We should be studying. We should be doing a whole host of things, really, but we always seem to default back to this. We can’t escape it really, doesn’t much matter how hard we try. She hates me. She stares up at the ceiling, biting her lower lip to keep quiet while I busy myself between her legs. I don’t tease her, or draw out her pleasure. We lapse into this, into sex, regularly. It’s the same each time. She tells me what she wants, I get to the point and do it. There’s not much to it, really. She’s not very nice to me. I know she should be, that she’s nice to everyone else. But she hates me. Truly. Why should she waste her eloquence and her presence on someone who doesn’t appreciate it? She slings one leg over my shoulder, gracefully, and I rub her shin as I continue to eat her out. We don’t kiss when we do this. It’s almost clinical, just me giving pleasure and her taking it. It’s what we decided was best for both of us.

When she reaches the height of her pleasure, she does so quietly. It takes a lot from her, and she collapses, panting, against her sheets. I sit and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. She stumbles her way to the bathroom, and I clean the sheets. She stumbles back into her bed, just having washed herself off. I take a cloth from a bowl of warm water on her nightstand, and I carefully run it over her legs. After cleaning her, I clean my own hands and mouth. When I get up and lean over the nightstand to put the cloth back in the bowl. My head turns, and suddenly our mouths are connected. I break the kiss first, and stand up with a glance down at her. She’s never had a kiss before.

“I hate you, you know.” she says, as she tucks herself under the bedcovers and hugs her stuffed teddy bear close to her chest. It’s a token of her childhood. It’s come with her everywhere, as long as she can remember. It’s accompanied her to her first days of school, her last days of school, her first time having sex, and now her first kiss. She says that she hates me, but I know she doesn’t hate me. She’s said that she doesn’t hate me. She treats it as if she’s doing me a favour by allowing me to eat her out. I treat her with such care; but there’s something in her I just can’t say that maybe she doesn’t hate me. “I know, Scottie.” I say, as I plop down at my desk. It’s not even my bed, which I think makes it worse. I have no idea where my foster parents are; I don’t really seem to care. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and suddenly is tempted to say something stupid. “I’ve never had a kiss before that. I mean, Marc and I kissed but that was just when we had sex, so I didn’t really count it.” She says, and I turn around. I wasn’t expecting that.