and how we just knew we were meant to be together, so why wait? He was weighing on me. It was a constant struggle of when we were making out, how it would pretty much always turn into a discussion about going further. Eventually we did. We fooled around a lot more than I ever meant for us to. I told myself it was what I wanted, and in the moment it was. But the second we would depart, I'd feel wrong. And the second he was back, he was somehow convincing me to do it all over again. I thought it was a fair trade. We wouldn't go all the way because I didn't want to but we would still be able to fool around because he didn't want to wait. I was a good girlfriend like that.

And then one day it all stopped. It was random, too. There was no gradual pull away. It was literally, one day we were fooling around in his car like we usually did and the next he kissed me once goodnight and drove off. At first I didn't think much of it but after a couple of days, I grew agitated and decided to confront him.