Happy New Year, Helena

It was the period coming up to Christmas, and, contrary to my bitterly cynical nature, I could feel myself getting a little carried away in the seasonal excitement, like I did when I was a little girl. I bought my presents weeks in advance, had wrapped them in similar haste, written up the cards, and when I got home from university in the midlands to my lovely family in the London suburbs it took no time to plonk every single one right under the tree. It was perfect. But New Year's was less so, in my mind.

I hadn't given enough thought in my daily doings, to exactly what I was going to do. Where was I going to go? I've got to have fun, I thought to myself, maybe not by going completely mental at a club, but I've got to do SOMETHING. I knew full well that my parents and brother would happily spend another New Year's Eve on the sofa watching the fireworks on TV and clinking glasses of wine, and there was nothing wrong with that. But I was 19 years old, dammit. I wanted something with a little more fire than that.

Luckily a few days after a cosy Christmas I got a text from one of my good friends, Michaela. She was throwing a medium-sized New Year's party-slash-gathering at her house. I grinned to myself. "What are the odds?" I thought. She asked me to bring whatever snacks I wanted, but know that booze was completely covered. Michaela can be so awesome sometimes.

Of course, New Year's Eve came by in no time, as unfortunately when you spend most of your holiday making up for the complete lack of work you've done in the months prior, you actually begin to wish days were longer. So sitting down in Michaela's flat, in a circle with a bunch of tipsy but witty students in their early twenties over a poker game was a well-needed break for me. I knew a few more people were yet to come before the party got well and truly underway, but I also knew I'd pretty much found my medium for the night in this poker game. I was pretty sure most girls at this party were straight, and there weren't any guys I was particularly into, so I relaxed into the lazy banter I usually had with Michaela's mutual friends. I'd scope the room again and meet some new people later, after a few more drinks.

At around 9:30, another gang of friends rang the doorbell, and Michaela, preening herself quickly in the mirror, went to answer it. A couple of punk-y guys with piercings and cool t-shirts wandered into the room shortly after, introducing themselves, and I had found a comfortable enough level of tipsy that I quickly introduced myself to them, complimenting one of the guys' hair, who I found out was called Rory. We chatted for a long time, and it seemed as though we had a fair bit in common, which surprised me, but again confirmed that I shouldn't judge off of appearances. It was when we were discussing one of our shared favourite bands that I noticed someone unfamiliar walk out of the bathroom.

Obviously I don't keep tabs on who goes to the restroom and when, so obviously there was another reason this person -- this girl -- grabbed my attention. Snatched it, even. I stared at her for a good minute or so. She had big brown eyes, and gave a standard white vest and jeans a strange dirty kind of glamorous. She was beautiful.

"Shit." I thought to myself. I was almost scared of her. This was the first time I had been this attracted to someone since I came out, and accepted that I was bi. "Shit." I kept thinking, all the while still staring at her, looking her over. Rory noticed something was a little weird -- "Uh, Taylor?"

"Oh gosh. Sorry."

"No worries. You're pissed aren't you. Absolutely wankered." Rory laughed.

"I am not! That's ridiculous. I've had, like, 3, super-weak drinks." I lied. I'd had 5, and 3 of them were shots.

"Well Shiv wants to play ring of fire. Maybe you should just, like, have a water or something." Rory laughed, walking over to the dining table that was now filling up with people. I laughed back, secretly wondering if I did actually look that drunk. I really wasn't that drunk. Really.

My eyes wandered over to the mystery girl's side of the room again. "Shit." I kept thinking to myself, I was getting a bit worked up. I went to get another drink and resolved to re-join the poker game, and try to avoid her for the night, seeing as she was most probably straight. But Jesus she was gorgeous.

Michaela was dealing, bubbly as ever, and her eyes glinted up at me.

"You having a good time?"

"Yes I is, bitch!" We both laughed, maybe I was more than a bit tipsy.

"Good because it's about to get a lot worse if you're joining this game. I'm fucking boss at poker."

"How can you be boss at poker, isn't it, like, completely luck?"

"Not completely." Said a husky, contralto voice.

I felt in my stomach before I looked, that it was her. The girl. Her eyes, naturally piercing and flirtatious, flickered briefly over me and looked back at Michaela.

"Oh, sorry, Taylor, I didn't introduce you. This is Helena. She's awesome." She said.

Helena smiled at me, and I, reluctantly met eyes with her.

