Page 64 of The Mismatch

‘Well,’ he said, tripping over his next words. ‘More that I want to tell you something, actually. Just that … I’m not seeing anyone else.’

His words hung in the air. His initial nervousness made sense now. She resisted the urge to smile. She felt powerful in that moment, knowing that what she said next was important to him. It was a strange, but wonderful, feeling.

‘Neither am I,’ she said, resisting the urge to sayobviously. Because to Magnus this fact wasn’t obvious, she realised.

He smiled then, a big, goofy smile that was contagious. ‘Let’s keep it that way, yeah?’ He winked and she let out a laugh.

‘I’ll try.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I have to ask you something, though. Once in one of our seminars you said you didn’t believe in relationships, that you think they’re wrong. Has that changed?’

Initially, he looked surprised, but then he leant back, a pensive expression on his face.

‘I know the time you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘The book we were studying reminded me of my parents. How they’re stuck together – or at least feel like they are. I never want someone to feel stuck with me, or vice versa. It’s probably one of my worst fears, in fact. But …’ he trailed off, tracing the top of his glass with his forefinger as he thought through what he would say next. ‘I guess with you I’m trying to just let go of that fear. We aren’t our parents. And I like you a lot. I kind of actually want to be yours.’

‘I want to be yours, too.’

Before Magnus, she would have thought this to be excessive, but she meant it. She liked the idea of them belonging to each other. She knew then that she was falling in love with him.

When they got back to his house, she avoided his housemates by going straight up to his bedroom whilst he shouted hello to them before following her up the stairs. As soon as his door was closed, he leant forward, his lips finding hers.

He stopped for a moment, moved an inch, and they looked each other in the eyes. His deep brown gaze was warm and mysterious. That said, she knew exactly what he was thinking. She was thinking it too.

They may try and do things with you. Don’t let them do that.

Ten minutes later came the moment she had to stop him from taking it too far, as she always did.

‘I don’t know …’ she said, not sure how to finish her sentence.

Frustration was clear on Magnus’s face.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but when do you think we can stop waiting?’

She wished she knew the answer to that question.

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘There isn’t one … I’m just dying a little over here.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘I want you so bad.’

‘I want you too, it’s just … like I said, I want to take it slow. I don’t know what else to say.’

She couldn’t even be sure at this point whether she was lying or telling the truth.

He looked as though he wanted to say something else but instead he bit it back, kissed her on top of her head, and pulled her towards him. ‘It’s OK.’ He encircled her in his arms and legs, and it was this act that felt the most intimate. Their naked bodies pressed against each other. And soon she heard his breathing slow as he fell asleep.

This position both panicked and softened her. His hands around her middle, almost trapping her. But that this person wanted to sleep next to her, felt comfortable enough to do so,and that he was hers to snuggle against, was almost too much for her. She wondered how people handled this level of intimacy as teenagers.

The guilt remained, heavy and hard within her. She could almost see herself from a bird’s-eye view and shut her eyes as though to erase the image. But she couldn’t. She saw her own naked body and this large white man pressed up against her. Imagined her dad and brother walking in and seeing them like this. Began wondering, again, how she could call herself a Muslim when she was in bed with a man who didn’t even believe in God and whom she would never marry. And yet she liked him, more than she wanted to admit.

She wondered, as usual, why everything in her life had to be so complicated.

She pulled his arms up, so they were around her waist rather than her lower stomach, so she could move around more freely. Then she got out her phone, and opened Instagram, seeing that he had posted the picture he had taken of her in the pub. She was holding a glass of wine and smiling, and from an outsider’s perspective they seemed like a perfectly normal couple. The picture only had three likes, whereas the photos of him alone tended to have significantly more.

She’d asked him in the past not to post pictures of her online because of the risk of her parents seeing them, but he must have forgotten. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that she was clearly alone with Magnus in the picture, or that she had alcohol in her hand. If Magnus wasn’t asleep she would have asked him to delete it, but a small part of herliked that he had posted it. It showed that he was proud to be with her, that he wanted people to know that they were together. This fact made her heart swell in both a pleasant and an anxiety-inducing way.

Perhaps she was being overly cautious. This level of paranoia was what her parents had reduced her to. Would she ever not worry about every single thing in her life?

She resolved to not say anything to Magnus about the picture in the morning; they could have this one small thing at least.

‘Relax,’ he said, sleepily.