I lied. Completely.
I was 17, he was 19. I felt like a freak of nature because I had never had any sort of physical contact of the sexual flavor from either gender. He was one of my best friends and I was helping him deal with an ex-girlfriend who had hurt him badly. Everyone had always thought that we were dating, but we were just really close friends who had a lot in common. One day, however, someone asked us the right questions:
"Are you guys going out?"
an exchanged look between the two of us ... "no."
"Well ... why not?"
Why not, indeed? What were we afraid of, exactly? So, we talked about it. For three hours. About our mutual attraction, about how well we got along, about how many friends we had in common, and about both how well and how badly it could go.
Then, he asked me out. And I said, "yes."
Four hours later, after my first (and, really, only) date, we were watching The Kentucky Fried Movie in his parents' basement and he looked at me, grimacing, too afraid to kiss me.
So I kissed him.
After a while (a little bit of a while, actually), he looked really disturbed for a minute and said "That wasn't your first kiss, was it?" in a tone that a person would also say "You don't have leprosy, do you?"
So, of course, I said: "No, no ... of course not."
He never did find out.