[Vulvacious]

EMILY'S POV

I woke up to find a text from Michael sent at 5 plus in the early morning informing me that everything was okay and that he was going to bed. The text was formal and had no mention of what had happened the night before. I did not think much of it.

I replied to tell him that I’ll be shifting my stuff back home for the holidays and we could meet for dinner or something if he wanted to.

I only received a reply from him late that night, way past dinnertime, telling me that he already had his dinner and he hoped I was not waiting for him.

His message sounded overly enthusiastic, infested with an unusual amount of exclamation marks. It was uncharacteristic of him but yet again, I did not pay much attention to it.

The long and draining semester was finally over and I was busy making plans with old friends after all.

I only felt that something was amiss a few days later when my elation had died down. I realised that he had been taking a very long time to reply my text messages and a couple of times, I even had to text him again before inciting a response.

I decided to send him a long message, explaining my thoughts and asking if anything was wrong. Once again, I waited half a day for his reply, which was so short; it really blew my mind away. His reply was simply “Nothing’s wrong!! Don’t worry!!”

Finally, I decided to speak to one of his close friends to ask if he was okay. I thought perhaps he was dealing with some personal issues and I wanted to help if I could.

To my immense shock and disappointment, I learnt that he had actually been seeing another girl. All those times that he was baiting me with his sweet gestures, he had actually been doing the same or more with the other girl.

I was not only devastated for myself, but I also felt a deep sense of guilt towards the girl. I felt sorry for her and even contemplated messaging her on Facebook to warn her.

Alas, my guilt did not last long as they got together one week later.

By the time I found out through Facebook, their status update had already garnered 52 likes. I felt incredibly cheated.

It was then that I realised how hard I had fallen for Michael.

I sank into a state of depression for a few weeks, moping around at home and refusing to go out. I had never in my entire life felt so cheated by someone. My heart ached so badly, yet there was nothing I could do about it, no one to blame, but myself for being weak and falling in love so easily.

I will never know for sure if he actually harboured any real feelings for me in the short time we were close to each other. I wondered if it was possible for a guy to go out of his way to treat a girl so well when in fact he didn’t like her at all. Could it be that kissing and fondling a girl was something perfectly normal to him that he could do that with just any girl? I simply couldn’t come to terms with his actions towards me and I started questioning the intentions of all guys in general. Were they all like that?

I remembered feeling so skeptical and angry towards the idea of relationships that I almost got a tattoo to serve as a painful reminder to never fall in love again.

***

One day as I was in bed watching No Strings Attached (a movie about friends with benefits) in bed, something struck me.

Remembering a conversation about fuck buddies that I had with a good friend once, I started picking myself up as an idea formulated in my mind.

I decided to test the concept of fuck buddies. Somehow in my heartbroken state, I thought that perhaps the solution to my problem was to leap into a commitment-free relationship. To fight fire with fire; I thought getting myself a fuck buddy would be just the lesson I needed to teach me how to toughen my heart.

I opened up my address book, clicked on “Ethan“ and started composing a message...