Once Burned, Twice Shy

I met Lee when I started university: fresh-faced, seventeen and never been kissed. It wasn't exactly how I'd always imagined meeting my first boyfriend... The guy next door to me in halls invited me over to meet some friends, and somehow we ended up playing strip poker. I am in no way an exhibitionist, and especially so at that point: the lack of any male attention throughout high school meant that I had very little self-confidence in my body image. In hindsight, it was one of those scenarios where no one really wanted to play, but the pressure of 'Fresher's Week at university', that mythical time when all students were meant to be pulling new and crazy stunts, meant that an awkward shuffling after the half-hearted suggestion led to us actually playing it.

Despite my reservations, my competitive streak was not to be beaten. I started off with an excellent running streak - which meant that when I started losing, I had successfully half stripped the rest of the crowd, and they were out for revenge. Lee in particular had it out for me. Admiring a fellow competitive spirit, I surprisingly found myself increasingly interested in him. He wasn't at all what I'd always described my ideal guy to be - I liked cheekbones, short but scruffy hair, someone who could sing (with many fantasies of someone one day asking me out via the medium of song - a girl can but dream!). Lee had long, dark and slightly greasy hair in a ponytail, one of those skinny and slightly sallow complexions and seemed to have a preference for black clothing with chains. He was like no one I'd ever known.

Technically my next door neighbour lost the game first, but he flat out refused to remove his jeans. When it came to me next, I couldn't face looking like a coward, but the entire atmosphere changed as soon as I undid my belt. To my great relief we decided the game could end there, and from that night on our group was inseparable.

Katie was the other girl in the group, and we got on relatively well considering we had very little in common. It was a week or so later that I finally found out about Lee and Katie's history, walking back from a disastrous but entertaining pub quiz attempt.

"So, I think Lee and I might be going out again." Katie dropped the bombshell casually into our conversation. I kept my face absolutely still, trying not to show how accurately she'd tossed that emotional grenade. Lee and I had been having lots of late night Facebook chats - nothing too risque, but his flirty comments and my bumbling attempts to reciprocate had been the highlights of each day. The more I found out about him the more I liked - his sense of humour, the way he could take on my teasing and give it right back, the way he could turn stories from his childhood into hilarious anecdotes. And the attention was addictive.

"Oh! Um... again? You've been out before?" Luckily I managed minimal stuttering.

"Oh yeah, we've been out heaps of times. We're one of those on-off couples - we went to the same boarding school. We broke up last year when I started going out with Colin, but he was a complete dick so that ended before university. And we're both here and single again, so I guess it was inevitable!"

"Oh." It was taking all my energy not to cry. To my seventeen year old self, it seemed too cruel. I wanted to yell at Katie, "You've had him before! You seem to have had half of the town from the way you talk! Why, for once, can't it be me?" 

The next day, walking to breakfast with my next-door neighbour, I casually brought up the topic with my usual subtlety.

"So... did you know Lee and Kirsty were a thing?" I tried to keep my tone nonchalant and light, not like my heart was thundering in my chest.

"Oh for God's sake. Not again! Are you serious?" He snorted, shaking his head despairingly.

Taken aback, words deserted me. "Uh, what?"

"Let me guess, you heard Katie's side... What did she tell you?"

"That they were an on-off type of couple, and that she broke up with her ex before uni... Why, what's the rest of the story? Spill!"

"Ah, not quite the whole story. So, they went to the same boarding school and started going out years ago. But from what Lee says, Katie isn't exactly the faithful type. She finds a new guy she likes, dumps Lee and goes out with him until he gets sick of her bullshit. Then she runs straight back to Lee, repeat cycle. He's been her fallback guy three or four times now, but he seems besotted with her. It's a real shame, if you ask me."

Not the whole story indeed. Suddenly, Katie wasn't looking too good in my eyes. Sure, I might be naive and lack relationship experience, but I still knew right from wrong and treating a guy like that wasn't what a decent person did.

Fast forward a month. Lee and Katie were definitely going out again - it was hard not to see that they were with Katie seriously loving the PDA. My late night chat sessions with Lee continued but I'd convinced myself that he wasn't flirting - after all, how was I to know the difference between flirting and being friendly?

Both being engineers, Lee and I shared many of the same first year classes. One day after we'd spent an hour trying to balance jelly beans on our heads instead of listening to the lecture on the exact wave movements required for wave energy regeneration techniques to work, I was heading back to my room for an afternoon nap whilst Lee had one of his rare lectures without me. Halfway home, my phone buzzed with a text from him: Mind if I drop past later? Can't figure out our maths homework, and you always make the equations easier to bear ;)

Despite myself, my brain went into overdrive trying to analyse the text. Could it possibly mean that he was interested? But he was with Katie! But then again, she didn't deserve him with the way she'd treated him - and surely I deserved at least one chance with a guy? And maybe he did just want homework help, after all I was the go-to person for homework and revision help in our group. Praying that I wasn't doing the wrong thing - and not sure if I even knew what the wrong thing was any more - I texted back telling him to come around whenever he wanted.

True to his word, Lee appeared at my door a few hours later. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, looking as if I'd been doing anything except obsessing, I patted the space next to me. Bringing out his notebooks, he sat down. Internally I gave a small sigh of disappointment, albeit tinged with relief - which instantly disappeared when he turned, pushed me back against the wall and kissed me.

"You didn't really think I was just coming over to do homework, did you?" He murmured into my ear, running his fingers along my arm, then under my shirt, across my stomach, leading upwards. "I think I should go lock the door..."

I'd like to say I stopped him, or at least pulled back in a semblance of doubt. I'd like to say I sent him out of the door and was never again found in even the slightest inappropriate situation.

But I can't.

I don't know what exactly turned me from someone who always believed very clearly in right and wrong from someone who fully and enthusiastically became an accomplice to cheating. I can name some of the factors - the irrational voice in my head telling me that if I didn't do this now, then I'd never be with a guy; the fact that I genuinely disliked Katie; the curiosity to find out what sex was actually all about; maybe just the simple fact that I had a hot and very interested guy in my bed, and for all my talk of being a strong, independent woman, the reality was that I'd fold with the smallest of temptations.

Any joy I received from that night was turned to ashes when Katie knocked on my door the next day in tears, telling me that Lee had broken up with her. I've never felt like such a shit example for a human being as I did that day, comforting Katie on the very bed where I'd slept with her boyfriend.

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Lee and I became a proper couple just before Christmas that year. I never fully forgave myself, and only managed to start the process once we found out that Katie had (again) already been cheating on Lee with someone. She started going out with him less than a week after she was crying on my shoulder. I knew that two wrongs didn't cancel each other out, but seeing her move on so quickly helped lessen the overbearing guilt.

Eventually I told myself that I couldn't change the past - it was done, and over with, and in all honesty the consequences could have been much worse. The only thing I could do was try to atone with my behaviour in the future - by promising myself that I would never let myself get into any compromising situation with a taken man. I could never make up for my mistake, but I could make sure that I'd never hurt another woman like that again. I couldn't be responsible for that level of pain in a person - how could I respect myself as a person if I did?

Knowing how I tortured myself over this, it should have been an easy promise to keep.