I was fifteen the first time that I gave somebody an erection.
My childhood bedroom was still covered in Winnie the Pooh sticks because mum refused to decorate it until Cam went off to university, so It was rather embarrassing to have a boy over at the house in the first place.
A single bed tucked into the corner with sunflower bed sheets. A wardrobe slightly too big for the wall, so the door didn't open all the way. A vanity filled with the make-up that I'd applied too much of in preparation for the date.
He told me that my room looked nice when I led him into it.
We had skipped school, so mum was at work and Cam was tucked away in his A level classes studying to no-end for his upcoming mock exams.
Alone. Awkward. A rising tension in the air.
He played football. He was cool. He pretended that he's been in other girls' rooms too.
"So. . ." hands in his pockets. "What d'ya wanna do?"
I remember the sudden thumping of my heart. Feeling my pulse at the tips of my fingers.
Like every other relationship I'd had in school, we started speaking on Facebook messenger, excluding a vast amount of confidence we couldn't replicate in real life.
I was taken by his popularity status.
He was taken by my sudden growth spurt that had finally given me the chest I'd been waiting for.
All of my friends at the same time had made out with a boy.
Or so they told me.
Looking back, I think a lot of people lie about sex at that age. I was teased mercilessly for not having had my first real kiss at the age of fifteen.
So when he asked if we could hang out alone one day, after three weeks of us playing twenty questions online in a mild attempt at flirting with each other, I invited him round in a flurry of desire to get it over with.
"I could put on some music?"
"Sure." A noncommittal shrug. Acting cool. Calm. Collected.
He played with his fingers when I sat down next to him, jean-clad leg brushing against my own; not so collected after all.
One Direction flowed through the room and he teased me about the large poster of Harry Styles that clung to the back of my bedroom door. He asked about the glow in the dark stars glued onto the ceiling and talked about school football matches.
I put a hand on his leg that displayed my well-bitten nails covered in chipped red nail polish. He was scrawny and cold and still talking about football.
Get it over with. Get it over with. Get it over with.
"You must be really good at football."
He wouldn't make the first move. He could barely look me in the eye. He kept pushing floppy hair away from his face and biting at his bottom lip.
I had to be the confident one.
In the back of my mind, I remember coming to the realisation that he was probably all talk. That he hadn't been in other girls' bedrooms. That maybe not everyone in our year was kissing or dry-humping anything they could get a leg over like i'd thought.
Still, he was cute. So I leant my entire body closer to his and patiently waited for him to get the hint.
I wasn't unpopular. Not a nerd. Not a teacher's pet. Not someone who cried on the yearly camping trip because I missed my parents.
My friends were quiet and sweet, therefore so was I.
He was loud and rowdy and entirely the opposite personality in front of his friends. He had a teenage image to upkeep. But in my bedroom, I had to make the first move - and so I did.
Weirdly, I remember feeling remarkably calm at how flustered he already was. I leant in and pressed my lips to his, following it up with a quick wink as I pulled away. Gaining a bit of confidence, finally, he pulled me back in and we made out to One Direction's latest hit.
The memory feels incredibly juvenile.
I put my tongue in his mouth and he put a tentative hand on my shoulder.
With my newfound confidence and a sudden urge to impress, I put my hand over his and moved it up to my breast. He pushed me back on the bed and that's when I felt it.
Pressed against my hip.
I didn't quite know how to feel about it. I'd never felt anything like it before in my life, I'd never even seen one, not a real one anyway - only crudely drawn ones in math class when the boys got bored. Or that one time we had to put a condom on a rubber one in sex education.
He got embarrassed when my body writhed against it and pulled away, hands immediately going over his crotch.
"Uh. . . Sorry." Sheepish. Shy. Stuttering.
It'd been wholesome. A fond memory. Cam's classes finished early that day so the three of us watched a film downstairs together, and nothing more was said of it.
Seeing Noah like that doesn't elicit the same feelings.
At fifteen, I was curious. Shy, but confident in knowing what I wanted from that boy in my bedroom.
Six years later, and pure arousal overshadows every other possible feeling I could have - the confident girl is gone, and in her place lies a pile of human jelly, writhing on the bed of a boy she can't have.
====================================================================
Sunday sucks.
Nothing is open so you can't go anywhere. There's nothing good on TV, and the work week looms over the day until you have to accept the week is about to begin, and go to bed.
I don't think I have ever had a fun sunday in my life. The work I've got to do this week is already running through my head, even though I only woke up two hours ago.
Noah and Cam haven't managed to drag themselves out of bed yet, despite going upstairs relatively early last night to recover from their all-day hangovers.
There's only so much news I can watch.
