Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

She sighed again, and smiled and looked away, and he inched back the duvet and said, ‘Seriously, girl, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ and she tutted and he said, ‘You’re the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life, too.’

‘Ryan!’

‘It’s true.’

He traced his finger from her mouth over her neck, between her breasts, down her belly, between her legs.

‘You let me do that,’ he said.

‘That’s your finger.’

‘You like my finger, and my finger’s all rough and I bite my nails and it’s not nice, really.’

She giggled. ‘It’s not the same and you know it.’

‘Yeah… I think my mouth’d be better.’

‘Ryan!’

‘Seriously though. Seriously. What is it about this that’s putting you off?’

‘I’d be embarrassed.’

‘Why? With me? After two years you’d be embarrassed?’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘You’re probably thinking it’s going to be a certain way and then it mightn’t be and you might hate it and then I’d die.’

‘What d’you mean, a certain way?’

‘Like… you know. Like in porn.’

‘You been watching porn, D’Arcy?’

She stroked his neck. ‘No. You have.’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘Have.’

‘Haven’t.’

‘Course you have! All boys do. And you’re probably thinking it’ll be bland and rubbery like… like plastic fruit and you’ll get a terrible land.’

‘You must think I’m an awful gom.’

‘No… I just think… I don’t know .’

‘You think this is something you’re doing for me?’

She frowned. ‘What?’

‘Sex.’

‘No. Of course not. Don’t even think that.’

‘It’s just… I want you to love it, like.’

‘I do.’

‘Well… if you love it, and you’re not embarrassed when I lie here and look at you, or when I kiss you or finger you or when you come or when you go down on me, why should you be embarrassed about me going down on you?’

‘It’s different for boys,’ she said.

He felt his shoulders tighten. He said, ‘No it’s not. Why should it be?’

She looked away and smiled, and he watched the smile twitch at the corners of her mouth like a living thing, growing, fading, taking root.

‘Haven’t you ever thought about it?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We’re together two years. And we’ll be together two more. And another two after that and on and on and on because I’m that sure that this is it for me and you, that this is it entirely. So I don’t want you to hold anything back because you’re afraid of what I might think; that’s just wrong, girl. I love you. That’s what love is supposed to be.’

She said, ‘You say the deepest things when you’re trying to get your own way,’ but she was teasing, and she reciprocated when he kissed her.

‘Please, Karine.’

She threw the playful smile back out into the expanse of their sanctuary.

‘Please?’

Still no reply. He kissed her breasts, back up to her neck, along her jaw and said, ‘I’m not going to do it until you tell me yes, girl. Has to be a yes, not just a not no .’

‘If you don’t like it, it’s all your own fault, though. OK?’

‘Totally.’

‘ Mmm … Yes, then.’

She wouldn’t kiss him afterwards. She made him brush his teeth. He went for a piss while he was in the bathroom and leaned one hand flat on the tiles to keep himself upright.

Weak at the knees for my girlfriend’s cunt .

As an attempt at a statement of fact, it felt ridiculous, but intoxicating. It was something new. It constituted a nail in the coffin of the memory.

All on his own, he allowed himself a jagged sigh.

When he returned to the bedroom she was wearing her skirt and his Napoli jersey, rummaging through the bag of pick ’n’ mix.

‘D’you think your dad would twig it if I had a shower?’

He lay on the bed and put an arm around her waist. ‘No. Yes. Maybe. Who cares?’

‘I care.’

‘I don’t. It’s none of his business.’

‘Yeah I know, but… D’you wanna white mouse?’

‘I’ve just brushed my teeth, remember?’

‘All part of my diabolical plan.’

‘Here, if you eat all the cola bottles I’ll kill you.’

She chewed, and stuck a finger in her mouth to dislodge a jelly, and said, ‘Well? Was it OK?’

He sat up with her and she gave him a stern look, one more suited to Did you just write with my eyeliner again? than Did you enjoy the act of oral pleasure, you selfless tongue champion?

‘I loved it,’ he said.

‘Really, though?’

‘Really. You have no idea. Did you like it?’

She made a face.

‘I know you did,’ he said. ‘I could taste it.’

‘Oh my God, you’re so disgusting.’

‘Why is that disgusting?’

She made a big deal out of dismissing the question — clucking, rolling her eyes, giving him a playful slap — but she understood, she accepted it, she was fucking delighted.

She went off to have her shower and while he waited he opened the bedroom window and started on the joint. Beneath the clouds his estate lay still as the rain uncovered brilliant shades of green on the trees, and the ivy, and the weeds growing along the back wall.

She came back in with her hair in a towel turban and he handed her the joint. She took his place by the window and shivered dramatically, so he got one of his hoodies and she snuggled into it.

‘That’s tasty,’ she said, exhaling.

‘Yeah. It’s handsome.’

‘I can’t believe he posted it to you.’

‘Yeah. He’s not such a bad guy, really.’

‘And yet here you are…’

‘You know what I mean, girl. I was bricking it. I thought he was going to kill me. And yeah, for a while he was pissy beyond, and I thought That’s it, boy, he is gonna flake into you , but he knows I’m not going to say anything and… Like, he trusts me not to blab and it’s not even because I know he’d slaughter me otherwise.’

‘Maybe he realises you wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for him?’

‘But I probably would be, girl. I have two previous convictions and they were before I even met Dan.’

‘Yeah, but…’ She passed the joint back. ‘It was his coke. This is his mess. And you’re the one in trouble for it.’

He shrugged.

‘I don’t know how you can be so OK with it, Ryan.’

‘I’m not OK with it.’

‘You are. And you don’t seem to realise you don’t have to be. Sometimes it really is someone else’s fault.’

‘It’s how things go, is all. Risks and stuff. You make an educated guess as to whether you’ll get away with something but at the end of the day it’s just a guess. It got me out of the house for a year and it got me out from under my dad’s feet, so it was worth it.’

‘I don’t mean to take that from you,’ she said. ‘I know you had to get away from your dad. But this shouldn’t be the price you pay.’

‘It probably won’t work out all that pricey.’

‘What if it does, though? I mean, who gets a twenty-four-hour curfew? That’s off the wall; you said so yourself.’

‘I guess coz I wasn’t living at home, they thought this was the best way of keeping tabs on me. If I had been living at home I’d probably have gotten your common-or-garden bail. Turn up on April twenty-first for your hearing, sonny Jim. And no drugging while you’re waiting. ’

She plucked the joint from between his fingers.

‘Well, it sucks,’ she said.

‘I know it sucks. Being here with him sucks. I mean, he’s on the dry and he’s trying not to be a prick but… I dunno. Too much water under the bridge. For both of us.’