I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 09: cherry seed

I first met Dominic in August 2005.

An unusually cold summer was chasing me into my GCSE year, and my friends were determined to cast one grenade before it snuffed us out — which, for teenagers, equalled a party. Tara Connelly had a rich uncle all the way up in Chapel Allerton who was supposedly travelling across the Mediterranean, and she picked up the mantle to invite the whole year to his three-storey house. Whether that was with permission, I've no clue.

Jacob arranged for his adult cousin to drive us and buy us alcohol as long as we paid, news which he announced with a smirk. It wasn't hard to understand the source of his smugness: this meant we owed him. And though Jacob was generally too nice to use it for anything bad, he'd definitely use it for something annoying.

The evening of the party was just as cold, but the sky was clear. The curtain of blue curled back to reveal the stars above, and I tried to identify constellations I had never learnt as I rubbed my arms for warmth. I didn't bring a coat because I didn't wanna get plastered and forget it at Tara Connelly's rich uncle's house.

Jacob's cousin was meant to pick us up at the football field since we all lived within walking distance of it, and our parents would ask questions if they saw us get into a stranger's car. We all told them we had extra practice.

But he was late. Freddie was beginning to question if this bloke was imaginary, which got on Jacob's nerves. Irfan kept telling them to stop bickering; the wait would be worth it once we got there, cause apparently Tara's step-sister was bringing her friends who were visiting for the summer and "European birds are mental".

'Maybe you can finally find a shag, Miles,' Freddie quipped, bored of taunting Jacob about his imaginary cousin and excited for a new target. 'Mate, you been sixteen for like two months and what've ya done with it? Nowt!'

'I've a job. Where am I s'posed to find the time for girls?'

He sniggered. 'Is your dick small or summat?'

'What? No.' I instinctively looked down and, when they all did the same, covered my crotch. 'It's normal.'

I thought it was normal. But I was also always careful not to look at anyone in locker rooms, so I didn't actually know.

The little porn I'd managed to watch (which wasn't much; between Má, Iris, and Ông Ngoại, I was rarely home alone) definitely wasn't any help to my confidence. I couldn't tell if the boys were tiny or if the men really were that big, but sometimes I'd compare the way their fingers wrapped around the girth to how well my own fingers reached around my wrist, and all I could think was wouldn't that hurt? I had no idea then that the actors prepared off-stage so they wouldn't have to shatter the fantasy.

'When I turn sixteen, Imma be loving Sasha Osborne every night.' Irfan mimed holding someone's hips and thrusting into her.

'Sasha Osbourne don't know you exist,' I bit. Sasha Osbourne was a year above us, and there was about a 0.00001 per cent chance of her as much looking at Irfan.

Headlights seized us before he could retaliate. A blue Vauxhall slowed to a stop in front of us, and Jacob smacked Freddie for doubting him, though I hardly heard their bickering.

When I'd heard "Jacob's adult cousin", I hadn't bothered to visualise much, but when Dominic rolled down the window and urged us in, his face struck me as a kind of beauty I would possess only when I held it in my hands. I was taken with the desire to do exactly that: to hold his face in my hands.

Maybe he was imaginary. He certainly looked like someone I would imagine. All fluffy brown hair and the kind of facial structure I thought only existed in photoshopped ads.