I want breakfast, but there's nothing greasy enough in the cupboards. I want Noah to get out of my head, too, but that would be asking too much.
Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear.
He pauses as he steps into the living room, eyeing where I'm sitting, huddled on the sofa. I wrap my hands around my hot cup of tea, blowing on the steam.
He doesn't bring it up, not that I was expecting him to.
I wouldn't know what to say either.
Instead, he walks over to the kitchen and begins making up his pre-workout.
"Gym?" I ask. More to break the tension than anything.
"Yeah," he replies.
He shaked his bottle, leaning against the counter.
Facing me.
God.
"You wanna come with?"
"Absolutely not."
I may be bored, but definitely not that bored. I think I'd rather wake Cam up and make him walk to the shop to buy us the ingredients for a full english.
Much better than the gym.
He shrugs, eyeing me before picking up his keys. He swirls them around one finger.
"I think I may have overstepped yesterday."
His words are cautious. As if he is admitting another secret.
I don't want to see this guilty Noah who thinks he's crossed a boundary.
So, I turn and give him a firm stare - one lone eyebrow raised.
"Noah, I've got no idea what you're talking about."
"Yeah," he laughs, ruffling up his loose curls and looking down at me from his position on the counter. "I bet."
"Go to the gym," I tell him, turning back to the TV. "Before you embarrass yourself again."
He picks up a pillow and smacks me with it on his way past the sofa. When the front door closes behind him, I'm enshrouded in social silence again.
I sat for a minute.
Then two, letting the news drone on and on about the cost of living crisis.
Greasy food. Definitely needed.
"CAM!"
A loud thud sounds against the ceiling above me. I smirk into my mug and listen to him banging around upstairs for a second before finally, echoing down the stairs.
"Are you okay?"
"Do you want a full english."
"Oh my God," he moans. "Please."
"Get dressed and buy me the ingredients then."
Surprisingly, he appears before me five minutes later in some lazy clothes. I expected more arguing from him actually, he definitely would've bit my head off growing up if I'd asked him to go out of his way.
"You're cooking it tho," he grumbles, and then he's out of the door.
Once he's back, I cook and we eat at opposite ends of the sofa.
He rests his feet on the table and flicks through the channels until a football match appears, kicking me as I scoff at his choice.
His phone buzzes on the table with a call, and he turns it over.
"Hiding someone?" I laugh. "I'm not mum."
He rolls his eyes, pushing a piece of bacon around his plate with his fork. He takes a deep breath and then looks over at me, a guilty look flushing over his features.
"What did you do?"
He opens his mouth but hesitates for a few seconds, frowning at me. My eyes widen but I say nothing, choosing instead to shove another mouthful of greasy food into my mouth.
"As a woman-"
"Jesus Christ," I choke.
He scowls at me. "I'm trying to ask for your advice here."
Oh.
I didn't expect that.
He has never asked me for advice before - although, the last time we lived together, I was sixteen and lost in my own world, so my advice probably wouldn't have been sufficient for an eighteen year old boy.
"Look," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I think I might have given Mia the wrong idea."
Oh dear God.
I put a piece of hashbrown into my mouth, chewing slowly.
"I don't exactly have the best track record with women, alright?" He admits, barely able to look me in the eye. "I'm a bit of a dickhead, actually."
My eyes narrow towards him. He playfully pulls his collar away from his neck, but continues telling me the issue.
"I've messed her around a bit, and I think she fancies me."
"Good?"
"It's not good, Kenzie," he laughs. "I don't want a girlfriend."
"How have you - what was it you said - 'messed her around a bit'?" I ask him, using my fingers to make quotation marks.
"Do you actually want to know?" he asks.
He leans forward and puts his plate on the table, and then turns to me, sitting crossed-legged, fiddling with a loose string at the hem of his shirt.
He sighs when I nod expectantly.
"You can't judge me because we're related by blood. But we dated in uni for a few months, and then I broke up with her to. . . explore my options."
"You can say you wanted to fuck around Cam. I'm not a child anymore."
"You are to me," he grins. "Anyway. . . I've been a little hot and cold with her since. We're best mates, but sometimes I get a bit drunk and blur the line again. . . Like I did on Friday." he grimaces. "And the Friday before that."
"You're sounding like a dick."
"I told you, I'm a dick." He stretches a leg out over me and I smack it away. "Could you speak to her on Tuesday?"
A squeak leaves my mouth.
I can't do that - I don't even know this girl. Imagine walking over to a practical stranger and saying, 'I know you fancy my brother, it's obvious. But he's an asshole, and he doesn't want a girlfriend right now'.
"What would I even say?" I ask, my voice high and unsure.
Unbelieving.
"Just say that I'm no good. That she can do better - I dunno. How would you convince one of your friends to move on from someone?"
