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Floriane always knew how she was supposed to feel.
She was supposed to pursue boys with a hunger, ignoring any qualms from her female peers. She was supposed to advance on them, to charm them, to put out. She could do the first two things just fine. As for the issue of putting out, well... That’s just exactly her problem.
Floriane is supposed to feel something when she messes around with boys. A fire in her stomach, persistent and alive. A fever that makes her blood rush with fervor as she pushes against the dry lips of this week’s suitor, hand splaying over his chest. That’s how Floriane is supposed to feel with boys.
Floriane instead only feels emptiness.
She knows it well, and she knows her limits. She’s supposed to be a slut, she’s supposed to have slept with plenty of boys by now. At this point, though, she can’t sleep with any boy because then they’d figure out she’s a virgin.
All or nothing, right?
Marie comes into the picture and Floriane is enraptured with her. She’s blunt, she wears her heart on her sleeve, and she’s almost invisible to everyone except Anne. Floriane feels drawn to her in a way she hasn’t to anyone prior. Marie asks Floriane to sneak her in to their practices, and after some deal-making, it’s sealed.
Marie is the closest thing to a friend she’s ever had.
The other girls don’t say anything about the lanky girl’s sudden presence during practices— they can’t defy Floriane’s authority. She’s captain for a reason, after all.
Sometimes, Floriane hears the occasional whispers in the locker rooms, when they think she’s not there. Floriane ignores most of it, keeping herself busy with spinning her lock until the day she hears some of the girls talking. “I don’t get what Floriane is keeping her around for,” one of them says. “What’s her angle?” Another girl contributes: “Maybe she’s like, Floriane’s little pet.” A few of them snicker before another girl adds, “Her own little pet gouine.” A giggle ripples through the group like that’s something hilarious before Floriane strides into the main area of the locker room. Floriane hears all the breath of all the girls catch simultaneously. She takes a stern look around the room, seeing their faces paralyzed with fear before she addresses them. “Mind your fucking business,” she spits, making a beeline to the door with her swim bag.
She hops on her bike back home, the day turning dimly into the afternoon. The summer days were torturously long, and even though Floriane was always out doing something or other during them, she still felt so, so alone.
Her father usually wasn’t home on the dull Saturday afternoons she would get home from practice. Her father, who was so distant from her yet always found a way to get involved in her personal life.
This Saturday was no different. The coffee he had made in the morning was now cold in its pot, the ashtray gaining the butt of his morning cigarette. Her father was an architect, always seeming to sustain constant business and as such, took up clients on the weekends as well as the weekdays. Floriane always went out before he went out, half to avoid conversation and half because she liked to look at the trees dotting their otherwise plain suburb.
Floriane knows that she’s using Marie. Well, maybe not completely, since she’s giving her something in return. Regardless, though, Floriane still feels sometimes like she’s abusing her patience. So when Marie snaps on her and tells her she won’t put up with her little charade of going out to see boys and having Marie cover for her, Floriane understands. Floriane also understands that if she turns around to go see François, then she’ll have lost the closest thing to a friendship she’s ever had. Floriane pleads with Marie, her hands interlacing with and tracing circles on the other girl’s.
Marie hasn’t had the same experiences as Floriane. It makes sense— people would say, in nicer terms, that Floriane was just more “developed” at her age than a lot of other girls. Marie still was very evidently young, her eyes full of adolescent naivety. It made her heart ache.
Floriane wished she could protect her from men.
Unfortunately, Marie can’t, and neither can herself. Her father is leaving on a business trip on Thursday, and François is set to come over that night.
It’s obvious what he’s expecting.
Floriane can’t be seen as a virgin, though. She ropes Marie into going to a club with her, the two riding silently on the empty car of the Metro after Floriane changed her shirt to a more adult, black number. For all the patrons at the club know, she’s over eighteen.
The club is pulsing with energy, everyone there bathing in red light as they sway and dance to the music playing in the background.
At first, Floriane doesn’t know how to integrate into the crowd. She has never been to a place like this before, a club in the heart of Paris. She danced, and was good at it, sure, but dancing for performance or for yourself is nothing compared to dancing in between hundreds of sweaty strangers, all dancing along to their own beat as it played in their heads.
She turns back to look at Marie, sitting idly at a table. It’d be irresponsible to leave her alone, she thinks, as she grabs the other girl’s hand and advances onto the dance floor.
Floriane, energized by the atmosphere of the lively club, moves against Marie, coming close to her face, again and again, in teasing motions. Eventually, Floriane tucks a piece of Marie’s hair behind her ear, the other girl’s breath silently catching. Floriane moves in, mere inches away from her lips, and hesitates. She can’t do this, she thinks, even if she’s in a club where no one she knows is there. Marie doesn’t go for it either, and before she knows it, Floriane feels a hot body against her rear, and she remembers what she came for. She pushes back onto the man behind her, dancing up on him. Marie stands there, paralyzed.
