Chapter 3: History
The silence after the prayer call faded felt heavier than before. Ben’s fingers were still in my hair, tracing lazy patterns on my scalp. I could feel him thinking. The question, when it came, was quiet, almost casual, but it landed in the center of my chest like a stone.
“So,” he began, his voice a low rumble under my ear. “How often do you do this?”
I didn’t move. My eyes were fixed on the perfect line where the dark sky met the glowing grid of the city. “Do what?”
“This. Meet guys like me.”
I swallowed. The taste of him was still a faint, bitter ghost in my mouth. “I don’t know.”
“Come on.” His hand stilled. “That was… professional grade.” He said it without malice, with a kind of amused, impressed curiosity. It stung more than if he’d said it with contempt.
A hot flush crawled up my neck. I pushed myself up on one elbow, breaking the contact. The silk sheet slithered down to my waist. The air conditioning kissed my skin. I looked at him, at his relaxed face, his open expression. He was just asking. He was a tourist. He wanted the story.
“It’s a habit,” I heard myself say. The words felt pulled from a deep, hidden well. “A bad one. Or a good one. I don’t know anymore.”
He propped himself up on the pillows, interested. “A habit?”
“When I need to… feel something. Or feel nothing.” I looked away, toward the minibar, its polished wood glowing. “I prefer tourists. You’re easier.”
“Easier?”
“You leave.” I met his eyes again, challenging him to be offended. “I don’t have to see you at the mall, or have my aunt ask who that nice boy was. You’re here, and then you’re a memory. It’s clean.”
He nodded slowly, absorbing it. “Makes sense.” A smirk played on his lips. “And? Any other reasons?”
There it was. The part of me that was proud of my own corruption woke up, stretched its limbs. It wanted to shock him, to see if this unflappable American could be rattled. I let a slow, ugly smile form on my own mouth.
“You want the truth?”
“Always.”
“The tourists are usually bigger.” I said it flatly, watching his face. His eyebrows rose a fraction. A spark of something—pride, competition—lit in his eyes. “Local guys… it’s different. You’re just… more.”
He laughed, a short, surprised burst of sound. “Okay. Not what I expected, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”
The admission had opened a valve. The pressure of the secret was now a flow, and it wanted to go somewhere. I leaned back against the headboard, drawing my knees up. The opulent room felt like a confessional booth designed by a decadent architect.
“There was this one guy,” I said, my voice dropping. “Australian. A surfer. He had that look—sun-bleached hair, skin like leather, muscles that didn’t come from a gym.” I was describing a relic, a statue of a different life. “We met at a beach bar in Kuta. He talked about waves the way other men talk about women.”
Ben was perfectly still, listening.
“He took me back to his hostel room. It smelled of salt and weed and damp board shorts.” The memory was visceral, clawing its way up. “When he took his shorts off… Ya Allah.”
I paused, letting the invocation hang in the air, a blasphemous punctuation. Ben’s eyes were dark, fixed on me.
“It was the biggest I have ever seen. Not just long. Thick. Like my wrist.” I held up my own slender wrist, staring at it. “I remember thinking it was impossible. That it wouldn’t fit. Not anywhere.”
“What did you do?” Ben’s voice was rough.
“What do you think I did?” I shot back, a defiant edge in my tone. “I tried. I got on my knees in that dirty little room and I tried. I couldn’t take half of it. I gagged until I saw spots. My jaw ached for two days afterward.” I looked directly at him, my heart pounding with a nasty thrill. “I couldn’t stop. The impossible size of it… it was like a dare. A challenge. I cried the whole time. He loved it. He called me a good girl while I choked on him.”
The room was silent except for the hum of the fridge. Ben’s expression had shifted. The casual curiosity was gone, replaced by something more intense, more primal. My story had done its work. I saw the effect tenting the sheet over his lap.
“You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?” I whispered, crawling across the silk toward him. “Thinking about that surfer. About me crying on my knees for him.”
He didn’t deny it. His hand came up and cupped the back of my neck, his grip firm. “Yeah,” he admitted, his gaze locked on mine. “I am.”
“Good.”
This time, there was no tenderness, no exploratory gentleness. It was a contest. A reclamation. He leaned back against the headboard, and I took him in my mouth with a singular, focused purpose. The memory of the Australian, of my own failure and fervor, fueled me. I wanted to erase that memory with this one. I wanted Ben to forget every other woman, every other story.
I used my hands, my tongue, the punishing depth of my throat. I orchestrated the sounds, the messy, gasping rhythm. I thought of the prayer mat in my bedroom at home, the geometric patterns pointing toward Mecca. I thought of the surfer’s tanned, calloused hands fisted in my hair. The two images blurred, smearing together like my mascara had on my cheeks earlier.
I lost time. There was only the physical grammar of the act, the strain and the salt and the building pressure in the base of his spine that I could feel telegraphing through him. His breathing broke into sharp fragments. His hips lifted off the bed.
When he finished, I took it all, swallowing down the evidence of my victory. I stayed there, breathless, until he softened in my mouth.
I finally pulled away, wiping my lips with the base of my thumb. We didn’t speak for a long minute. The city’s lights blinked, indifferent.
He reached out and touched my cheek, his thumb stroking the hollow beneath my eye. “You’re a lot of things, Cynthia,” he said, his voice soft with a strange exhaustion.
I knew what he meant. A devout woman. A skilled mouth. A collection of shameful stories. A living contradiction.
I just nodded, lying back down beside him, the space between us now charged with a new, unsettling knowledge. The chapter was closed, but the story felt more dangerous than ever. I had won his awe, and in doing so, I had fed the very thing I was supposed to be starving.