The First Time

8.

Meredith woke the next morning after the best night's sleep that she'd had since she'd met Derek, which was surprising given how depressed she was when she'd gone to bed. Nothing about the previous night had gone well.

She knew that she'd hurt Derek.

And not only was she still a virgin but even worse - she didn't think that she had it in her to do the deed with just anyone anymore. She wanted it to be with Derek.

But she was petrified of repeating the Alex scenario again. She didn't want Derek to think of her as some hopeless inexperienced kid. She wanted to meet him as an equal. But how could that happen?

She stretched in bed, loving the feel of his shirt on her body. She knew that it was the reason that she had slept so well. It kept the memory of him close and even though she knew that she should get out of bed and throw it in the laundry so that she could return it to him ... there was no way that she could do that. She didn't want to lose the smell of him. In fact just the thought of it, of him, of the way that his body had looked when he'd taken it off and offered it to her, of the lust that she'd seen evident in his eyes when he'd looked at her when her top had come astray ... was making her heart quicken and her body tingle in all sorts of unfamiliar ways.

At least they were unfamiliar until a week ago when she'd met Derek. But now they seemed to happen whenever she was thinking of him. She couldn't help but let her hand trail down inside her pants wanting to find some relief from the tension inside her.

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Meredith couldn't wait for her break at work that day, because she'd made a decision.

If she couldn't go through with doing the deed with some random guy then the only other thing that she could think of was to revert to her other great friend for help.

Books.

At many troubled times in her life she had resorted to books. They had been her friend and ally and had never wronged her. Surely she could learn a lot from them. It wouldn't be the same as the real thing but it would be an lot better than knowing nothing at all.

She knew that she would be too embarrassed to actually borrow one on the subject and take it home but that didn't mean that she couldn't take her break and try to read up as much as she possibly could about the subject while she was at the library. And hopefully they would have plenty of illustrations so that when she got up close and personal then she wouldn't react like she had with Alex.

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Sunday afternoon, Derek stood outside the main library and looked up at the building contemplating yet again if he was doing the right thing.

He still really had no idea. But the one thing that he was sure of was that he couldn't get Meredith out of his mind. Christina hadn't been able to help much last night but she did at least know where Meredith worked and that had led him to decide that he needed to study in the library today.

He figured that he had some tests coming up that he could use as an excuse for being there. And he'd already planned that if she accused him of not giving her space or time to take care of whatever it was that she needed to 'take care of' then he would just plead that Mark was making too much noise for him to be able to concentrate at home. He was sure that she would believe that - anyone who knew Mark would.

She didn't have to know that the only reason that he was even putting his foot inside the library was to see her. But he needed to know just what was going on with her.

She was such a contradiction in terms. One day she seemed shy and skittish and at least a little attracted to him, the next, he finds her at a party dressed like a classy hooker and with some other guy that, according to Christina, Meredith barely knew. A guy that obviously thought Meredith was going home with him.