Chapter 5. Fifteen Minutes

His hand closed over my breast again. I had no time to clench my teeth, no time to brace myself — he simply did it, as if he had every right. His fingers found my nipple, pinched, and a short, sharp, entirely unwelcome jolt ran through me.

It felt good.

I hated myself for the fact that it felt good.

Dan was in no hurry. He did not tug or twist or try to hurt me. He simply held on — and from that simple touch my nipples tightened, my breasts grew heavy, and a dull, pulsing ache settled low in my belly. I bit my lip to keep from making a sound, but he seemed to see everything anyway. To feel it. To understand without words.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said quietly, almost gently. “It’s only a body. It wants the same thing you do. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”

I hated him for those words.

Hated him because they were true.

Because I understood perfectly well that I would almost certainly not last. Even if I wanted to. Even if I had to. The body had never been particularly interested in what the feelings wanted. It simply took what it needed.

I remembered the first year of university.

That was when I had only just met Jess. Loud, shameless, completely fearless Jess, who in two weeks of acquaintance managed to overturn everything I thought I knew about what was allowed and what was not. It was she who dragged me to the first private party. Not a club. Not a halls flat. A large detached house somewhere on the outskirts of Exeter, the kind of place you only found if someone gave you the exact address and a password at the door. The music was loud, the air thick with shisha and weed, and the alcohol flowed without any pretence of restraint. There were no rules. Or rather, there was one: everything was allowed if both sides agreed.

I was under no obligation to sleep with anyone. Jess had made that very clear on the way there, half-laughing, half-serious. “Just watch how people enjoy themselves, Sash. Maybe you’ll like it too. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, you’ll know.” I genuinely intended only to watch. I told myself I was a serious veterinary student, the sensible one, the girl who still texted her little sister every evening and pretended she had never even thought about anything dirtier than a late-night wank.

By midnight the alcohol had done its work. Someone put a glass in my hand, then another. Someone else pulled me onto a makeshift dance floor. Jess disappeared with a tall redhead and reappeared twenty minutes later looking thoroughly pleased with herself. I laughed. I drank more. And then somehow I was in one of the upstairs rooms where a small crowd had gathered around a low bed and someone was explaining the rules of a stupid contest involving ice cubes and a stopwatch.

I did not have to take part.

I took part anyway.

The first man tasted of vodka and cigarettes. The second was gentler, almost careful. The third made me come so hard I saw stars and laughed out loud afterwards because I could not believe my own body. By the time the sky outside the window began to lighten I had stopped counting. Faces blurred. Hands blurred. The only thing that remained clear was the heavy, sweet satisfaction and the faint, secret pride that I had not only kept up with Jess’s crowd — I had, in some ridiculous way, won.

There were other nights after that.

Sometimes at the same house, sometimes at different ones. Sometimes with Jess, sometimes without her. I told myself it was just a phase, a way of burning off the stress of first-year exams and the constant low-level pressure of being the “good Vance girl”. I was careful, or so I thought. Condoms most of the time. Testing every few months. I even felt a sort of clinical satisfaction at how adult and responsible I was being about something so thoroughly irresponsible.

Until the morning I woke up with a dull ache low in my abdomen and a burning that would not go away. Three days later a calm, middle-aged doctor in a sexual-health clinic said the word “chlamydia” as if she were discussing the weather, wrote a prescription, and advised me to contact recent partners. I sat on the plastic chair in the waiting room afterwards and felt something inside me quietly shut down.

I never went back to those parties.

Even when the hunger returned — and it did return, sharp and insistent, especially in the long stretches between boyfriends who were too polite, too careful, too human. Even when my own fingers were no longer enough and I found myself staring at the ceiling at three in the morning, remembering the taste of strangers and the way they had looked at me when I was on my knees. I learned to endure it. I learned to keep the lid on tightly. I became the girl who could walk past temptation without flinching, who could laugh at Jess’s stories without joining in, who could pretend the wild part of herself had been a temporary aberration.