3 days after Christmas, and both Clare and her brother Simon had that day split up with their long term partners. Despite Clare being aged 19 and Simon being 22, neither had had many long-term relationships other than those which had just ended.
As if splitting from their partners on the same day wasn't enough of a coincidence, the reasons for the splits were also the same - neither Clare or Simon felt ready to go all the way with their partners. Well, OK, they were ready but both being virgins, were too afraid of getting things wrong.
During the night after the breakups, Simon heard a noise from his Sisters room, knowing that his parents would be far too deep asleep to hear it; he decided to go and check it out for himself.
He knocked on Clare's door, "Come in" she responded. As Simon entered, he realised quite how much his "little sister" had changed since they used to play together as kids. A combination of Work, College and relationships meant that they rarely even saw each other, let alone went to each others rooms. Where there used to be Barbie Dolls, there was now make up and perfume, the old posters of Boy Bands had been replaced with posters of half naked, muscular men - she's really grown up, thought Simon.
"Are you alright?" asked Simon, now able to see that she had been crying. "Not really" was Clare's reply, "Me and Matt split up earlier, he didn't want to be with me any more".
"Really? Me and Nat split up as well, she didn't want to be with me. Did Matt say why?"
"Well, promise you won't laugh?"
"I won't" said Matt,
"It's because I wouldn't sleep with him"
"Well why not?"
"I'm scared that I'll mess up and he'll tell everyone how bad a fuck I am" she said.
"My god, that's exactly the same reason I split with Nat"
"There's no way that girls a virgin!" exclaimed Clare,
"No sis, it was me that was scared, just because I'm older than you doesn't mean I'm experienced"
Both brother and sister sat in an awkward silence, considering they never really spoke about their lives, discussing their sex lives, even in such little detail was quite a shock to them both.
Simon finally broke the silence, "So, um, you wanna talk about it?" he asked
"There's not much to say, we'd done pretty much everything else, and we were in bed, he asked if I wanted to, I said no and he got up, dressed and left, saying he never wanted to see me again! What happened with you?"
"Well, we did a lot of stuff as well, but when it came to having sex, I just couldn't get it up, I was just too scared!"
In his own concern for his sister and his own self-pity, Simon had failed to notice that all this talk was getting him aroused, he may not have realised, but Clare certainly did,