"Really?" I said, grinning, forcing confidence. "Hey."

I was pretty sure my eyes said everything.

"Hey," she replied. "Are you actually any good at poker?" She leaned forward, probingly.

"Yeah..." I said defensively.

"Then you should know it's 80% bluffing, and 20% luck."

"Oh. Yeah." I looked so dumb.

Michaela's two other friends, mutual friends of mine, Johnny and Piers sniggered. She dealt the cards, and we all put our bets in. Michaela turned over one of the middle cards, we checked our cards accordingly. The game went on, and rather predictably, Helena's pile of chips grew larger and larger. Piers was flirting with her, knocking over her pile and purposely pissing her off, only then to playfight. "It's over." I thought to myself. "Alright, Taylor, she's straight, you can calm down and get on with the rest of the night now."

But every so often she'd look at me. She was so confident, so self-aware and assertive, it just made her more and more beautiful and thus more and more difficult to look at directly.

In the fifth round, she made an offhand comment about The Simpsons. I gasped and feigned offence, but I agreed with her more than anything. It had gotten pretty shit recently.

This was the first of many slating remarks that she made over the course of the night, and after the third one I began to chime in myself.

"And fuck the X Factor. I hate the idea of someone getting a record contract off the back of a sob story, or the fact that they're 83 or some shit. That's all that seems to happen these days."

"So true. You remember that woman that got to the finals because she worked at the checkout at Tesco's? I mean, sure she could sing but really Britain just loves an underdog.... until they buy their album, and realise that actually they're shit."

Helena laughed, and smiled, and looked at me as if I was really interesting. I wished that look went on forever.

So I kept going. We kept taking the piss out of everything that we could think of that we both hated, and she laughed at every single one of my jokes. We made private jokes with each other. When Johnny was out of poker chips and left the game, I moved and sat next to her. I very almost forgot how cripplingly nervous she made me until that point.

When Michaela dealt the next hand, Helena muttered,

"Go all in.", over my shoulder. I felt the armpits of my shirt cling to me a bit, she was making me sweat.

"You go all in." I retorted. I couldn't think of anything witty to say back.

"Fine." She said, playfully squinting at me. There was something very sassy about her; she had an edge to her that reminded me of Mean Girls, or a 'fierce' gay guy or something. I found it fascinating how that tied in with her naturally alternative style. I bit my lips and furrowed my brow to stop thinking about kissing her.

Before long, it was 11pm. Helena and I had ended up chatting to each other alone, and everybody else had presumably gotten sick of us and wandered off to some other people. We couldn't care less. I was loving it.

"I wanna get another drink." Helena said.

"Let's!" I replied, all too keenly.

"Nah. I promised my boyfriend I wouldn't get too drunk tonight."

I couldn't hide my reaction. I felt the awkward, but I was beyond caring. The one time the cynic in me had kept quiet, and let me enjoy her company too much, and she's straight.

"Oh." I said, icily.

There was a short silence. She smiled widely at me, as if she saw something.

"I don't have a boyfriend."

This time I just raised my eyebrows in surprise.

"Oh!" I was blushing.

"I hate couples. One of my friends said that to me at a party last week. I was like, why did you even come to the party then? Why didn't you just stay with him? I never understand that stuff." Helena ranted on.

I smiled in relief at her. I could feel my eyes burning at her, I couldn't help it. I wondered if she was straight. I wondered if straight girls even read anything into that kind of maintained eye contact.

She moved a bit closer to me, until we were standing face to face. I guess she answered my question. I nearly lost it. My eyes were going everywhere, I lost all the witty confidence I previously had with her.

"Ugh, I need a smoke," patting herself down, she looked as though she had realised something, "I left my bag in Michaela's room. One sec."

At that, she walked off. I cursed under my breath.

Before she left, she turned round and looked at me.

"Come on, then! Wait... you don't smoke do you?"

"No... but I'll come with... it's really hot in here."

As we walked upstairs, my gaze fell to her arse. I had to shake my head to stop the flow of lust through my brain. Everything about her was gorgeous, and just effortlessly sexy. Her skin clung tight to her every muscle, supple waist and back, her hair was thick and shiny, her neck...

We entered Michaela's room and she stopped in front of me to look around. It was a pretty cool room, and it was huge too. But I'd seen it before... I was still looking at her. Absent-mindedly, she flung her hair over one shoulder, and my heart beat faster.

