I'll Sing You One Last Song and then I'm Gone (Tokio Hotel Fan-Fic)

Chapter 25

This story is written by @xAnDeinerSeitex She wrote this story on a website called TokioHotelFiction.com. I was able to locate her and found out she had a wattpad account. She has given me permission to post it on here. @xAnDienerSeitex aslo has a new updated version of the story, as seeing this one is a few years old. If you like to read that one click the external link on the side. And I would like to say I have no rights to this story and I am NOT the writer. I would also like to thank @xAnDeinerSeitex for writing this great story and letting me post it on my account.

Come on, Ash, you wear makeup, you know how this goes,” Alyssa chided me with a dramatic roll of her eyes, pulling her eyeshadow brush back a bit to give me time to blink some of the stray powder out of my eyes. “If you keep moving, I'm going to mess it up, and you're going to look like a freak.”

It took all I had in me not to rub the crap out of my eyes. The extent of my makeup was usually just a bit of eyeliner, so this whole makeover deal was totally new to me. I wasn't used to the powders and the sparkles and the brushes and the wands and the tubes and the poufs. However, on prom night, you often go out of your way to look extra-special, so, when Alyssa, who would be going to school next year to be a cosmetologist (as I find so many girls I know are, for some reason), offered to do my makeup for me, I didn't hesitate to accept.

In the guest room of Alyssa's house was only Jenna and I. Our moms were downstairs socializing, and only Alyssa's dad had made an appearance. Jenna's parents were newly divorced and her dad moved to Texas, and I hadn't seen the unsavory monster I'm forced to call my father in days. Nobody really knew where he was, and Mum and I didn't care enough to try to find him. The whole thing about being able to come to Alyssa's with me that night made Mum really happy, because, now that she was slowly going into remission, she was more able to get out and do things. It had been a while since she got to sit down with women her own age and just shoot the breeze, and her face lit up when Mrs. Ceded and Mrs. Thornton – who were longtime friends, since Alyssa and Jenna have been friends since second grade – invited her to sit down for coffee with them while we went upstairs to get ready.

Similarly, we knew the guys were all at Joey's house getting ready (even though Joey lived the farthest away). My date for the event was obvious. Alyssa and Ben, who I still occasionally call Blondie just to tease him, had been together since the end of eighth grade, so they were going together, and then Jenna, not wanting to be alone, conned Rob into being her date for the night. Even though the guys weren't supposed to see you beforehand, or so they all told me, it didn't stop us from texting them obsessively.

In reality, I seemed to be the only one who was truly excited for this night. To Alyssa and Jenna, it was just like another party, but it was so much more to me. When I was little, I used to dream of my prom night – what I would wear, how I'd have my hair done, who my date would be. Last year, for the junior prom, I was still socially ostracized, still carrying the leaden burden of being a misfit, and, to save myself the humiliation, I just didn't go. This year, though, was different. Now I had friends. Now people liked me. Now people would notice if I wasn't there. Thus, my time had come to dress up like a princess, get my hair and makeup done, and walk into the hotel prom was being held at on the arm of the guy I could have only dreamed of attending with, ready to turn heads and outshine everyone else.

I patiently waited while Alyssa finished rubbing stuff all over my face, and, expecting to see myself looking like a fake little overdone doll, I was pleasantly surprised to see how amazing I looked. I never thought of myself as the classical pretty-girl type, but, with my prom style, I was beginning to look the part. The light smoky look she'd given me made the color of my eyes pop, and somehow, that enhanced everything else about me. With that done, and my hair already curled into an adorable style, I was more than excited to slip on my dress.

Back when I went dress shopping with Ellie and Sam, I picked out my dress for a number of reasons, and seeing it again brought a little cloud of despair over my head. When I saw it in the store, I knew I had to have it. At first, I thought I only liked it because it was absolutely beautiful. It was black, which screamed elegance to me, with a host of rhinestones around the sweetheart neckline. On the fitted middle part of the dress, the fabric folded over itself many times horizontally in a flattering pleated pattern spilling down my chest and stomach, and the silky fabric fanned out the slightest bit when the pleats stopped at the dropped waistline. Something about the gown had seemed familiar to me, and, at first, I couldn't place from where.

Then, as I was staring at it hanging in my closet a few nights ago, I realized exactly where I had seen the dress before. The day I met Bill, I dreamed with him twice. Once was in the Meadow, then, later, he and I wound up at the Bistro for the first time, both dressed to the nines for a private sort of formal event. Bill had been dressed in an atypical sort of formal wear, and I showed up to our event wearing the dress I had purchased to wear to the prom.