Floriane tries to ignore the poorly concealed look of hurt on the other girl’s face. It doesn’t work, try as she may, but she makes herself forget about it within a few seconds as she turns around starts kissing the man she’s been grinding on. He’s a little older, probably somewhere in his 30s— and after a bit, he takes her to his car, Marie trailing behind in the background.
His car smells like stale smoke, cigarette butts dotting the leather seats. Floriane wrinkles her nose. “Whas’the matter?” He slurs, obviously some type of intoxicated. “Nothing,” she says, and kisses him to silence his protests.
This guy is a total creep, and obviously Marie can tell, too, as she swoops in and knocks on the car door and saves Floriane from the hell she almost endured. After that, all the two girls can do is laugh on the side of the highway, Floriane rushing Marie with a hug. Hopefully it communicates everything she would never, could never, say out loud.
Floriane still has to have her virginity taken somehow, though, and she thinks about it for awhile. If François finds out she’s a virgin, the word will spread and spread until she won’t even have half a leg to stand on. It’s amazing how a single boy could take her power like that.
So, she decides to take the biggest risk of her life and asks Marie to take her virginity.
Marie pulls back and rejects her. Of course she does, of course she does, how could Floriane be so stupid—
And then Marie reconsiders. And she accepts.
The moment is horrid. Floriane lays down in her bed, under the covers, before shimmying off her jeans and panties. Marie takes a tentative hand underneath the comforter, gentle but hesitant. Her hand slips into Floriane, and she feels her breath catch. She’s never even done anything like this to herself before, too scared of slipping her hand down and doing things to herself to the thought of another girl.
It doesn’t hurt, really. Marie is being as gentle as possible, it’s just an unfamiliar feeling coupled with the fact of why she’s doing this. It’s not for her pleasure. (Nothing she ever does is for her pleasure. She lives to serve the male fantasy, whether she likes it or not.)
Floriane chokes up, holding back tears as she releases straggled breaths. Eventually, the tears slip out, and so does Marie’s hand. It’s over, and now she has to see François.
Marie leaves just as François comes in. They go up to Floriane’s room, kissing on the bed where Marie deflowered her only about an hour before. It feels wrong as François pushes her on the bed and starts making out with her. François slides her hand under Floriane’s shirt, and her blood runs cold. She hates this. She hates this. She always does.
Then, François is slipping off his jeans and going to slip off hers. Floriane grabs his hand, stopping him from continuing. “Attendre une minute, François, I don’t know if we should—”
François’ face twists up into anger. “You know what? Tant pis. I don’t need you for a good fuck.” He shoves her down on the bed, buttoning up his jeans and starting to leave her room.
“François, wait, please—“ Before Floriane can plead, he’s gone.
At this point, Floriane couldn’t care what poor, desperate girl he has sex with. It’s his problem now, not hers. Floriane doesn’t even need François to keep up her status. There are plenty of guys his equal that Floriane can play with. She doesn’t need him.
So, she goes to the party. François doesn’t talk to her. He doesn’t even look at her. She sees him going off with Anne somewhere, which she could give less of a shit about. Who knew having teenage diabetes could make for a good fuck.
Marie is there, too. She seeks out Floriane, and before she knows it, the two are in the locker room, a sizable distance apart from each other.
Marie doesn’t move. Of course she doesn’t. Even though Marie’s feelings are constantly on display, Floriane knows she wouldn’t dare act on them. Floriane knows she has to make the first move, if she wants to do anything at all.
“Come here,” she coos to Marie, who’s sitting idly by on the bench.
It’s a split second and then they’re kissing. It doesn’t take long for the kiss to get heated, Floriane slipping her tongue into Marie’s hot mouth. Floriane feels a burning, an aching, impossible to ignore deep in her core. It’s the only thing in her life that has ever felt truly, wholly, right.
She has to pull back eventually, though. “You see… it wasn’t that hard,” she lilts, going to the locker room mirror to fix her now-smudged lipstick. Marie looks thoroughly shaken, swiftly leaving as Floriane is asking Marie to save her if the boy she was flirting with on the dance floor is an ass.
Floriane knows if she chases after Marie, it’s over. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she can’t. She’s not a hedonist, after all. She doesn’t exist for her— so Floriane returns to the dance floor, and she dances. For the boy. For all the boys, until it feels like she’s the only one on the dance floor, bathing in the neon blue light. So Floriane dances, and she dances, until she’s not thinking about anything else. Not about Anne, not about François, and especially not about Marie.
She’ll tell herself she isn’t thinking about Marie, for the rest of her days, for the rest of her nights, her weeks, her years.
And she keeps dancing.
Until she’s not thinking about anything at all.
☆★☆