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to contend with

      It’d be a pretty short story, and a pretty boring life, if we all lived happily ever after at this point. So, not content with just fucking each other, number one, number two and I set about breaking each other’s hearts.

      It makes sense, of course. I’d learned how to fuck, and how to have a relationship, how to be polite to partners’ parents and avoid answering too many questions from my own. It was only logical that the next lesson I should learn would be the one I couldn’t do the research for: how relationships end and why it makes you feel as if the whole world has crumbled around you. Or, as my mum rather succinctly put it: the heartbreak thing.

      I sound callous when I talk about number one. First Love had hooked me with his beauty and his wit and the fun we had together, but number one’s main attraction was his geographical convenience and willingness to actually get naked with me. To be honest, given his propensity to lie down and let me suck him off, I’d probably have fallen for him even if he’d had three heads and a drinking problem. But although he gave me fluttery feelings and brought me toast in bed on Saturday and called me ‘pretty’, he was clearly never going to hold my attention when other guys showed an interest.

      At school I’d looked enviously at the girls who had boyfriends. Not just mates who they flirted with, but genuine boyfriends, who’d pass them notes in class and kiss them at breaktime and admit to their friends they were ‘going out’ with. I’d spent most of my childhood being one of the kids whose name was frequently a punchline, the one who boys would approach, say ‘will you go out with my mate?’ and then run away laughing when I naïvely accepted. Having not just one but two guys who wanted me felt unusual and fragile, as if someone was playing a long-winded trick that would end with them both running away shouting, ‘Ha! She said yes! What a loser!’ I was convinced that, having been unfuckable for so long, being fuckable couldn’t possibly last for long enough that I’d be forced to choose between one and two. I held on to both of them because I assumed that soon I’d have neither.

      What’s more, beside these immature calculations, I genuinely loved number one—his soft, shy, easy-going nature and the way he looked at me with adoring and exhausted eyes. Even as I held number two and whispered filth into his ear and gripped his cock and rubbed myself against him, I knew I loved number one. He was special to me because he was the first, the one with whom I’d learned and played and experimented and practised. He expected nothing more of me than that I just keep doing that with him. And I couldn’t bear to break his heart.

      I began fucking number two in more risky places. Many of my friends knew that I was cheating on number one, but none of them were quite willing to tip him off. They were either as scared as I was of breaking his heart, or afraid of the bolshy goth persona that emptily threatened to crush them if they spoke up.

      So, in the absence of anyone to stop me, I kept going.

      One Saturday afternoon, my friends and I met at Amy’s house to hang out. And by ‘hang out’ I mean ‘pool all of our money and get as drunk as possible’. Number one came along, with a group of friends from his college—the loud, swearing kids we’d all known for years.

      None of our school friends would have dared suggest that we—one of the longest-term couples in the group—got a room, so I sat comfortably curled up with number one on a sofa, sharing a bottle of something that called itself cider and occasionally leaning in for a snog. I had one of my hands flat on his stomach, feeling the smooth, hard contours that were the result of nothing more than a few sit-ups and a hell of a lot of sex.

      By this time Amy was on the arm of a nineteen-year-old who looked down upon us from the lofty height of his two-year advantage. He kept touching her and getting brushed off, Amy being less convinced about the joy of sex when it was about to happen in her parents’ bedroom. Number one and I, unburdened by any Oedipal disgust about Amy’s parents, traded coy smiles and whispered to each other, growing hotter and more desperate to retire to the bedroom with each mouthful of sour booze that we swallowed.

      Then the doorbell rang, and my desire for number one dissolved completely. At the door was Jenny, who was now so fully immersed in number two’s friendship group that she’d started seeing one of his friends. She brought her current boyfriend and—in a move that both delighted and terrified me—number two himself.

      As an adult I’ve realised that mixing friendship groups is rarely a good idea. The people you know from school are more than likely to bring up embarrassing stories about your childhood in front of your work colleagues, your work colleagues will disappoint you by being hideously dull, and everyone will be left with the vague sense that you’re not quite the person they thought you were and perhaps it’s best to cross you off their Christmas card list. All that’s stressful enough without the added tension of knowing that at any moment you might forget which one you’re legitimately fucking and stick your hand down the wrong pair of trousers.

      The same rule of not mixing groups applied equally to our college-aged friends, but Jenny and I didn’t have the maturity to realise it until we introduced everyone. The two gangs didn’t exactly hit it off, as awkward jokes about the kids from ‘the thick college’ were met with an excruciating silence, a couple of multisyllable words were deemed ‘wanky’, and it dawned on each group that they were essentially rival factions.

      The main difference, of course, wasn’t one of snobbery but just understanding. The group from the vocational college had what sounded like a bewildering array of potential career paths. Future football coaches, sound engineers and electricians were met with blank looks when they tried to engage with the academic types. Those from the posh college couldn’t comprehend why anyone would want to actually earn money rather than sit in seminars being a smug arsehole, while the vocational kids didn’t realise that there was a formula to life that some of us were rigidly and unimaginatively following:

      ‘What are you doing after college?’

      ‘Well … university.’ The unspoken ‘of course’ hanging ominously in the air.

      I was definitely in the ‘smug academic’ camp. As far as I was aware, university wasn’t even a choice, it was just what you did after college. So during our brief discussion of the merits of tertiary education, number one gripped me tighter. He was decisively on the other side of the fence. While I snoozed through lectures, he’d complete an apprenticeship in something useful, and get a job that entailed getting off his arse rather than sitting on it. But given that no amount of regular sex with him had prevented me from handing in my UCAS application, he knew that at some point our paths would have to diverge quite drastically. Every day that passed drew us one step closer to the time when I’d pack up my bags and fuck a hell of a long way off.

      This tension wasn’t in any way relieved by number two—loud, brash, funny and university-bound. Like me. He was clutching a half-bottle of whisky and teasing me for drinking piss. Laughing at my flushed cheeks and wandering hands and subtly letting me know how much he disapproved of number one.

      ‘You two look comfy.’

      ‘We are.’

      ‘Hey, man.’ A sideways look at number one. ‘That’s an amazing pair of jeans you’ve got. Did you rip them yourself or did you buy them like that?’

      ‘I …’ I stutter when I’m nervous, he should have said. But he didn’t. ‘I … I d-did them myself.’

      But by the time he’d finished the sentence number two had turned away, trying not to notice number one’s hands firmly, possessively around my waist.

      As he started to roll a cigarette I pushed number one to the side, and made my way to the designated smoking area—Amy’s garage.

      There was a door to the garage through the kitchen. To get there, I had to walk past everyone in the lounge, cigarette packet on display to show that I was just off for a smoke. I walked quickly, willing no one else to jump up and say, ‘I’ll join you,’ or ‘Grab me a lager while you’re in there.’ I didn’t look once at number two, steadily rolling a cigarette on the coffee table.

      I settled in

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