One lazy Sunday, I went to Anna's house to swim and study, although we quickly decided to do more swimming than studying. It was a blisteringly hot day and we alternated between sitting on sun lounges in the shade and diving into the pool to cool off. I was wearing my blue one-piece, cut high on my legs. I always made sure I shaved very carefully before I wore it and I had spent an hour in the bathroom the night before making sure that no stray hairs would be visible at the sides of the lycra.
Anna was actually quite religious and took the whole church and sin thing fairly seriously. At one stage when she was younger she had thought seriously about becoming a nun. I wasn't exactly sure what I believed and went to church and prayed and tried not to commit any sins because I was expected to do those things. Anna's commitment to her religion was much more real, mine was simply what I had been brought up to do. And since I seemed to be committing some sort of sin almost every night now, the whole thing had become even more confusing for me.
Anna was wearing a purple bikini. She was taller and thinner than me. She had pale skin that tended to freckle and smallish breasts but a face that I always thought of as very pretty. She had a wide mouth with the kind of pouty lips I would have killed for and big, emerald green eyes. She also had cascades of wavy, thick red hair that always seemed far sexier than my dull brown. I guess in the overall scheme of things we were both quite plain, or at least average but neither of us was ugly. Even so, we weren't in the same league as the beautiful girls at school, and we knew it.
Anna was telling me bits of gossip she had heard from another friend, Lisa. Anna and Lisa worked together in their part-time job in a bread shop. Lisa moved in different circles to us. She mixed with the cool, beautiful girls, she went to lots of parties and she had a boyfriend. Despite all that, Lisa was quite friendly and didn't mind at all associating with less outgoing girls like Anna and I.
"Lisa says that Paula is going out with a guy who is twenty," Anna told me. Anna loved gossip and scandal despite being as shy and serious as me. It was a little contradictory to her religious side but she chose to ignore the fact.
"Twenty," I said. "I'm surprised her parents would let her."
"Well, Lisa said her parents don't know. Can you imagine our parents letting us go out with a twenty year old guy with a car?"
I couldn't imagine going out with any guy. My fantasy guy, yes, but not a real guy my age. Neither of us had ever been on a date so I had no idea how my parents would react.
"Is Lisa still going out with the same guy?" I asked. I was becoming much more interested in the whole dating-boyfriend thing.
"Yes, and I'll tell you a secret but you have to promise not to tell anyone, OK? She told me not to tell but I can tell you if you promise."
"I promise." Anna knew that I could keep a secret.
"OK, well she said that they have been just kissing and stuff for ages, but on Friday night they went a lot further." She paused and looked at me significantly.
"How much further?" Anna and I rarely ever talked directly about sex, mainly because we had no experience and very little knowledge of it. It thrilled me that the discussion had taken this interesting turn.
"Well, she said that they started off just kissing and stuff and then he had his hands on her boobs and the next thing she knew her top and bra were off and he was kissing her boobs. Can you believe that?" she said, wide-eyed with delight.
"Wow," I said. I was suddenly jealous that a girl my age, a girl I knew was actually doing the things for real that I fantasised about at night.
"Can you imagine a guy actually kissing your boobs?"
I certainly could imagine it and in fact I had done so for quite a few minutes the night before. And now, I suspected that it had crossed Anna's mind on more than one occasion. I wondered for an instant whether my best friend lay alone in her bed doing the things to her body that I did to mine. I forced the thought from my mind. It felt wrong to think about her, another girl, doing that. And it was also a bit too exciting to think about it in broad daylight in a swimsuit.
"I wish mine were bigger," Anna said. Even though Anna turned eighteen three weeks before me she looked quite a bit younger.
"Yours are fine," I said reassuringly. "Anyway, bigger isn't always better."
"Yes, but guys notice girls with bigger ones." This was a new Anna, fretting about guys noticing her. It seemed that the changes that had happened to me had also happened to her recently.
"Guys will notice you before they'll notice me. You've got that hair and you're taller."
"Guys aren't interested in hair. They're interested in boobs and they'll see that set you've got there, Mel and fall in love with you."
"I don't think so," I said with a laugh but I was secretly pleased to have Anna acknowledge that my breasts were so attractive. They were rapidly becoming my favourite part of my body.
"Anyway, back to what Lisa told me," Anna said. "She said that Glen, that's her boyfriend, said that he wants them to do it. And she said she'd think about it but she wasn't really ready for that. But she told me that if he had just gone ahead and done it right there and then without waiting for an answer she would have let him because she was feeling so turned on." She shook her head in disbelief.
"God," I said. I was already making a mental note to add that to my fantasy tonight, the man asking if he could do 'it' with me, and then doing it anyway, without waiting for an answer. I crossed my legs, feeling the pressure against my tingling vagina.
We both decided, perhaps for the same reason, that now would be a good time for another swim and dived in and paddled in the cool water. It cooled me down and calmed me down. After a few minutes Anna and I leaned our backs against the sides of the pool and paddled idly in the water.
"She asked me if I thought she should do it," Anna said.
"What did you say?" I asked.
"Well, you know, I don't know anything about...what I mean is...I've never done....never been in that situation."
"Mmm," I agreed. Neither of us had. If there was one person in the world, beside myself, who I was absolutely sure was a virgin, it was Anna.
"But, you know," she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially, "sometimes I think a lot about it." She looked away, embarrassed at her admission. I felt my heart beat faster. It was a relief to know it wasn't just me.
"So do I." I said softly. I pushed away from the side and swam deep, covering my embarrassment with the water. I could feel my cheeks burning red with my own admission. Anna got out and dried herself before arranging her long limbs on the sun lounge once more. I swam several lazy lengths of the pool before I returned to my sun lounge beside her.
We were both silent for several minutes. It was an unusual awkwardness between us. I wondered what I could say to return things to normal. It was Anna who broke the silence, but not in the way I expected.
