‘Have you ever had the urge to kiss me before the night of the party?’ I say.
He’s quiet, and I listen to his breathing.
‘Yes. Once.’
‘When?’ I’m holding my breath.
‘That’s another question. You don’t get another question. It’s my turn,’ he says, and pauses to think. ‘Do you want me to kiss you right now?’ he says.
‘You already asked that,’ I say.
‘No, I asked if you wanted to kiss me. Now I’m asking if you want me to kiss you.’
‘They seem like very similar questions.’
‘Similar but different.’ He’s smiling, I can hear it in his voice. We’re facing each other, but I have my eyes closed.
‘Yes, I want you to kiss me,’ I say, my voice rushed and shaky. It feels like the single bravest thing I’ve ever said.
Before I have time to go into a full neurotic meltdown, he leans over and kisses me. His kiss is so quick and soft, a gentle touching of lips, that I could almost convince myself I imagined the whole thing. I open my eyes, and our faces are only inches apart on the pillow.
‘Your turn,’ he says. And I know he’s probably saying it’s my turn to ask a question, but instead I decide that he’s saying it’s my turn to kiss him, and before I can rethink my decision, I take all my courage and I move forward and put my hand on his stubbly cheek and kiss him.
14
Fifty-two Minutes
I’m kissing Alex.
I’m kissing Alex.
He kisses my neck and my collarbone, and it feels more reckless and thrilling than anything I’ve ever done or anything I may ever do again. I feel like I am bursting, like I can’t hold the particles of myself together anymore, like I could power a city with the electricity coming off my skin.
We kiss for fifty-two minutes, until the red numbers on the digital alarm clock on the bedside table say 12:42am. For a lot of that time, Alex’s hands are in my hair, on my face, on my shoulders, wrapped around me. After a while though, they venture further, sliding under my top. I’m not wearing a bra, it’s not hard for him to find the bits of me he wants to find. I put my hands under his T-shirt and feel the bare skin on his stomach and chest, and it makes me breathless.
I can feel things getting more intense, and I pull back a little. I stop kissing him, mostly because I feel like I’ll lose control of myself. He kisses my forehead, then shuffles back, creating space between us, but then reaching his hand out to touch mine. We don’t say anything, we just lie facing each other, holding hands, until we fall asleep.
15
A Day at the Beach
The next day, while we’re having breakfast, I am nervous. I’m keeping my head down and hoping no one notices the faint rash I have near my mouth from Alex’s stubble rubbing against me, and if they do, that they think it’s just part of my sunburn or my acne scarring.
Alex is not currently at the table. I think he’s still asleep. He barely stirred when I snuck out of the bed early this morning. I messed up the blankets on the trundle on my way out the door, so it looked like someone had been sleeping there.
I nibble on a scone and try to stop myself thinking about last night’s kissing, even though my mind keeps looping endlessly back to it.
The kissing was glorious. The kissing was terrifying.
At about the seven-minute mark, a little voice wormed its way into my head, reminding me that Alex’s hands were touching my body and my body is a minefield of potential humiliations. When his hands went near my hips and stomach, I kept thinking about how flabby they might feel, and when he put his hands on my back, under my T-shirt, I flinched away, because if he went any higher on my shoulders, he would feel the scars.
I want, so badly, to be the person who loves and is proud of her body, who says I am not giving in to the bullshit that is pressed on every girl from birth that what she looks like matters more than anything else. But the truth is, what I’ve looked like has shaped my life, or at least my recent life. So I am not the enlightened person I want to be. I wish I didn’t care what Alex thinks of my body, but I do. I’ve never let anyone as close to me as I let Alex last night. I don’t even like people kissing me hello or goodbye, and last night I let someone press his face against my face for fifty-two minutes.
I didn’t let him into my underwear (he didn’t try, in truth). That’s an area of my body that represents anxiety I’ve never needed to fully contemplate before. For a start, I am not completely hair free. I’m trimmed down and waxed enough to wear bathers, but there is still lots of hair there and I’m not sure if I am supposed to have hair there. I mean, obviously I know I am biologically supposed to have it, and that women can do whatever they like with their body hair, but I still have a bubble of fear that maybe every single other girl my age keeps everything completely waxed or shaved off, all the time. I know Lucy gets waxed regularly, and I’m pretty sure she’s getting everything removed.
I once read online that guys my age watch so much porn they don’t even realise that women naturally grow pubic hair. Surely that can’t be true. Can it?
Not to mention, what if I am…weird down there. Maybe I’m lopsided, or my insides are on a weird angle or curve the wrong way or are too long or too short or too big or too small or just don’t feel right or look right or taste right. I wish there was some way of verifying for sure if I have a regular, standard, run-of-the-mill vagina and vulva before anything more happens with Alex. I could see a doctor, but I would be too embarrassed to actually ask the question (‘Hello doctor, do you think a nineteen-year-old guy with an unspecified amount of sexual experience would think it all looks generally okay down there?’). The internet says genitalia come in all shapes and sizes, that there is no right or wrong, and I know, intellectually, that’s true, but it gives me no real reassurance because I’ve never had to face the real prospect of someone interacting with mine before.
I thought I had catalogued and processed all my bodily anxieties years ago, but being with Alex has made me realise there are so many more possibilities.
I am also worried about Alex’s expectations. He’s nineteen and he’s had a girlfriend. Who knows what he’s already done. We were in a bed. At night. Kissing. Enjoying the kissing. Any other person in my situation would probably have had sex, no problems. Well, maybe not, but they would have at least considered it. But we didn’t even get to the halfway point of having sex. (I don’t know what the official halfway point is, but I doubt we reached it. We might not have got to a quarter of the way.) I don’t regret not having sex, but I regret not being the person who would have had sex.
I just feel like I am so bad at this.
I keep secretly worrying about my vagina and eating breakfast while Zach chats with his father about politics, Mariella listens to Glenn talk about dinosaurs, Anthony plays a game on his phone, and Lucy stares into space, sipping at her tea every now and then.
Alex walks in the door, panting. He’s not still asleep after all. He’s in exercise gear and he’s covered in sweat. I can hear the music blasting out of his headphones from across the room.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Zach says.