by Sara Jafari
Soraya’s ears pricked up. She locked her phone and looked at the girl in front of her properly for the first time. “Wait…what did you say?”
“Yeah, you know Magnus? He’s behind you but don’t turn around,” she said. Soraya squinted her eyes as though trying to recall who he was. “Lucy dated him for four months before she found out he was sleeping with other girls. She actually thinks she loved him—though I’m not sure if it was just because he looks the way he does and the sex was really good. I’m not surprised though; if you’ve slept with that many people you have to be good. Otherwise, what are you even doing?”
The girl’s words fitted the impression Soraya had gotten from others about Magnus during their three years at university. If someone had said this yesterday she would have brushed it off, not cared at all. Now though, she felt a weird desire to leave the conversation; she didn’t want to hear more. She found herself justifying his actions, and she didn’t like it.
“Oh, shit,” Soraya said, lifting her phone up as though she’d received a message. “Sorry, I need to find my friend. He’s looking for me. Talk later, yeah?” She got up without waiting for a reply and left the room, not taking a second glance at Magnus. But she could have sworn she felt his eyes on her.
The rest of the night was a blur of dancing, and conversations lamenting the end of an era. The queues for the toilets were ever-growing. Someone had mentioned that one of the basement bedrooms had an en suite. Soraya went to check.
There was no one down there, which struck her as odd, but she did find a toilet. She spent a long time looking in the mirror trying to fix her makeup, but her hands were shaky and her vision blurred. She steadied herself against the sink and took deep breaths. She hated this part of being drunk—the point at which it was too late to do anything but ride the wave of the spinning world.
As she came out of the en suite she saw Magnus sitting on the bed. His back was to her and she wasn’t sure whether to walk out of the room without saying anything, or to acknowledge his presence.
“Hi,” she said, despite herself.
He turned and gave her a smile. Her palms were clammy, her heart beating too fast. Part of her longed for someone to walk in, but a small part also hoped no one would.
He patted a spot on the bed next to him. “Sit,” he said.
She hesitated.
“Or don’t.” He shrugged.
She went over and sat down next to him.
“I’ve not seen you at a party before,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s not really my…” She was going to say “scene,” but thought again. It wasn’t that it wasn’t her scene; she had just never been invited to one like this before. Even now, she hadn’t been directly asked; Oliver’s boyfriend, Charlie, had invited them along. “I prefer more low-key gatherings.”
Magnus looked at her for a long while. Being this close to him meant she could smell him for the first time. His aftershave was musky, earthy almost. With him this close, she noticed his eyes were red.
“You’re very drunk, aren’t you?”
“No,” he lied. “I mean, aren’t you too? You look it.”
She had sobered up a little since sitting down next to him, but the room was still spinning. Focusing her gaze on him kept her grounded, so she did that.
He put his hand on her thigh as though to steady himself, and she felt herself go very rigid. This always happened when boys tried to touch her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds.
“So, Soraya,” he said. “Let me guess what you do with your nights instead. You’re ‘alternative,’ so you go to Corsica or Bussey Building and listen to techno music while you’re high on MD? Or you prefer to have intellectual conversations drinking artisan coffee with your friends?” He had a smile on his face.
Her mouth was open in astonishment. In reality she liked pop music, secretly still enjoyed Twilight, and drank instant coffee. But she thought it best to omit those details.
“And you’ve never done those things yourself? What are you, antidrugs? How very un-Goldsmiths of you.”
“If you need to take something to have a good night, then you’re not having a good night, is all I’m saying.”
As he spoke she noticed he had a small gap between his two front teeth, like she did. She felt a strange warmth towards him then.
“So you’ve never taken anything before?”
“I’m not saying that,” he said quickly. “It’s just a slippery slope, that’s all.”
He was the first person she had spoken to in her three years at university who wasn’t blasé about drugs. She remembered the exchange she had overheard between him and his dad at graduation and wondered if that was the reason for Magnus’s stance against drug taking.
He shifted, and Soraya became acutely aware that his hand was still resting on her thigh. She was struck by how attractive his hands were—she had never had such a thought before. Hands, she had always felt, were just hands—and yet looking at his did something to her. She could describe them in no way other than manly. She realized she had never been this close to a man before, in this way at least, to have made such an observation. When she looked at him, he didn’t seem to notice what he was doing.
“So, you’re going to tell me my description of you isn’t right?” he challenged.
“You’re such a dick.” She playfully pushed his shoulder—which was as hard as it looked. His hand covered hers as though to stop her and their eyes locked. His other hand was still resting on her thigh.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” he said.
“Well, it’s my turn now,” she said. “You’re a rugby player, so you like sports, drink lots of beer, eat a shit ton of protein, and sleep with lots of girls. Oh, and brag about it too, am I right?”
“I’m not like that,” he said softly. “I guess we’re both wrong about each other.”
Her throat was dry.
Magnus leant in closer, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. She recoiled, stood up quickly.