The realization brought tears to my eyes. Like their personalities, their gift ideas, and their feelings for me, my beautiful ball gown was just one more check on the list of things that Bill and Joey were unknowingly forced to share.

But, I didn't want to think about Bill tonight, as I so often found myself doing. Tonight was my night. Bill wasn't here, Bill wasn't my date. Tonight was about Joey and I, and I was determined to make sure that nothing changed that.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, it came time to slip into our gowns. At first, I wasn't sure why the makeup and hair came before the gowns, but it was quickly explained to me that the hair was “to get it out of the way” and the makeup was so we didn't get various cosmetics on our expensive dresses. We helped each other into our gowns, and, once we were entirely situated with them, as well as our shoes and accessories, we stood in the full mirror in Alyssa's bathroom, admiring how stunning we looked.

I don't mean for this to sound conceited or anything, but, in my honest opinion, I looked the best of the three of us. My hair curled down my back, my simplistic jewelery emphasized the glitz of the dress, and my makeup was, thanks to Alyssa, flawless. The other two were naturally beautiful girls, but I felt like their choices for the night did them a huge disservice.

Alyssa had chosen to go with a lengthy, frumpy purple gown, but it seemed like it was a size too big for her, and the zippered back forbid us from fixing that problem. Not only was it too big, but it was too revealing, and the combination of it all was awful. The slit went too far up her leg, and the deep v-neck was too low, so she was alternating between showing too much cleavage, or revealing her black, lacy panties she'd chosen to wear underneath, citing “big plans” with Ben after the event. Jenna, on the other hand, had gone in the exact opposite direction. Her “formal gown” was a tiny little cocktail dress, cerulean in color and covered entirely in fake gems and glittery bits. Usually, the neckline on the dress would be flattering, but Jenna was considerably flat-chested, “almost concave”, as she often said, so it fit her very strangely. Also contributing to the atrocity was her decision to pair the too-much dress with a large diamond necklace, with matching earrings and bracelets.

Alyssa was a puffball. Jenna was one giant sequin. I was a princess.

But, of course, I didn't tell them that. Being the “good friend”, I pretended to be stunned, taken in by their “beauty”. Even though they looked more like disasters, I assured them several times that they looked like absolute royalty. Maybe that kind of thing is what Ellie was talking about when, during her ranting, she called me fake.

After making a grand announcement to our eagerly waiting mothers, the three of us paraded down the stairs to the complimentary oohs and aahs. The other two were flooded with flattery, but, Mum didn't really need to say anything for me to know what she thought. When I first made my way down and she laid eyes on me dressed up like I was for the first time since I was a very little girl, her smile ignited, bursting across her face with fervor that I remember about her from way back when. Once reaching such a level of happiness, she took it one step further, and had gotten tears in her eyes before I even hit the landing. She claimed me into her arms immediately, squeezing me as tight as she could, though being careful not to mess up my outfit. The other two girls had their mothers shower them in words that I doubted were true, but mine didn't need to say a single word for me to know that she thought as highly of me as I did.

Once the big reveal was out of the way, then came the traditional pre-prom photo shoot. Each mother whipped out their own camera, snapping shots of the girls together and separately, for their personal collection. If any photo was going to be displayed at home, it would likely be of me. Of course, I enjoyed taking pictures with the girls, but having them taken of me boosted my confidence even more, if that were possible, at this point. With the soft, late-spring breeze reaching out to cradle me in its comforting warmth and sun shining brightly down onto us, I felt like a model, as though the photos were going to wind up in some sort of magazine instead of on social networking sites and in frames back at home.

The most exciting part thus far, though, had to have been when our group's limo pulled up, containing the guys who waited patiently for us to join them. The time had finally come for us to be united with our dates, and I couldn't wait another second to see Joey so dressed up. He usually stuck to the rules of your typical rock-star fashion, a perfect blend between preppy and rocker that appeased everyone, but he promised to get traditional on me for the prom. As I was in black, and the guys matched their dates' colors to prove their unity for the night, I knew anything he had put on was going to be slick.

