Drifter

Drifter. Even his name tasted like something I wasn’t supposed to want.

I was fifteen, stupid with hormones and desperate to be seen.

But the truth is uglier and more honest than that. I understood nothing-least of all the difference between wanting someone and being consumed by them.

He was six years my senior, which made my fascination feel both inevitable and forbidden. At twenty-three, I recognize the danger in that math. At fifteen, I only recognized the way my body responded to him like a prayer.

I called myself ugly, but my body disagreed. It was divine, electric, alive in ways that terrified me. When he came to me after the gym, still damp with sweat, his skin radiating heat and effort, I wanted to taste the salt on his collarbone. I wanted to map every muscle with my mouth. The tension between us was physical, visible, a rope pulled taut enough to snap.

I catalogued him: his body, his scent, the way his Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed, the particular shape of his lips. Everything. I wanted to possess him so completely that other women ceased to exist for him. The strange thing was, I never felt jealous of his female friends. Perhaps because what I felt wasn’t love-it was something hungrier, more primal.

Pride kept me still. I never approached him first. I waited, royal and remote, for him to come to me.

When he finally kissed me, it was barely contact-lips brushing like a question. I wanted to answer with teeth. With hunger. I wanted to eat him alive, swallow him whole, keep him trapped inside me where he’d be safe and mine and known.

The next time, he held me differently. His arms circled my waist, and I felt myself melting-boneless, breathless, undone. Then his tongue, seeking, and I was lost. I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t try.

After that first kiss, we grew closer day by day, exploring each other with a hunger that never quite satisfied itself. I never denied him. I didn’t want to. I liked it too much.

One afternoon he tried to push further, pressuring me toward something I wasn’t ready to give. I was too clever, or perhaps too aware - the phantom fear of young pregnancy, of abandonment, of becoming some cautionary tale - and I pushed him away. He was so certain I wouldn’t stop him. The surprise in his eyes when I did. I was angry at myself afterward, but also proud. We were the same, he and I. We needed each other. We craved each other.

We did everything else. Everything possible. I grew accustomed to the pleasure he gave me, to the way my body responded before my heart could catch up. I told myself I didn’t love him. But I loved the way he made me feel - comfortable, known, safe in a way that contradicted everything I believed about safety.

I shared secrets with him I’d never told anyone. My body, my family, the architecture of my fears. I believed then that no one knew me better. He could read me like his own language.

I hated rain, yet I loved getting wet with him, loved the excuse to press closer under shared shelter. I loved his arms around me. I loved when he cut my nails with careful concentration, when he ran to meet me breathless and shining, when he fell asleep in my lap like a child. I loved the parts of myself I usually hid - my feet, my face, my hands - because he loved them. I hated photographs, yet I loved catching him trying to take mine, loved hiding from his lens while secretly hoping he’d find me.

I kissed him from toe to forehead. I wanted to embrace every part of him. I waited three hours once just to see him for a few minutes, and I told myself this was simply what people did when they craved connection.

Maybe he felt more loved than he was. Or maybe he didn’t get what he wanted - the sex I withheld - and that absence curdled into something else. Suddenly he began disrespecting me. He loved me, he said, even as he disappeared with girls his own age. And just as suddenly, I felt jealous. The jealousy was a revelation, arriving late and violent. I began noticing every fault, every small cruelty. I convinced myself I didn’t care as much as I once had. I became physically aggressive, lashing out, my studies suffering while I unraveled.

I passed high school with average grades. I used to be a good student, and I started blaming myself for the failure. I started hating myself, and maybe him too, but still I wanted to see him.

Then in college, I met a guy. My heart fluttered the same way it had when I first saw Drifter. When a classmate told me his name, I blushed so hard I completely forgot I was in love with someone else. He was tall, handsome, smart. Every girl wanted him. He was a flirt. He sat behind my bench in class, and we spent breaks together. He used to teach me in the chemistry lab, making up nonsense things that I found very funny, though later I realized how cringe it was.

Maybe I was cheating on Drifter. Emotional cheating. I wanted to distance myself from that new guy, but I couldn’t. Even today, if someone mentions his name or says it in front of me, I blush. We never confessed to each other, but something was there. Due to some reason I had to leave that class and ended up in another section, and the distance came automatically.

During this process with Drifter, we rarely met. The distance came between us automatically too. One day I saw some pictures of other girls on his phone. It wasn’t surprising because he was that kind of characterless guy, he didn’t respect girls. But he was kind with sweetness at first. Anyway, he was nice to me.

Then one day I made up my mind to leave him, to focus on my studies, or basically I wanted to leave him. I got fed up with him, but I couldn’t because somewhere I still wanted him to be with me. Some attachment issue. Then one day he said he was dating someone, so don’t call him. It hurt my pride, my ego. Then I decided to...