For some reason, maybe it was the alcohol, maybe the fact that we were alone, or maybe, just maybe, it was a feeling of heat that I got from her -- I got a stroke of confidence, and kissed her bare neck.

It was the first time I had ever kissed a girl's anything, and it arrested me. Her skin jumped. She turned around. I felt shocked, embarrassed, and looked at the ground. She clearly wasn't into me.

"I thought so." Helena chuckled to herself.

I felt her arms on my shoulders. I looked up in surprise, and saw her long eyelashes flicker as she looked at my lips. My heart stopped, and she pressed her lips into mine.

Every sexual, feminine image that had ever roused any feelings in me seemed to amalgamate into this explosion of thick red lust. She pushed her soft breasts into mine. I could feel the feint muscles of her stomach through the thin fabric of her vest. God I wanted her. She softly, but firmly pushed her tongue into my mouth. I sucked on it. I reciprocated and she did the same. She started to moan softly. I was somewhere between paralysed attraction and wild animalistic lust. She bit my lower lip. This tipped me over the edge.

I pushed her onto the bed.

"I know you wanna smoke, and I'm sorry." I whispered to her.

Her beautiful eyes burned too.

It caught me off guard. I expected the assertive, cynical confidence from her. Instead, she looked a mixture between alarmed and deeply hungry. She was breathing as heavily as I was. I paused, reading her eyes, and they quickly flickered over my body as she pulled me to her. I was clearly dithering about for too long.

She wrapped her legs around me, and we kissed, breathily, hungrily, with a manic desperation. I loved every minute that her body was pressed against mine. It was like I suddenly needed it, craved it. She was moaning very softly, and each one sounded different. We kissed and kissed and mashed faces, until she pulled away.

Looking at my lips again, she took off her long vest top. She kissed me again, but I pulled away to look at her. She grinned. She was wearing a black lacy bra, and her breasts looked amazing. Her skin shone beautifully against it.

I don't know what came over me, but next, I plunged my face into her stomach, and kissed it. I was breathing loudly, and she was laughing to herself in her deep seductive voice. She leaned forward and pushed me off, still laughing. She had that look in her eyes, the one that I saw when we first made eye contact. It was primal, and dominating, and it made me feel like a child being chastised. She crawled on top of me, on hands and knees, and held her face over mine. She looked like a fantasy. I tried to kiss her, but she pulled her face away from me. She was playing some kind of game. I was trying to steady my breathing.

She gripped my shirt, and pulled it off me. Her eyes flicked over my body again, for a longer time, and then she paused, and laughed. The tension fell. I sat up.

"What?"

She looked at my bra, then motioned to hers. I thought it looked familiar. We were wearing the same one.

"Lesbian problems." She laughed, and I laughed too.

When the laughter died down, her gaze dropped to my trousers, and then cheekily back to me.

"Are you wearing a matching set?"

I grinned nervously. "... I don't remember."

"Okay," she said, getting up, walking over to the door, she locked it. "Let's find out then, shall we?"

I sat up, and then kissed her as she undid my trousers, and forcefully slid them off in one action. I held her face to kiss her some more, and then, before I'd even come close to having enough, she pulled away and tugged my knickers down. I was breathing audibly again.

She looked up at me, and it was my turn to be scared.

"Have you... been licked out by a girl before?"

My eyes widened, and my nerves began to make themselves known.

"No."

"Okay. Well tell me how you want it anyway."

I could only nod. I was staring at her; I bit my lip as I felt her breath on my pussy, twitched as I felt her lips, and then tongue.

A choked moan escaped me, and my back arched as she slid her tongue right through what felt like the very centre of my being, she was touching raw nerves. I could hear my wetness on her mouth, and she had to suck every now and then to get rid of it. Her tongue was carrying me, pulling my spirit along, lifting me, and before long I was moaning louder and louder, grinding against her face.

I gasped another choking moan. And another, and they built into this wave of intangible energy, as Helena continued. I felt the first twitches of an orgasm, and Helena began to penetrate me with her finger. I bucked involuntarily, and nearly screamed, gasping, writhing, the bed spinning beneath me. She kept going until it subsided, and then looked up at me through her eyelashes, pleased with herself, wearing a wicked smile.

Once my screams died I heard the countdown to New Year finish downstairs.

"Happy New Year." Helena said, her hands replacing her tongue so that she could move in to kiss me.

In my head, I couldn't believe what had just happened.