Ryan and I met under unfortunate circumstances. Perhaps it was not so much the circumstances that were unfortunate, but the time in our lives when we happened to meet. We were both in our first year of college. I had never had a serious boyfriend and considered myself incredibly sexually ignorant. He had been in a relationship for over three years, but was also a virgin. The only fortunate thing about when we met was that we were young and incredibly horny, eager to learn all we could about sex.
It was a time in my life where I had more confidence than common sense. I had recently discovered that all men wanted one thing, and I learned quickly how to play up my best physical attributes and approach a guy with confidence. When I first saw Ryan at the campus bar, I was immediately attracted to him. He was tall, with an average build and great looks. He was the type of guy that could be devastatingly attractive to a girl but didn't realize it. I got aroused just looking at him, and imagining the things I would like to do to him.
As luck would have it, Ryan was in two of my classes that fall semester. Without hesitation, I started sitting beside him and talking to him and we bonded instantly. I worked up the courage to ask him out to lunch, then over to my apartment for lunch, and I began to think that the attraction was mutual. Although he hedged around the topic of a girlfriend, he admitted that he had been seeing someone back at home but brushed it off as a fairly casual relationship.
One Thursday, Ryan came back to my place after our Psychology class. We had lunch, hung out all afternoon watching movies, then separated briefly to get ready to go to the campus bar. I knew from the time spent together that day that it was time to make my intentions to him known. Hanging out with him was great, but I couldn't help but want more from our relationship. At the end of the night, after many drinks and while we were slow dancing, I started kissing him, and he responded. With some feigned reluctance, he came back to my apartment with me and my roommates after the bar closed, under the guise of needing to discuss what was going on between us. He admitted that he had a girlfriend but that he was attracted to me as well. Standing in my bedroom, in the dark, I asked him what he wanted, and with only slight hesitation, he kissed me again.
We stayed up the entire night, making out on my bed, but things didn't go much farther than that. We were both virgins, and although I had every intention of saying goodbye to my virginity that year, I wasn't in too much of a rush.
At the same time that my relationship with Ryan was developing, I became involved with another guy. We met at work and soon started dating. I cared for him but didn't find myself physically attracted to him the same way I was to Ryan, but I felt that since Ryan had cheated on his girlfriend with me, I couldn't ever trust him in any sort of relationship. I lost my virginity to my boyfriend, while Ryan continued dating his girlfriend throughout the school year. We discussed the physical attraction between us, but decided we couldn't do anything about it. There were plenty of drunken phone calls, and an occasional slippage which found him in my bedroom in the middle of the night, but in general, things remained fairly platonic, although very sexually charged between us.
Over the course of the year, Ryan and I became close friends, able to talk about anything and spending a lot of time together watching movies and going running. Although I was still very much attracted to him, I tried my best to stifle these feelings as did he. It became acknowledged and accepted that our relationship would remain the way it was, a friendship.