Just the look we exchanged when he first climbed from the limousine was breathtaking to me, both thinking the absolute highest of the other. Joey always had a way of looking good, but that night, god did he look good. Every single thing that he was wearing – the shined leather shoes, the slacks, the button-up shirt, the dress-vest, and the jacket that fit him snugly in all the right places – was black, only except for the tie. I had shown him a photo of my dress, and he had taken to heart that it was entirely black except for the sequin and gem combination along the neckline of the gown. As I had with that decor, his tie added a simple-yet-elegant touch of silvery-white. The only thing different about him, aside from the obvious ensemble changes, was his hair. Usually, it was mostly straight, but it had a slight wave about it that I had always found adorable. Up for the difference for just one night, his hair was entirely straight, adding a sleek sort of touch to his already luscious look.

As the guys' parents pulled up right behind the limo, everyone gave the couples a chance to unite with their significant other, allowing for private compliments and sweet little nothings exchanged between our designated pairings. The other guys had no problems marching straight up to their sweetie, but, under the weight of Joey's gaze, I found myself almost hesitating to approach him. Nervously, I tucked my bangs out of my face a bit, feeling flush as I alternated between looking at him and the driveway. Knowing, though, that I couldn't keep myself away from him – the voice in my head that repeated her mantra about how amazing he looked wouldn't let me – I got over myself relatively quickly, and stood so I was only a couple inches away from him.

His eyes scanned ever single inch of me repeatedly, and I stood with one hand clasping the opposite wrist behind my back, rocking a bit, enjoying the feel of him taking me in. Under his radar, I thought about just how badly I wanted him to see me, to like what he saw. I was preoccupied with drinking him into care, but all I knew was, I wanted what I saw. The longer he looked, the more I liked it, and thus, the quicker the big decision I had to make was finally made.

A couple weeks ago, while the two of us were hanging out at his house, Julian and Rosetta were working late to cater to a party, leaving Joey and I entirely by ourselves late into the night. At first, things had been perfectly normal. We got something for dinner and spent the night just hanging out, enjoying the company, which is what he and I always did when we were by ourselves with nothing better to do. However, things quickly changed in the middle of a round of that dancing video game he and I loved to play, to see who could beat the other. At a song I was unusually good at, he had, for the first time, beaten me by a very small margin, and, playfully berating him for my loss, I went to shove him backwards so he would be stretched across the sofa. However, he saw this coming and grabbed my wrists as he tumbled, which sent me crashing down on top of him.

We giggled about it together for a moment, and after we exchanged apologies – him for beating me and me for, in turn, beating him in a different, more literal sense – I smiled at him and leaned down to plant a kiss on his lips. This, as it sometimes tended to, deepened, only, this time, it felt so much different than before. Our kiss lasted much longer than usual, and I began to feel things that I had never experienced before. In the brief little blips of conscious thought between just savoring these intensified feelings, I dissected my new desires, the ones urging me to just not stop kissing him, to take things farther, and I knew right away what was going on.

You see, though it was the end of May, and he and I had been together since the very beginning of November (before we made it official not all that long after we met), unlike all the other couples our age, we had never consummated our relationship. Despite that it was going on seven months of being absolutely crazy about him, loving him in ways I never knew possible, making out was the absolute farthest we had gone together. Due to my incredible lack of social skills in the past few years, I've never really had boyfriends with which to do things like that with, and the thought of losing my virginity to Joey didn't even occur to me until that night. But, I felt ill-prepared for such a thing, and, nervous, I stopped. Though he was on the same wavelength as I was, he didn't mind at all. This sparked the discussion of sex, during which he urged that he would never push me into anything, ensuring that we could take that step when I was ready, and not a moment sooner. “I love you,” he told me with an earnest kind of expression. “I don't need sex to prove that.”

Since that night, I've been relatively careful with myself. Once that passionate flame called lust was ignited inside of me, everything about Joey had instantly become more intense, even though I'm sure it was all in my mind. I had begun craving him, and I assumed that I would likely not stop until I had him in the way I wanted to, and maybe not even after that. I had never done such a thing before, never wanted someone this way so badly, so I wasn't sure. Maybe I would feel like this forever, always wanting each kiss to last a bit longer, each embrace not to stop there.

Finally, with my feelings beginning to get the best of me, coupled with all the high-school movies I had ever seen, I had come to my decision. Prom night was going to be the night that things got carried all the way. I had never been more sure of wanting something in my life.