Words from her childhood about zina being the ultimate sin, and having to explain yourself to God once you died, rang in her head. She was a bad Muslim in every way, it seemed.
“I need to find Oliver.”
For a split second Magnus had a wounded expression on his face. Just for an instant. Then he relaxed and flashed her a big grin.
“OK, see you later, Soraya.”
It was only once she was outside the room that she felt like she could breathe again. She climbed the stairs to the hallway, which was now heaving with bodies and laughter. She disliked herself for not leaning in with Magnus. Why couldn’t she just kiss someone, even someone she didn’t particularly like, and get it over with? Why couldn’t she be normal?
She climbed the second set of stairs and tried three rooms until she found Oliver. He was straddling the windowsill, joint in hand.
“Help,” she said, clambering down next to him. Outside the window was the flat roof of the ground floor, and people were sitting on it. Soraya knew without asking that Oliver had refused to sit on the roof, not because it was unsafe, but because it was dirty. He often wore extravagant outfits—not gaudy, but well thought out with attention to detail. Despite it being late summer, and warm out, he had chosen to wear navy wool trousers with a red Kenzo jumper tucked in. Underneath the jumper she could see a cream roll neck. He enjoyed layering.
“And why do you need help?” Oliver took an elegant swig from the bottle of red wine he’d stashed outside the window, his pinkie sticking out.
“Magnus,” Soraya breathed, but then she pulled herself together. It was in this moment she remembered she was drunk. Or perhaps dizzy from the interaction she’d just had. She straightened up, gave herself a light slap on the face. Oliver didn’t bat an eyelid. “I think he was going to kiss me, you know, just now.”
&n
bsp; “Magnus? Why? Tell him to leave you alone.”
“Well, no…I think I wanted him to.” With drunkenness came candidness.
“You want to kiss Magnus Evans?” Priya said, poking her head in from outside the window. “As in, rugby lad Magnus Evans?”
“OK, can we not shout?” Soraya said.
Priya nudged Oliver to move away from the window ledge so she could climb in. He hopped off and stood inside the room. Soraya was suddenly self-conscious and looked around. Was she being loud? Upon inspection, it seemed no one was focused on her. But then, why would they be? She shook her head again.
They moved to sit in a corner of the room.
“It’s not that I want to kiss him in particular,” Soraya began. “I just think, you know, it might be nice to get it over with, and he seemed like he was going to kiss me.”
Priya nodded, while Oliver had a gleam in his eye.
Priya hadn’t known Soraya was a virgin for the first two years of their friendship, had just assumed she wasn’t because she wore short skirts and dark lipstick, and for some reason apparently that meant she was more liberal in her views on sex. It was only when they were high one time in third year that Soraya finally divulged her secret. Priya was surprisingly reasonable about it, but that didn’t mean she truly got it.
Like Oliver and Soraya, Priya came from a restrictive background. Her Pakistani family didn’t allow her to behave like the English people around her, but instead of rebelling at university like Soraya, she had done it in secret throughout her teens.
“Yes!” Priya said. “Use them like they always use us.”
“I mean, you could do much worse for a first kiss,” Oliver said. “At least he’s fit.”
“Your Brummie accent was proper strong then,” Soraya replied, laughing.
“OK, also would not go that far, Oliver. He’s not fit at all.” Priya shuddered. “But he’d be good practice. Technique-wise.”
“I mean physically fit. You’d obviously not have deep emotional chats with him, but…oh, come on.” Oliver got his phone out, began typing, and fairly quickly brandished a picture online of Magnus Evans, stark naked with a cushion just about covering his genitals. The caption was the monkey covering its eyes emoji. “You can’t say he isn’t hot. Just look at those abs and thighs.”
Priya wrinkled her nose. “He’s not my type.” She preferred skinny indie boys who dressed in vintage clothing, and whose Tinder pictures were either of them on their skateboards or else of them drinking coffee. Soraya thought her taste in men mirrored Priya’s, though she refused to go on Tinder. She didn’t like the idea of judging people solely on their looks—online anyway. “But you should do it, Soraya. It’ll only last a few seconds, and it’ll be funny.”
“I don’t want it to be funny,” she began. “But the guys I like never seem to like me back and, at this point, I just want to get it over with. Oh, God, I don’t even know how to kiss!”
Oliver took a last puff of the joint he was smoking and dropped the butt into a glass. It still had someone’s drink in it. He had an uncanny ability to look perfectly sober, and act it, even when stoned.
“Most thirteen-year-olds don’t either. They just do it,” he said.
“But what if—”
“OK, let’s just cut straight to the chase. Soraya, do you want to have this hanging over you forever? It’s all you talk about lately, that you’ve never been kissed,” Priya chimed in.
“Guys, could you be less loud?” Soraya breathed in deeply.
She’d done so much at university and yet when it came to men she’d done nothing. Who knew when an opportunity like this would come again?
She resolved to take action. To do what she wanted for a change, rather than let her life be dictated by her parents and their views.
