She always thought she didn’t have any strong feelings regarding her body. True, sometimes she would go for a run, out of a habit she acquired when she played volleyball in school. And, from time to time, there is the idea of going to the gym, but that’s more or less it.

And, yeah, sometimes she thought about it in relation to Roy. He would like her with bigger boobs, he said more than once, and if that didn’t make a girl feel self conscious, Pam didn’t know what could. And sometimes she had seen him follow another woman’s ass with his eyes in a very evident way.

That’s how guys are, right? She is not exactly innocent. Once or twice she had remembered a time when Roy was less heavy on her, and she had wished, albeit silently, for him to be a little different.

Even after all the years, she still remembers how it felt that first time Roy kissed her. He was wearing his football uniform, and she felt tiny when those hands grabbed her by the waist. Pam couldn’t help but being amazed at the fact that this popular guy was kissing her, and that feeling managed to make her ignore the fact that he hadn’t showered, and that his lips seemed to be all over hers, pushing and pulling in every direction.

She touches her lips with her fingertips, exploring them. They feel swollen, and it is as if they were still vibrating. Yearning for an experience so completely different it is unbelievable that the same word could be used to define both.

Maybe her lips are too thin? Or maybe Roy was just enthusiastic that way?

With time, that heated kisses had been accompanied by wandering hands. On both sides, Pam has to admit. She was as curious as Roy was eager, and even though she wanted to wait and he agreed, there was something exciting about touching him, and about seeing how his body reacted to her hands.

His kept on being rough, and it took her a long while to actually tell him what she liked better. Sometimes he remembered. Then again, maybe she was too small, too fragile?

That’s the way she felt that other first time. After the excitement of being at his parents’ empty house, Roy telling her that he had bribed Kenny to go with them to the Poconos while he feigned being sick, and how she wanted to laugh but bit her lip as he fumbled with the shiny wrapper.

But then it all happened so fast and it hurt a little, and finished way too soon, leaving her with a very strange emptiness inside her she’d never been aware of before.

Pam’s fingers travel down her neck and touch the small golden chain. How come it never occured to Roy that kissing her neck could be a good idea? Not just hickies, but really kissing her. Again she feels that longing, and her fingers trace imaginary paths for an imaginary mouth to follow.

There was a great deal of things that never occurred to Roy. Like calling her the next day. Sure, he had left her at home with a kiss, but then nothing, and she had felt weird, avoiding her sister because she was sure she’d find out just by looking at her. When she and Roy finally met at the mall, late in the afternoon, she could hardly believe Kenny was tagging along.

Whatever her fantasies about her first time had been, none of them had included a visit to the arcade with the guy’s brother and then looking at them engage in an endless shooting game she didn’t care about.

Pam frowned. In retrospective she still felt… humiliated? Hurt? Forgotten? But she liked sex. She liked the intimacy, and those giggles when they were finally alone and knowing what was going to come afterwards.

So maybe it is difficult for her. Maybe she has too high expectations from movies. While in reality sometimes it was long, and even boring, so she pretended like Meg Ryan in that film, so he would get there and they could just lay, naked bodies badly fitting in his twin bed. He snoring slightly, she thinking about abstract futures.

When she grew older, she grew bolder about her own body. It took her one night alone in the house they’d just moved into, a very explicit novel she had gotten from a friend, two restless fingers and a deaf ear to a scandalised voice inside her head. And that’s when she… it was difficult to describe it, really. That first time, she saw colours. Shapes behind her eyelids. Music as her back arched to meet her own hand.

Later, Pam came to the conclusion that this stuff was just different for her. That she needed different things. And maybe it was not really good that she was not getting them from her boyfriend, but she had learned, hadn’t she? Now, she knew better.

Moving her fingers on the armrest of the couch, she toyed with the idea. She was restless. Giddy. And it was so wrong and so unfair that this moment was being invaded by memories of Roy and of mediocre sex and a relationship that never really satisfied her.

But she couldn’t help it.

Roy is all she knows. All she has known, she corrects her own thought, for over ten years. A lifetime, really.

And then, this. What’s this?

Her hands touched her lips again, imagining she could still feel his on hers. Gently. Softly. Oh so slowly.

It was impossible, really. Illogical. Absurd. Unimaginable that one good night kiss at her door made her feel much more, so much more, than all those years put together?

But it had not just been lips, although those had been amazing enough to feed her fantasies for decades. No. There had also been a gentle hand, reaching to touch her as his mouth did. The slow caress felt a little possessive as he pulled the side of her neck, deepening the kiss, and for a second his thumb caressing the back of her ear distracted her from his lips, but it was just a second, because then his other hand was on her waist, pulling her again, and she obliged because, really, she was only too eager to feel his body pressed to hers.

How did her hands end up in his neck, she didn’t know. They were exploring the tips of a hair that was shorter than it had been in her fantasies but still so desirable. So his.

The kiss turned urgent. Deep. And she opened her mouth before he did because, really, she wanted to, so much. As his tongue touched hers, he growled She decided that was the sexiest sound she’d ever heard, she needed him to do it again, so she played with her own tongue on his lower lip, and her own hand on his ear. That second growl vibrated on her chest and her knees felt weak. It was her, her body, making him react like this in a fantastic dance she wished to keep on doing forever.

“Pam,” he said hoarsely, and both pulled back just a little. He was beaming and so was she.

But then he was really pulling back, slowly but decidedly, and all her body felt like screaming in protest.

“It’s a school night,” he said with an impish grin.

“Yeah,” she breathed although she couldn’t say for the life of her what day it was. She didn’t care, really

“Besides…” he sighed deeply. “If we keep on doing this, there would be nothing left for our second date.”

“Third.”

“Huh?”

“The rooftop. Grilled cheese.”

He laughed, and launched into her lips, deeper, and, right when her mouth was jumping into action again, just a moment later, he was pulling away. “Sleep tight, Pam.”

“You too.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah…”

Without really knowing how, she had opened her door and entered. And that’s when her knees gave up and she sat on the floor.

It must have taken several minutes to get the strength to actually stand up and walk the three steps to the couch. She couldn’t help the memories. The comparison. How wrong it all felt, and how perfectly perfect it all feels now.

Her fingers seem to agree. No longer on the armrest, they trace shapes on her tight. Reaching up. Pretending they are somebody else’s.

But it’s not fair, because this is new, and wonderful, and her lips are still trembling and her insides are full of warmth and maybe, just maybe, there is a chance for that emptiness inside her to be finally filled.

Frowning a little in concentration, she directs those fingers to her cellphone and looks for those three letters that have the power to turn her world upside down.

“Pam?”

She takes a deep breath. “Could we have our third date now, Jim?”