Luckily for me, Joey seemed rather into my ensemble for the night, as much as I was his, so I wasn't thinking it would be hard to coerce him into it. “Oddio, Stellina,” he breathed, finally looking me in the eye again, instead of having them glued someplace on my body. He grabbed both my hands into his own, smiling brightly at me. “You look absolutely incredible.”

“You don't look so bad yourself, sir,” I chuckled back to him, almost missing the collection call of our parents, urging us all to group together once again for yet another barrage of photographs.

Julian and Rosetta knew someone who did portraits for a living, so they got him in on all of this, assuring us professional quality photos so that we didn't have to pay the outrageous prices for the horrible at-prom photos everyone always seemed to obsess over. The woman took all sorts of shots, but I felt like a superstar when I was either by myself or paired off with Joey, acting like we were a high-class, in-demand couple instead of just high school kids going to prom.. The confidence shone through brightly on my face, and it made Mum tear up again. Before we left, she told the woman she would pay whatever she needed to in order to obtain each and every shot that I was in.

Soon enough, we found ourselves piled into the sleek, black limousine, being chartered away to the hotel on the other side of Rhodes at which prom would be held. San Pietro had staked their claim on the only ballroom on this side of town, so the closest place with a suitable event hall was the only four-and-a-half-star hotel on the safer side of Rhodes. We passed the time by just chatting, hyping up the night and getting ourselves that much more excited for it all. I couldn't help but notice that I was the most psyched for this, but I didn't let it slow me down.

A lot of our classmates were already there, flooding into the building as we arrived. In the parking garage, where the limos were to drop students off, we were queued behind a couple other cars, and I didn't mind the wait, since it gave me time to admire all the outfits of the people streaming into the building. Some people looked like royalty, others like high-class fashion disasters, but it didn't stop me from looking. I was so overcome by curiosity and wonderment of it all, I couldn't help myself.

The walk from the entrance up to the event space on the main floor of the hotel was studded with people I recognized from school, all of which shouted their greetings and compliments to us as we made our way inside. Once we reached the actual ballroom-type space the actual prom would be held in, I stopped in the doorway to breathe it all in.

Everything about this seemed magical. The vacant dance floor dissected the room in two, hosts of elegantly-decorated tables on either side. Around and above the floor was a pattern of glittery balloons – silver in the center, purple in the corners, Marmara's school colors – tied together to create a weave of decor overhead. Silver and purple candles flickered in decorative centerpieces on each of the tables. At the back of the room, the DJ went through his music for the night as he talked with the principal, the volume low on his sound system as it played a song I almost recognized from the radio. All around the room, groups of friends united and excitedly gabbed about various things, the excitement and delight clear on everyone's faces.

I found myself singing the parts of the song I did know with a spring in my step as my group made our way to a table right on the edge of the dance floor, in the very center of the line of tables, right in a spot where all the attention would be on us, as only the popular clique would select. We set our belongings down to claim the table, and set off to greet everyone and graciously collect the stream of compliments that would flow our way.

I kept my arm weaved through Joey's, gradually becoming more sure of myself. At first, I was absolutely petrified, and of what, I wasn't sure. I slowly warmed up to the idea of being here, surrounded by people who were more than willing to chat us up and tell us how incredible we looked. We made our rounds, stopping to converse with almost every single person in the room, engaging them if they didn't do it to us first. What warmed my heart a bit, for one reason or another, were the girls who looked genuinely surprised to hear positive things from me. Self-confidence always has been and always will be a problem in high school girls, and the simplest of compliments brought grins to the faces of so many girls who looked absolutely wonderful. Sure, I may have told a few white-lies about how great some of them looked, because some dresses just never should have been designed in the first place, but everyone deserves to feel like they look amazing on a night like that.

My heart sank noticeably when Ellie and her small but earnest group of friends strolled through the door, taking in the atmosphere as I had done when I first came in. She hadn't seen me, but I had seen her, and a pang of agony surged through my body the moment I laid eyes on her. She looked absolutely incredible. She looked so much like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and I told her so when she bought the dress, and again when she dyed her naturally blonde hair a chestnut shade of brown for the event. Belle had always been her favorite Disney Princess, ever since we were little, so that had been when she was going for, waiting excitedly to see who would notice and connect the dots. I hadn't seen her with the whole thing put together, and she was beautiful.

