I Didn't Mean to Sext Her

Clara and I were not dating.

Not technically speaking, anyway.

But we were kissing – a lot and quite often. It started in my bathroom on New Years Eve and had since then moved to bathrooms and closets around our high school.

While the location of our endeavors didn’t please Clara, I used every excuse possible to keep her from coming to my place, or having to go to hers. I hated the implications of a room with no imminent threat of someone catching us even more than I hated the imminent threat of someone catching us.

I wasn’t ready to ‘come out’; I wasn’t even sure what I’d be ‘coming out’ as. And I definitely couldn’t entertain the idea of telling my parents I was kissing girls on the reg, or, well, one girl specifically.

Somehow in my mind, I rationalized that a bathroom stall was a safer make-out location than Clara’s bedroom, mostly because I wasn’t sure if we’d just make-out there.

I also couldn’t entertain the idea of Clara, naked, doing things with me.

Clara wasn’t pushy when it came to defining what we were, or letting people know. Although she was out to her family, she wasn’t to our peers and preferred to keep it that way.

She wasn’t pushy when it came to sexual things, either. I knew she wanted more, to go farther but she didn’t force it. When I was with Clara, it felt like I wanted to go farther, too. I just didn’t know how to act on that without, like, throwing up from nerves.

It wasn’t until summer started that my issues came to a head.

Clara and I were no longer able to make-out during study hall, or lunch. I had to make time for her, and that meant one of our houses was going to come into play. Probably Clara’s, since her parents were barely ever home.

The first couple weeks of break, I played it cool. Clara was working a cheerleading clinic at our high school and I had a summer job at an ice cream parlor. Our schedules lined up, but it was mostly nights that we were free. (Which helped and didn’t help as you can imagine).

It was Friday night, and like most nights Clara and I were up late talking. She was still a little drunk from a party she’d gone to (she’d asked me to come with her, twice, but I told her it’d look sus).

Our conversation was taking place over Snapchat, as Clara sent me videos of her getting into her house, climbing the stairs, and flopping onto her bed.

She sent me another Snapchat, this one of a pouting Clara with the caption: ‘Come over. Fam gone for weekend. I’m lonely’. I sent her a pouting face back, typing, ‘Can’t. It’s late & past my curfew’.

She didn’t respond right away so I thought maybe she’d passed out. I put my phone on the charger, ready to resume the episode of Scandal I was watching on my Mac when she snapped me again.

I unlocked my phone, opened Snapchat, and hit her response, completely unsuspecting. I nearly dropped my phone at the sight of Clara, or well Clara’s breasts because that was mostly what took up the frame.

“What the hell?” I whispered staring wide eyed as the snap counted down and then vanished. Even without the photo, I could not get the image out of my head.

I snapped her a photo of my rug, with the caption, ‘Put on a shirt!’ And I wasn’t even sure if I wholeheartedly meant the command.

She snapped back immediately, this time a tasteful side shot of her breasts, which she covered with one hand, and the curve of her spine and ass. She wasn’t wearing underwear. This was bad.

‘Come on Ved. Give me somethin to wrk wit’ was the caption.

Five seconds later the photo disappeared. But her taunting voice in my head didn’t. I’d never sexted before, in text message or Snapchat. I’d never sent nudes. In fact, the only people to have seen me braless were the girl who measured my boobs at Victoria’s Secret and my mom.

But they were just boobs. Clara had a set. I had a set. Maybe hers were rounder, perkier, and overall just beautiful (because honestly Clara was overall just beautiful) but they weren’t any different.

I glanced at my bedroom door, sure that my parents were about to burst in and catch me. I took a deep breath and peeled my tee up over my chest, holding it near my neck.

I placed my arm across my chest, and snapped a photo, throwing on a filter before I sent it to Clara with the caption, ‘Satisfied?’

She responded almost instantaneously, an even more illicit photo of her lying down, the camera angled upwards from her waist, giving me just enough view to see that she shaved, or maybe waxed, her bikini area. ‘Take your shirt off, babe’ it read.

Sighing, I took off my shirt, tossing it to the end of my bed, setting my arms down for a second photo.

We went on for a little while longer, but Clara couldn’t coax me into sending photos of below my waist and I begged her not to do the same. I could handle breasts. I could not handle the rest.

By two thirty, I was falling asleep and trying to say good night to Clara.

I was resting my eyes when she sent me another snap, a video this time.

“Before you go to sleep,” she said lying down in bed with a tee shirt on, thank god. “I just want you to know that you’re sleeping over tomorrow. And I’m eating you out.” She kissed the screen. “Night Veda.”

Even when I thought I’d figured Clara out, she always managed to blindside me. But there was one thing that always remained true.

Clara West did not mince words.