"Absolutely not." My head shakes suddenly with my distaste for the idea.
The front door opens, a strong breeze pushing its way into the room and wrapping around my body.
Noah's face peers into the living room, red with the bite of the cold weather. His hair is wet and he's wearing sweats instead of workout clothes now.
He throws both of us an exaggerated smile and then disappears back into the hallway.
"Please," Cam begs. "Talk to her, please."
He holds his hands out to me in the prayer position, so I kick them away from myself, hesitantly nodding.
Surely this can only go well. Although my annoyance with Cam aids me in planning what to say, because he is an ass; I guess I just have to convince Mia of that.
We continue to watch the game in silence but I'm still trying to figure out what to say to her. It's obvious she likes him - it was obvious the first time I met her because she was flirting and trying for his attention the whole night.
I guess I presume it was reciprocated since Cam flirted back. Apparently, he's just a player.
Gross.
My brother: a man who grew up with two women, has noidea how to treat women. The irony.
My mind drifts. Is Noah like that?
Is that why they're such good friends? Because they screw girls over and laugh about it together? I want to ask, but I know it's not my place. If he saw me hanging over Noah on Friday and then I started asking about his status with women, he'd probably start making assumptions.
Noah's not a player - surely I would have noticed.
But he did blatantly show me his hard-on yesterday.
"Yo," Cam's voice startles me. "How was the gym?"
Noah clears his throat behind us. He's leaning against the doorframe when I turn around, still with his keys in his hand.
"Busy. But at least my day will only get worse when your sister crashes my car." My ears perk. I spin around to look at him. "The driving lesson?"
Cam snorts with laughter.
"Get ready," Noah commands, eyes sparkling with mischief. He takes my seat as I stand up from the couch, but ignores the look I throw him as he begins talking about football scores with Cam.
What am I even supposed to wear for a driving lesson?
More importantly, how am I supposed to be alone with him after yesterday?
Questions, questions, questions - none of which I have the answers to.
I dress in the bathroom in leggings and an over-sized hoodie, and then, with shaky hands, I untie my hair from the ponytail it's been in since yesterday.
I brush through it and wet it slightly with water from the tap, to tame the waves. Slightly.
Noah and Cam are still chatting when I enter the living room again. He doesn't waste a second, brushing off the conversation and rounding the sofa to begin leading me out of the house.
"Don't die!" Cam shouts to us.
I flip him off and close the living room door, stepping into the entry way.
I think it's more likely I'll die of heart palpitations than I will of crashing the car, and that's even more ironic because I'm a terrible driver who should not be behind the wheel of a BMW convertible.
I can smell his bodywash as he huddles over to the front door to press his key into the lock.
He steps to the side once it's unlocked and allows me to pass by him, locking it behind us as I walk over to the driver's side of the car. I stand by the door and tilt my hip, waiting.
Oh, God.
That killer grin.
He's giving it to me as soon as he turns away from the house, slinking towards me. I shove my hands into the pocket across my belly.
He stands by the wing-mirror and presses the button that unlocks the car.
I reach for the handle.
"Are you wanting to kill us?" He asks.
"Huh?" I tilt my head to the side.
"Do you even know how to put the car in reverse?" he gestures to the driveway that I would have to reverse out of. My eyes follow the gesture, and then run up his arm and to his chest, which is pressed up against a muscle tee. "Focus."
"I am focused," I lie, narrowing my eyes at him. "How are you going to teach me how to drive if you won't let me start the car?"
"I'm going to drive you somewhere safe. With less pedestrians. With less. . . everything, preferably." He waves me away, so I walk around the car, still holding his gaze, before I open the passenger seat door. He waits until I've got into the car before he opens his own door.
He gets in and switches on the engine, turning down the music that pours out of the speakers.
I pull my seatbelt over my body and click it into place as he does the same.
"So, I'm holding down the clutch," he starts, turning to me and pointing down to where his left leg disappears into the foot-well. "What do I need to do now?"
"Reverse?"
He smirks. "And how do I do that?"
"Aren't you supposed to teach me that?"
A bigger grin spreads across his face.
He's purposefully annoying. Purposefully frustrating. Purposefully being a shit teacher so I look like a dumb student.
I can't think about retaining information while he's looking at me like this; while he's teasing and making fun of me and sending butterflies all over my body.
"You have an attitude today," he states.
Before I can argue with him, he grabs my hand and puts it on the gearstick, placing his own above it.
"We need to shift into reverse." I stare at the clock tattoo on the back of his hand. He pushes our hands left, and then up. "This is first gear - are you listening?"
"Of course."
Despite the difficulties with you touching me like this, yeah. Sure.