Nervously, I broke away from Joey for a moment, pacing over to her before I could even think of what I was doing. Before last night, I would have had no problem at all approaching Ellie about anything, but now, my legs felt like jelly, liquefying more and more with each step I took. She had her back to me when I reached her, and without hesitation, I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around with a bright smile, eager to see who wanted to speak with her, and I couldn't help but notice that such a grin faltered a bit when she saw that it was me. I didn't want to let it deter me, though, and I smiled brightly at her, as though I hadn't noticed. “You really meant it when you said you were going to look like Belle tonight. It's like you stepped out of the movie.”

Her body language screamed how awkward she felt, how little she wanted to be part of this conversation, but I didn't want to just give up on the girl who had been my only friend for years. “Yeah,” she said back, eyes on the floor. “It's my favorite and it's senior year, so I had to. But you know that already, though.”

“Well, you pulled it off well. You look really great tonight, Ellie.” It pained me so deeply inside that the conversation took effort. Ellie had never quite been the best of friends, but she was mine, and the fact that there was a wall between us hurt.

“Thanks,” she fumbled awkwardly, looking up at me briefly. “You look really nice, too.”

Just as I was about to say something to her, to ask her if maybe we could talk at some point tonight, try to even things out, an arm wrapped around my wrist. “Ashley,” Ben said excitedly to me, not even sparing Ellie a glance, “there you are. Come on, we need you over with us. Alex Rasher and Katie Vanzetti want to take some pictures with our group, and it's not 'our group' without you.”

Who are Alex Rasher and Katie Vanzetti? The names didn't even bring faces to my mind. Immediately, I looked to Ellie, and, as she had in her bedroom last night, she snickered without any hint of humor. “Have a good night, Ashley.” And she turned back to the group she was talking with when I interrupted her.

I wanted so badly to drag her back to me, to make her understand that I feel really bad about what happened, but, always the doormat, I let Ben carry me away.

We all went through the motions of the night, doing each thing as the administration told us we could do it. They allowed enough time for everyone to get in and socialize a bit before we were called to order and organized so we could go into the adjacent room to collect our food from the catering service. After, when the servers were almost done clearing plates with scraps of food from satisfied kids, the DJ picked the music up, the lights went down, casting a sparkly overhead light as the flickering colors shone through the glittery balloons, and the entire class flooded the dance floor.

At the beginning of the night, your place on the dance floor explained your social standing at Marmara High School. On the outer perimeter of it were the kids who didn't really have distinctive groups, slowly climbing through the social ladder as you worked your way inwards. Thus, I found myself at the very center of the dance floor, holding tight to Joey, as not to get lost in a sea of people I hardly knew. As the night carried on, though, the kids began to mesh together into an amorphous blob of people accepting, this close to the end of our high school carriers, that we're all people and we all deserve a chance. It wasn't to say that friendships were formed, but I did notice people I never thought I would see together dancing in a cluster like the years of animosity were nothing anymore. Petty fights dissolved as the night went on, and, though we did dance with a menagerie of other people, the core group in the middle stayed strong.

As excited as I had been for the night, the actual prom kind of flew by. At some point in the middle of it all, Joey and I were named Prom King and Queen, though it technically should have gone to someone else since Joey didn't go to Marmara, but the kids in our grade overlooked that. We got the cheesy crown and tiara, and returned to our place in the middle of the dance floor for the slow song promised to the winning couple, though a bunch of other pairs used the opportunity to get a little closer to their significant other, too. Immediately after, the music picked back up again, and I was free to shake and grind my way through this high school staple, my twinkling tiara weaved into my hair to clearly display my social importance to this school.

I think I got off the dance floor only once or twice for a quick soda break, far too eager to dance the night away to care much about anything else. Joey had come with me to leave his jacket at our table, rolling up his shirt sleeves, displaying his ink to provide an interesting clash between elegance and punk-rock. I think that was when we exchanged his tie and my garter, too. He explained to me that it was tradition for couples who come to prom together, and the girl spends the night loosely wearing her boyfriend's tie, and he dons her garter on his arm. I giggled about it and went with it, not one to question much, and dragged him back to our designated spot on the floor to get the dancing going again.

Joey and I stuck together the entire night, only separating once when we went to the bathroom, and that was only a moment or two of separation. As bright as my star shone at that school, something about the night was still a bit unnerving. He did everything in his power to make me as comfortable as could be, promising to leave with me if it became too much and I wanted to head out. Trying to ease my tensions, he went out of his way to make me laugh and enjoy myself. I might not have had Ellie to get me through the night, but I did have Joey, and I couldn't have asked for better. Every time I looked him in the eye that night, when his arms wrapped around me, each laugh he forced from within me with one of his silly antics, I fell more and more in love with him.

