Chapter 1
He runs his hand up my thigh, waist, then the side of my breast; gracefully tracing each curve as if I were a meandering river. I feel seen under his unfaltering gaze. I feel known as he lies with me quietly, allowing my mouth to move along with my thoughts. Then those feelings subside after a short time as if I am woken from a dream.
He tells me I am soothing yet always on the move; quite like a stream. I nod and graze the back of my hand softly across his cheek so that he feels my touch resembling a warm cloth of silk, while I regard him as a kettle that I’m checking whether is hot. “I am a torrent of flood waters,” I warn.
It was difficult to believe him when he confessed to being in love with me. His understanding of me was as deep as a puddle. I never quite said the words back and this knowing fact tightened my shoulders and straightened my neck in pride. I could drown this boy if I wanted to.
I packed a bag one morning before work and didn’t head home when it concluded. As I drove, ignoring the worried calls that came through and listening only to the tyres gripping the road, I reflected. I felt misunderstood, you could say. I was well aware of the absurdity to feel misinterpreted or unique in a world of seven billion people. Deep down I knew I was neither of those things. I felt it nonetheless.
The sentiment had arrived in the early years of adolescence and had decided to remain even after my departure from puberty. The hormones at the time which had a tendency to cause a sudden severe self-consciousness and deep analysis’ of the world and people was a likely cause.
Eventually a sense of self-assurance came as I slowly learnt who I was; more than just my plumping breasts and the profuse hairs poking wherever they could.
Yet the sense of being an outsider remained. The thoughts said aloud of wonders were glared at for their irrelevancy and unlikelihood. My inability to comfort other’s during their elaborated complications led me astray. I did not care for their childish problems and they did not care for my hypothetical ones.
I know now that it was not other’s faults that they did not understand. I had disguised my insecurities with an egotistical exterior. I was mysterious by choice and misunderstood on purpose, and yet I felt an overwhelming desire for someone to try.
James was trying hard. I felt it. In his mind he must believe that the more chivalrous favours he did for me, the more I would open up. He wasn’t entirely wrong. Taking me into the hills to watch the sun set over the flat plains of our city and drink a bottle of wine was wonderfully sweet. Three glasses down, questions and hopes of the future were forced to the back of my throat. Thoughts and wonders encouraged by a sky dyed with the sun’s residue, was becoming harder not to share.
When the sky turned to dark, memories replayed behind my eyes; hiding beneath the floorboards, demands to act like a lady and not a child, a backhand to the face, protecting my sister, and all the pretending’s of someone wanting to know my mind, but more interested to know the inside of my reluctant thighs.
I know who I was now. I know why I was.
But as I was about to tell him my findings on those matters, I asked myself what would happen if someone did understand me? If they did know me like the back of their hand?
I knew it would mean surprises of my favourite food. Of loving embraces when my body shook because my mind had gone too far. It would mean proud smiles when I succeeded. Of tough love when I was being irrational. And reassurances to my nightmares whispered so frequently that they become a lullaby.
Instead the images I associated with it was of myself walking to the edge of a forest, taking a step, and falling into the abyss.
So, I didn’t share any of those words that haunted me during that sunset. I had leaned into him instead and kissed him so as to keep my tongue preoccupied. I allowed him to know my curves, my bends, and the inside of my eager thighs; as if to distract him from the parts of me I kept to myself.
