Mitchell and Nina: A Fairy Tale First Time Story

Everyone remembers their first time.

Their first crush. Their first proper kiss. The first time someone reached for their hand and held it as though it belonged there. The first time three small words were spoken and believed without question. And, of course, the first time love carried two people somewhere neither of them had been before.

Sometimes it is awkward. Sometimes it is perfect. Usually, it is a little of both. Whatever happens, it leaves a mark. Years pass, faces change, and life becomes crowded with other people, but that first experience refuses to disappear. It waits in a song, a smell, a room, or the taste of bad coffee, ready to return without warning.

Nina and I were young enough to think love could solve anything. We did not know much about broken promises, complicated marriages or the quiet ways people drift apart. We only knew that we wanted to be together. At that age, wanting someone felt wonderfully close to needing them.

Our courtship was made of small things. We shared music, passed notes and waited all week for a few hours alone. I knew the sound of her footsteps and the particular smile she gave me when no one else was looking. If she touched my arm, I carried the warmth of it for the rest of the day. If she said she missed me, the whole world seemed to rearrange itself in my favour.

That is what dreaming about love is like when you are young. The dream and the person become the same thing. You do not imagine endings. You picture next Saturday, the next kiss and the next chance to sit close enough for your shoulders to touch.

We were always finding harmless excuses to be near each other. A record needed playing. Homework needed discussing. Coffee needed making, even though neither of us made it well. The coffee was instant, too strong in one cup and too weak in the other, with grains that refused to dissolve.

I remember looking into the spiral patterns it made as we returned to the living room. The last dark specks slowly vanished into the pale foam while music played nearby. We placed our cups on the floor and lay beside each other, close but not quite touching. That tiny distance seemed enormous. Then one of us would move an inch, the other would smile, and the gap would be gone.

Our kisses had begun cautiously. The first was short and soft, followed by two embarrassed smiles. We did not know where to look afterwards. Then came another kiss, and another, until kissing became our private language. We could say I missed you, stay longer and I love you without speaking at all.

We never boasted about those afternoons. They belonged to us. Long before people spoke openly about every intimate detail, there was an understood rule about not kissing and telling. I liked that rule. What happened between Nina and me felt too precious to hand over to schoolyard jokes.

One afternoon, after the coffee and the music and our usual place on the floor, Nina suggested we go to her bedroom.

Her parents were not due home for hours.

My heart began racing before I had even stood up. I knew what the invitation might mean, yet neither of us said it. Naming the moment would have made it too large. We walked silently down the hallway, hand in hand. Halfway there, she squeezed my fingers. I squeezed hers in reply.

At the bedroom door, she turned and kissed me.

There was no bold declaration and no clever line. We entered the room together, still kissing, as though the kiss itself had brought us there. The room was ordinary—her bed, her familiar things, the muted sound of music reaching us from down the hall—but everything inside it seemed newly important. I noticed the light. I noticed the quiet. I noticed how nervous she was because I was nervous too.

We stood facing each other and played at being confident. We tugged gently at our clothes as if we were experts, but neither of us removed a thing. We laughed under our breath. We kissed again. Time slowed until it felt as though we had been standing there for hours.

Then Nina stepped back.

She began to undress, slowly and shyly, watching my face for reassurance. I wanted to look at her and look away at the same time. I had imagined this moment, but imagination had not prepared me for the trust in it. She was not a fantasy. She was Nina—the girl who drank terrible coffee with me, shared songs with me and knew all the ordinary pieces of my life.

When she stood before me, I thought of butterflies emerging from cocoons and opening their wings for the first time. That is how innocent the sight seemed to me. I wanted to stare forever, but politeness lifted my eyes to hers.

She smiled.

That smile rescued me.

I understood then that she was not waiting for me to perform or prove anything. She was simply asking me to stay with her in the moment. I went to her. We held each other, and the nervousness did not vanish, but it became something we shared.

Our first time was not smooth. We paused. We whispered questions. We checked each other’s faces. There were clumsy movements, nervous laughter and moments when neither of us knew what should happen next. Yet kindness covered every uncertainty. If one of us hesitated, the other waited. If something felt awkward, we smiled and tried again.

That tenderness mattered more than technique ever could.

There are no perfect words for the first sensation of two people becoming one, not really. Lovemaking sounds too polished. Sex sounds too plain. What I remember most is not the mechanics of it, but the astonishment. There was the warmth of her, the closeness, her arms around me and the impossible awareness that she had chosen to share this with me.

For a little while, the world outside her room stopped existing.

When it was over, nothing dramatic happened. There were no fireworks beyond the ones in my head. We stayed close. We spoke softly. I remember relief, wonder and a foolish certainty that life had changed forever. In one private afternoon, we had crossed a line together and left part of our childhood behind.

We believed we had become adults. Of course, we had not. We were still two young people who did not know what adulthood would ask of us. But something had changed. We had trusted each other with our bodies as well as our hearts, and that trust made our love feel larger than it had the day before.

The next time we met, we were shy all over again. Then she smiled that same smile, and I knew the sweetness of the first time had survived the morning after. Her bedroom became our sanctuary, a place we returned to whenever life allowed. We became more comfortable, but I never forgot the hesitation of that first afternoon or the gentleness that carried us through it.

People sometimes talk about first sex as a prize, a conquest or a rite of passage. It was none of those things for me. It was a gift exchanged between two nervous people who cared for each other. The memory matters because Nina was kind. I hope she remembers that I tried to be kind too.

Young love does not always last. Ours eventually met the same pressures that find many teenage romances: changing plans, adult ambitions and the slow discovery that love cannot keep two lives on the same path by itself. That does not make it false. A love can end and still have been real. It can leave broken hearts and what-ifs without turning every beautiful moment into a mistake.

Years later, I gave parts of that memory to Mitchell and Nina in SEETHINGS. Nina became more than a lost teenage love. She became the keeper of a softer version of Mitchell, the person he had been before bitterness and obsession complicated everything. Readers can discover more about Nina DeJong and the romantic twist she brings to his story.

The first time stayed with him because it stayed with me: the coffee spirals, the music, the walk down the hallway, the clothes that seemed impossible to remove, the nervous laughter, and the kindness in a young woman’s eyes.

People say the first time is unforgettable because it is new. I think it is unforgettable because, for one breathless moment, we discover how completely another person can trust us.

Our first encounter was sweet, awkward and simple. Later experiences gave us confidence, and the third time may even have been better, but nothing could repeat the wonder of that first crossing.

We entered Nina’s room as two young lovers who were frightened of getting everything wrong.

We left it believing we had got the one important thing right.

We had been gentle with each other.

That was our fairy-tale ending.

Listen to the podcast. Their first time was a magical one, wouldn’t you agree? Who knew guys could think that way?

For more of Mitchell and Nina’s story, please read my novel SEETHINGS. It’s free (for a limited time).

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)