Songs blended together into one, dances were done, laughs were shared, pictures were taken, and it didn't feel like very long before the DJ announced the final song of the night. After a brief conference with my group, we decided to get out of there as soon as the song was finished, not dawdling around and mingling as many of the other kids were going to do. Outside on the sidewalk, we discussed our options, and found ourselves at the restaurant across the street, having danced up an appetite.

Each moment that passed once the initial prom was over, though, was agonizing. I didn't anticipate going out for dinner afterward, as fun as that proved to be. I didn't care about the burger I got. I didn't care about the stupid things we laughed about. I didn't care about the quality time with my friends. Joey had sat next to me, and I didn't want the burger, the laughs, or the quality time. I wanted him, badly.

Jenna cackled obnoxiously as we made our way back out of the restaurant, clamoring over to the awaiting limousine on the curb. Acting enough like she already was, what with her stumbling and slurring and giggling, she asked as she leaned against the door, “So, now that we've had the pre-party, the prom, and the post-prom dinner, where are we going to go to get wasted tonight? I'm more than ready for booze.”

Though I had crash-landed my way onto the scene studded with lots of people at lots of different parties, I had only allowed myself to get drunk once, and that was when this whirlwind first began. Roger had always had a disposition for it, so, curious as to why he liked it so much, when someone broke out vodka at one of the parties Joey was throwing at his house, I dabbled in it. Unlike my father, I wasn't an angry drunk – quite the opposite, really. I remember little parts about the night. One kid refused to walk anywhere, and instead did somersaults to transport himself around. Someone else had taken a permanent marker and colored on various parts of their own body. Another still felt the need to sing every single thing they said. Personally, I was told I was a fun, affectionate kind of drunk. Apparently I walked around with Pringles in my mouth, quacking at anyone who spoke to me like a duck, but only after I went through the entire party, telling each person there that they were my best friend and that I cherish them.

While getting so drunk that I woke up under the coffee table in the basement lounge, sore, smelly, and confused had been fun the one time I did it, I vowed to never do it again. The last thing I wanted to do was come to need it, like my father had, because I didn't want to be like him in any way. I had no problem with anyone else in our little group going off and doing what they wanted, since, who was I to police their lives? I, however, had plans, and I was not going to deviate from them.

“I think Eric P's having a party at his dad's house. We could go there,” Rob offered, looking around at the faces in our group in search of approval. “Would everyone be cool with going there?”

Though the other three agreed, Joey and I shook our heads. “I don't much feel like drinking tonight,” I said to them, no longer worried about shaking my head and messing up my hair – that had been done long ago. “I kind of want to remember prom, so I think I'll stay sober. The two of us are going to hang out together anyway.”

All eyes shifted over to us, each carrying the utmost levels of suspicion, but, without making any comments about what they assumed would happen between us, the four of them bid us farewell after asking if we needed a ride, climbing into the limo without us. We stood at the curb together until they were entirely out of sight.

We had it all planned out ahead of time. Neither of us quite wanted to drink that night, but we couldn't retreat to either of our houses to be perfectly alone. Nobody knew when Roger would return, and the last thing I wanted was to be in the middle of being deflowered and have my berserk father storm in, and, in terms of Joey's house, Julian and Rosetta always came home at some point, and I didn't want to take any risks with being caught. Thus, I convinced him to get a hotel room with me for the night, at the same hotel the prom was held at. I told him that I wanted to spend time together entirely uninterrupted and do something different for a change, and I don't think he realized exactly what I was talking about by that, as the plans were set before the incident in his basement, but I remembered. Accordingly, because pregnancy is the very last thing I need right now, I had tucked a whole host of condoms in the duffel bag I had brought with me. It was stashed in the back of the limo, along with his bag for the night, and we had collected our things before we went in for dinner. Not noting how nervous I was gradually becoming, Joey grabbed my hand with a smile, and lead the way down the street back to the hotel.

I had only stayed in a hotel once or twice as a little girl, so I let him take care of the checking-in process so I didn't make any mistakes. The woman at the desk eyed us both carefully, clearly judging by our outfits that we had come back from the prom taking place down the hall. She had no grounds to judge us on, though, and handed over the room key without hesitation. We toted our things through the hotel and up to our room.

