I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 15: tug of war

Dominic wanted to take pictures.

We were staying at a hotel in Ripon, which he considered far enough from Leeds that it was unlikely we'd see anyone we knew.

I told Má that I had a football tournament. She never came to any of them, so the risk of her finding out it was a lie was minuscule. She handed me a twenty quid note with a sigh that they shouldn't plan these things for the weekend, that she was supposed to work, and what was she meant to do with Iris now? But she let me go.

Dominic bought us tickets to the Fountains Abbey, though I hardly heard a word of the tour. I spent most of it pressed against the ancient columns as he kissed me out of sight from the European tourists who chattered excitedly in their own languages.

It made me feel so liberated: kissing him in public. Even if it was still hidden from anyone except the spirits of those who used to live at the monastery. They'd be scandalised, I thought, if they were watching two men kissing, and it only thrilled me more.

We held hands as we walked Ripon's empty streets in the evening. The only restaurants in town were a posh steakhouse and an Italian place with a neon open sign in the window signalling its affordability. We ate there an hour before closing, when there was only one family present. 

When we returned to the hotel, I told him I loved him, and he kissed me with a hunger that was still foreign to me. I should have known then that his hunger was beyond lust, that when he kissed me, what he desired was to eat me whole.

I were so thankful to be wanted that when he pulled out a regular school uniform skirt and asked me to wear it, I did so immediately. The way he looked at me when I put it on was all I needed as a reward. But when he lifted the polaroid camera we'd used all day to photograph the abbey and the town, I hesitated.

Pictures are evidence. They could come back to bite me, and there would be no heterosexual explanation for semi-nude photos of me wearing a skirt.

But I agreed, knowing if I didn't, the ice in his eyes would swallow the pupils to make them sharp again, sharp and so cold. The closest his eyes ever got to brown was when I followed orders. I thought, like in one of Bà Ngoại's folk tales, that if I pleased him enough, maybe the ice would melt from his irises and reveal lush earth.

Once he had taken enough pictures to please himself, he handed me one. It was still developing, but I looked at it incredulously nonetheless.

'What am I s'posed to do with this?'

'Give it to your next boyfriend.'

I laughed and, placing it on the nightstand, stood up so I could drape my arms around his neck. 'I'd rather not.'

By that point, I had learnt how to kiss him in a way he liked. By that point, I had understood that he wanted me on my stomach, even if it bothered me that I could never look at him. 

I had hoped that maybe for our romantic getaway, our sex would be different: slow, loving, with eye contact. That it would feel good the way other people talked about it. But after kissing me back to the bed and easing me down onto the wiry mattress, he rolled me over, wedged my legs apart with his knee, and pinned me down.

By that point, we'd had sex enough times that it had lost the sense of accomplishment it gave me. But by that point, the only thing it made me feel was some sickly kind of shame that grew with every moan he yanked out of me.

Dominic's breaths beat against my neck. 'Call me sir.'

*

Dr Qureshi looks at me for a long while. I'm so tired of his soaking wet full stops. They leave me drenched in my own sweat, but every time I break and fill them, I end up revealing something he can decipher within seconds. He pretends he doesn't, that I'm not an open book for him — or open five-page brochure, more like, cause we both know there isn't enough in my mind to fill a book — but I'm pretty sure he already knows everything before I say it — just like Ziri always does.