He shifts our hands down. "Second gear." Up across, and then up again. "Third gear." Down. "Fourth gear." Up, across, up. "Fifth - you shouldn't be using that for ages yet though. You'll barely use anything more than third until you get comfortable."
I hum, still staring at our conjoined hands. He holds my hand tighter, pulls the gearstick down and jiggles it into place. "Reverse."
His fingers thread under my palm, lifting my hand off the stick.
"It'll stay there now," he murmurs, dragging our hands to the handbrake. My breath hitches in my throat as his thumb strokes over mine, guiding it to the button. "Handbrake." His hand tightens around mine. "Lift it, hold the button. Bring it down flat."
His hand feels warm against mine. And calloused. He doesn't take it away as he begins backing out of the drive, checking his mirrors and craning his neck between our seats.
I stare at the shrinking house as we pull further away from it. My deep breaths are quiet, which I'm incredibly thankful for.
His hand leaves mine to switch the gears as we drive forwards, but returns seconds later, pulling my hand onto the stick again.
"We're going to switch into third," he tells me, the car crawling past houses and shrubs. "What gear are we in now?"
I look down at our joined hands.
"Second?"
"Good girl."
Jesus Christ, make this end.
"Where's third?" It's another murmur, as we continue driving at the same slow place. "The clutch is down, switch it in."
I pull it into the center with his hand still atop of mine, and then struggle to get it to the middle. The car screeches as I try to push it up.
I yank my hand away and begin letting apologies tumble from my mouth as he easily corrects the mistake and speeds up.
"It's alright," he laughs. "Getting into third is one of the harder ones."
We drive through the town and I try to watch his technique as he changes the gears, eager not to screw up at it again. He speeds down the country lanes on the outskirts of town, weaving around corners easily and narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a tractor driving at a fraction of his speed.
This would be an incredible drive in the summer, with the roof down and the radio turned up loud. Maybe even with a cocktail in hand and a few blankets in the back so we can stop by the beach.
He makes me walk him through which gear is which again as we slow down, eventually pulling into a huge, near-empty car park.
"This shop closed down two months ago," he explains, reversing into a parking space like he's kicking a football and not controlling a machine that weighs two and a half tonnes. "Do you feel ready?"
"No."
"Good." Then he's pulling up the handbrake and getting out of the car.
It hums underneath me, like it knows I'm about to do it harm.
I'm sorry, I think as I lift myself over the console and settle into the driver's seat.
The steering wheel feels warm in my hands. My toes tickle the pedals underneath but I don't dare press down on a single one of them.
Clutch, brake, accelerator.
Or was it accelerator, brake, clutch?
He appears in my vacated seat and gently closes the door.
Taking a deep breath, I look over to him and attempt a smile.
"Don't panic," he comments, looking out at the vast empty space in front of us. "All I'm going to ask you to do is drive straight forward, into that space there."
I follow his pointed finger to the car parking space adjacent to our own.
"Press down the clutch - the peddle on the left."
Left. Yes. I can do that.
"All the way down. . . Good. Now put the car into first gear."
I cannot do this. This is too nice a car. It's purring below me, vibrating my legs - it senses my fear.
He places a hand over my own again, and we resume our position on the gearstick. First gear - left and up. Left - done. Up - done. Easy. Breathe.
"Good," he murmurs, eyeing the gearstick as I do. "Look at the road. Always look at the road."
"How will I know where the gears are?"
There's a smile in his reply, "You just will."
"Okay," his voice is gentle, calming. "Only use the foot that you have on the clutch - don't press the accelerator at all. Slowly lift it up." I do as he says, and the purring gets louder. "Stop about there. Do you hear the engine right now?"
It's louder, whirring like it can sense that Noah isn't the one driving it.
"That's your bite. We're gonna ride that out to the space in front. When you take down the handbrake, it'll do everything for you. No accelerator needed."
With trembling fingers, I reach between us and release the handbrake, squealing as the car begins creeping towards the empty space at a snail's pace. Noah's gaze is hard on my face but I stare unblinking in front of me, guiding the car between the lines.
"I'm doing it!" I shout.
I slap his leg. "Stop staring at me and look!"
He doesn't seem to approve of my wiggling happy dance, leaning over to straighten up the steering wheel before pulling away again.
"When you press the brake, press the clutch back down too," he informs.
We settle into the space. I press the clutch down, and then I almost put us both through the windscreen as I press the brake all the way down too. His arm slaps across my chest as the jolt happens to keep me against the seat, the other banging against the dashboard.
I pull up the handbrake and bite my forefinger.
"The brake is sensitive," he enunciates each syllable, burning a hole into my cheek.
I think that's enough lesson time for today.