Chapter 4: Happy 17th Birthday

At Jonathan's seventeenth birthday bonfire things take a dramatic turn in Emylia's heart.

I was invited to Jonathan’s seventeenth birthday party. Before going I went to dinner with David where he made it clear that he was pursuing someone else. If he was going to pursue someone else, so was I, and not that Zach guy. Someone who was already a threat to him. Jonathan. At this point I considered us really good friends, and I knew he liked me so I wanted to see what he would be like as a boyfriend. Tonight would be the perfect night for it. It was his birthday and I got him a present he could not turn down.

Driving out to his house I was almost about to call him and tell him I couldn’t come because I felt like I’d be rebounding on him tonight and finding his place was getting harder the darker it got, but then I found his place and all, which turned out to be a cute little farm property. Respect for a real country boy.

He introduced me to his family, and the friends that trickled in slowly over the course of two hours. When his friends were all there, they decided to play hide-and-seek on the property. Jonathan and I ended up being partners. We hid in the green-house, a place everyone forgot existed.

In the moment that we realized we were completely alone, something came over us; like we became two magnets just drawn to each other. We immediately started kissing like it was the first and last time we’d do it. He propped me up on the bench, kissing my neck and lips. I never knew he could be so aggressive. My heart was racing the whole time . . . until we heard his friend Natally call “Give”. We came out and he noticed I had a huge hicky on my neck. I quickly buttoned up my shirt so his family wouldn’t see.

Jonathan has always been raised to stay a virgin until marriage, and he’s never even been kissed as far as his family knows. We weren’t about to tell them at this point that he has been kissed before . . . at minimum.

Second round, we hid in the attic of the garage or “the man cave” where the make-out session turned into second base . . . and the very tip of third base . . . and again “Give” made us stop and come out. To this day, I couldn’t explain what I was feeling after that with him. I just know that I knew things were going to be very different between us from here on out. By the end of the night, we had made it through third base, but not home.

And when I was about to leave, I gave him his real present. One of my great uncle’s bolo ties from the 1950s. I could tell that tonight meant a lot to him, and it meant a lot to me . . . but for some stupid reason I couldn’t pursue him completely yet . . . at least not until David was out of the picture. Right now there was no room to figure out my feelings for Jonathan . . . even though it was something I really needed to do.