As soon as we got in, Joey dropped his bag on the ground and flubbed down onto the bed with his feet still planted on the ground, one arm draped dramatically over his face. “I love people from Marmara and all, don't get me wrong, but being by ourselves is a welcome change after tonight.”

I snickered, bending down to unlace my heels. My feet craved the plush carpet feeling of the ground, no longer damned to those fashionable little torture devices. “Ditto,” I told him. “I had a blast tonight – one of the best nights of my life – and I enjoy the people we were with, but you're my favorite, and I'm glad they're gone.”

When I looked up, he was looking at me as I tossed my shoes off to the side of the room, not caring at all where they landed. “I'm glad you had fun tonight, though. You deserved this. I'm glad I helped make your one and only prom great.” He didn't sit up, but patted the spot on our bed beside him. “Now you're more than welcome to come just lay down with me and forget anything outside of this room exists until check-out time tomorrow.”

“Or,” I suggested, feeling that familiar heat welling up in my body again, every part of me delighted by where I wanted this conversation to go, “you could come unzip my dress, because I'm more than ready to be out of it. It's beautiful, but breathing properly is nice, too.”

Grumbling about the need to get up, he complied, pacing over to me and assisting me with the zipper. Really, I could have gotten the dress off myself, but in all the movies I've seen, when people are going to have sex, they're tearing the other person's clothing off like it's on fire. There was nothing frantic about the removal of my gown, but it was good enough for me. Once I had been left standing in my bra and panties, purposely the cutest ones I owned for the sake of making good impressions, I picked my dress up off the floor and draped it over the closet door. To my dismay, once I turned around, Joey had already begun undressing himself, not allowing for me to do it for him. His tie and vest were gone, and he had already set to unbuttoning his shirt. By the time I got over to him, he was on the last button.

“Wait just a second,” I told him, loving the feeling of him seeing so much of me. His hands froze, and he looked up from his task with just his eyes, not tilting his head up to me. “I just wanted to say, thank you for everything tonight.” I inched closer, tucking myself into him, and, figuring that a hug was what I craved, he wrapped his arms around me, pressing his forehead to mine and looking into my eyes with a gentle grin. “Without you, none of this would have been.”

He shrugged a little as I embraced the feeling of his warm, smooth skin pressed against mine. I pushed myself in more, as close as I could be. Every part of my skin that touched his had become electrified with desire. “I'm obligated, as your boyfriend, to go on whatever kinds of excursions you want to, so it was my pleasure to be your date for tonight.”

If I tried to start this whole thing, it would be really awkward, like everything else that I ever do, and I don't want my first time to be awkward. I had formulated this plan, and now it was time to shine the spotlight on someone else, someone who knew what they were doing. After stealing a quick kiss, teasing myself just a little more, I looked him dead in the eye. “I don't know how to segue this in the direction I want it to go, so I'm just going to be really blunt. Do you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago?” Joey narrowed his eyes at me a bit. We've talked about many things in the last few weeks. “That thing we talked about doing at some point? You put the ball in my court and told me we could do that thing whenever I was ready to?” Now understanding where I was going with all of this, he returned to normal, nodding his head a bit, which, in turn, shook mine with it. My voice sheepish, I bit my bottom lip a little in anticipation as I murmured to him barely above a whisper. “I'm ready.”

Somehow surprised by this news, though I thought it was entirely obvious where I was going with it, he pulled back a second, examining my face closely, though I wished so bad he'd move his eyes to other parts of my body. There was so much of me I wanted him to see, and all he wanted to look at was my face, which he's seen hundreds of times. Our gaze held for a moment, and I understood that he was probing me for any signs of hesitation, making sure I wasn't just telling him this. Finally, he slowly asked, “Are you positive about this? I mean, I'm game if you are, and yes, it's a big step for both of us, but more so for you.”

Translation, “I'm not a virgin and you still are, so are you sure you want me to have one of the very few things in life you can never get back?” and the answer was “yes”. Not looking away, I nodded. “I've never been more certain of something in my life. I love you, Joey, and I'm sure that this is what I want.”

His lips curled into an amazing sort of smile, a devilish combination of both love and lust. “Let me run down the street really quick for some protection, and then - “

“Taken care of,” I cut him off, slipping out of his embrace to dart over to my duffel bag. I felt around inside until I found those tell-tale little packets, grabbing out a fistful and tossing them onto our bed after flashing them to him. “I planned this a few days ago, so I came prepared tonight. That's why I bugged you into staying here for the night, so we run absolutely no risk of getting caught. I've never done this before, so I didn't know how many we would need. The cashier looked at me like I was some sort of animal, so I would assume we're all set.”