If she was truly being honest, she didn’t know what her thoughts were about sex before marriage. She’d grown up assuming she would wait, and at one point in her life she’d liked that idea. Liked that there would be only one person for her. That their relationship would be halal. That it wouldn’t have to be kept a secret from her family. It was only at university, however, that she realized the likelihood of finding someone who would wait until marriage was low.
And she didn’t know if she wanted to wait anymore.
But quite frankly the thought of having sex with someone terrified her, so it was pushed to the back of her mind every time it arose.
While she still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about sex before marriage, she now knew that she wanted to kiss someone before marriage. Wanted to know what it felt like. Even if it was embarrassing, at least she would never have to see him again. Any experience at this point was good experience. She just had to push past her guilt, and the fact that objectively he was the last person she’d choose to have her first kiss with.
“Oh, God, I’m going to do it,” she said, before mock-heaving, at which Priya cackled loudly. “I’m going to ask Magnus Evans out.”
Hey, do you fancy going for a drink sometime?
Immediately after sending Magnus the Facebook message, she locked her phone and turned it facedown on her bed.
Two days had passed since the party, and despite Priya’s and Oliver’s goading her to ask him out immediately, she’d put it off until she had had the time to think about it logically.
She had written a list of pros and cons in her diary, which she kept hidden under her pillow, but while there were many cons, the one pro outweighed the rest: she’d finally get it over with and be able to move on with her life.
It wasn’t as though she was intentionally a twenty-one-year-old who hadn’t been kissed. When she was a teenager it was virtually impossible for it to happen, but she hadn’t abstained from kissing at university for any particular reason. She had wanted to do it, but, setting aside the guilt she felt at thinking such thoughts, the guys she liked never showed interest in her anyway. And could she ever feel that irresistible pull towards a man who was not her husband when she was weighed down with Muslim guilt? When the thought of attempting to kiss someone made her feel sick with worry?
She needed to accept that life wasn’t like fiction; her first kiss would be logical rather than magical.
While Magnus had spoken to her and paid her some attention, she was under no illusions: he paid every girl attention. She was not singled out. She’d seen the way he flitted around the party, talking to an array of women, lapping up their attention. So perhaps he was the perfect subject. One date. One kiss. Then it would be done. And they’d likely never talk again.
That was her thought process when she pressed send.
As soon as the message was sent, however, a whole manner of cringeworthy scenarios clouded her mind.
She was almost tempted to contact him again and say the message wasn’t meant for him, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t a teenager anymore. She needed to be confident in her actions.
Her phone pinged a few minutes later. She grabbed it, almost dropping it in her haste.
Magnus: Hey. Why not? When you thinking?
She stared at the words for a long time. Why not? What did that even mean?
Soraya: Next Friday? I’m going back home this weekend.
Magnus: Sounds good. Where’s home?
Soraya: Brighton—you ever been?
Magnus: I have not. But I’ve not had the right tour guide before.
Soraya snorted and was about to reply when he double-texted.
Magnus: P.S. I knew you were posh;).
Soraya: WELL. Just because I’m Southern doesn’t mean I’m posh…and anyway I kind of have Northern roots. My brother and sisters were born in Liverpool actually.
It was refreshing to say “sisters” rather than “sister” and know he wouldn’t think anything of it.
Magnus: That’
s a real stretch at saying you’re Northern, but I appreciate you trying.
Her hands were clammy from their conversation, and she felt light-headed. She hated this reaction to what should have been a normal, easy interaction.
Unexpectedly, they continued talking for the next few days.
Through their messaging, she discovered he was into a lot more highbrow literature than she’d expected. His favorite texts from their course were Tender Buttons (a book Soraya gave up attempting to read two pages in) and Antigone. Whereas she much preferred studying writers such as Joan Didion—whose writing style Soraya appreciated as much as her fashion sense. These conversations left her wanting to keep up with him, almost wishing she enjoyed more classic literature.
Through their messaging she was reminded of her seminars at Goldsmiths, in which her personal reading tastes weren’t considered highbrow. She’d responded to this by writing her dissertation on a variety of contemporary romance novels, arguing that they were in fact empowering for women.
She and Magnus talked a lot about university, but nothing personal.
He did reveal that in their first year he had made it a point to memorize key details from essays about the texts they were studying for the seminars. He said he wanted to seem clever. Such admissions made her think he didn’t speak to everyone in this way. She, in turn, told him she often felt like the dumbest person in their class when she struggled to keep up with the reading and seminar discussions. He replied saying that she came across quietly confident, in his opinion. This comment made her smile, and she wanted to believe it, liked the way he imagined her.
She still hadn’t told Oliver or Priya about the conversation she’d overheard between Magnus and his dad at graduation. She decided she wouldn’t, ever. It wasn’t something they would understand anyway.
From: Hannah Gordon ([email protected])
To: Soraya Nazari ([email protected])
Hi Soraya,
I hope you’re well and had a great weekend!