I leaned against the wall as he paced over to the scattered pile, looking over my collection, or, at least, the part of it I threw. I still had more in my bag, just in case. “Two or three rounds, let's do this, but maybe we should save some of them for another time, because you have nine here, and I don't think I would be physically capable of that in one night.” Grinning at my innocent cluelessness, he turned back to me again, the look in his eyes absolutely sincere. “You're absolutely positive?”

For one reason or another, I giggled. I'm not quite sure why, but I felt like I had to. Something about this was amusing to me, and I really wasn't sure about that. I was about to take this huge step in my life, and all I could do was snicker. “Yes,” I urged him with a bright grin on my face, delight when he drew nearer and nearer now that the confirmation had been given yet another time. “I'm new to this, though, so I must request you take the lead this time and show me the ropes.”

Assuming it would need to be done, as soon as he was close enough to me, I ran my fingers over his pecks on my way to pushing his dress shirt off of his shoulders, delighted by the sight of his entirely bare chest. Once his shirt had been rid of, the look on his face became more intense, and, as asked to, he took the reins. One arm snaked around my lower back, just above my panties, the other a bit higher up, and he pulled just my lower half closer, grinding our hips together in the most delicious of ways as he dropped his face away from mine, leaning into my neck. The soft tickle of him mumbling, “Not a problem, Stellina,” into my skin was nice, but not nearly as great as the kissing and nipping that followed.

Before long, we had moved away from the wall, collapsing together onto our bed exactly the way we had on his sofa on the night that began all of this, only, this time, when the kissing got as intense as it had then, we didn't even consider stopping. It was at this point that hands began to stray, and, if I needed any more persuasion that this was what I wanted, that was it.

Clothing had been thrown, hands and mouths had wandered to wonderful places to do wonderful things, and everything was in order to carry this all the way. The anticipation from the build-up had been so much, we barely remembered the stack of condoms in bed with us, and it wasn't long between that all-important recollection and the moment Joey told me he loves me one last time before we shut the light and passed the point of no return.

I had always wondered what the big deal about having sex was, how something so basic could be as “awesome” as everyone said, but now that I had joined the club of the sexually active, I never wanted to resign. Everyone always went on about how great it was, but I never knew just how serious they were until I got in on it for myself. We carried on through the night, and the fact that I was growing tired didn't stop me from wanting more.

Except, there was one little snag in the whole thing, and luckily, I hit it toward the end, when the exhaustion from the pleasurable exertion was beginning to become evident, suggesting that it was our last run for the night. However, once I found that problem I didn't think would come to, I couldn't get past it. The problem wasn't in the actual sex, because that was mind-blowing. It lay in my emotions, dormant, waiting for just the right moment to pop out.

For one reason or another, all of a sudden, as we neared the end of our tracks, I thought of Bill. It sounds strange, to think of someone while someone else is literally on top of you showing you a whole new, amazing kind of world, but I couldn't help myself. Suddenly, I began to wonder, why is this happening with Joey? I care a great deal about him, but there would always be Bill, always be that wonderment. What is he doing right now? How does he feel?

Why didn't I find a way to right my wrongs and hit this milestone in my life with him?

I hardly had much time to think this, though, as the build-up of unfiltered bliss spilled over, sending me over the edge one final time. A mere moment or so after, the same thing happened to Joey, and the whole thing was over. No longer coerced to push forward by the tantalizing draw of pleasure, breathless and overcome by fatigue, he kissed what little breath I had regained back out of me and collapsed at my side. I left him to do whatever it was he needed to do for himself, rolling over onto my side and staring blankly at the wall, the magic of the mood erased completely.

Momentarily, Joey was back at my side, lying behind me with an arm draped over the curve of my torso, face buried in my damp hair as his lips found the back of my neck without problem. Convinced I was going to sleep, he whispered sweet things to me, about how much I mean to him, that he loves me. Soon enough, his breathing became soft and rhythmic, and I was left to my thoughts.

I don't know how long it took me to fall asleep that night. I was far too consumed by thoughts of Bill – how much I missed him, how upset he would be if he found me naked in someone else's arms, how I wished he were here with me – to keep track of time. So, there I lay until I don't know when, wishing, wanting, and mourning my love lost.