A Portrait
A PORTRAIT
Now
At midday on 4 January, Shirin arrives at Kian’s flat. He opens the front door with his hair disheveled, wearing a gray hoodie and Adidas shorts, his feet bare. The way the hoodie hugs his shoulders is attractive in the way Shirin thinks men’s bodies often are in athletic wear. He steps out of the way for her to enter and she removes her boots by the door. Without her platform shoes she feels especially small next to him, her eyes level with his chest now. She wonders if his heart is beating as quickly as hers, if being this close to each other for the first time since New Year’s brings back all the memories of their night together for him, too.
He asks her if she wants a cup of tea and Shirin nods, even though she doesn’t. He leads the way to the kitchen and it looks different from when she was here last, for his housewarming party. It appears bigger now it’s empty of people, the winter sun shining through the windows. The kitchen is at the back of the house, with ugly wooden cabinets from the nineties. And it is this that makes her feel a little less on edge somehow, this ugliness.
As Kian fills the kettle with water he asks her how her train journey was, back down to London, and she murmurs something like, Okay—long. With his back to her, she thinks he looks tense, not at all relaxed, and again this calms her, like it’s not just her; all this spinning isn’t only in her head.
There is this thing between them now and it makes them awkward, the conversation mundane. They don’t look into each other’s eyes until Kian flicks the power on the kettle and turns, leaning against a cabinet. It is only then that their eyes lock. And even this makes Shirin go funny inside, reviving a stirring within her. It is embarrassing, how much she wants him. How on the Tube over here, each time her mind wandered she imagined his hands on her body, his lips on hers. She hasn’t felt this strongly about someone in a long time. It is almost reminiscent of the way she felt with her first serious boyfriend, but she was clouded by first love, not yet hardened by failed relationships and situationships. So while she wants to indulge in this feeling, she knows leaning into it wouldn’t be wise, that it has never been easy for them, so why would that change now?
Kian bites his bottom lip, unconsciously, and her eyes flicker down and then back up again, meeting his gaze. The hiss of the kettle grows louder in the background. Before the kettle clicks, there is a sudden urgency between them. She is not sure who steps forward first, but his hands are around her waist, pulling her toward him, against him. She feels as though she needs him—needs his lips on her again, needs all of him.
They kiss and his hands move up to her face, his palms cupping her cheeks, while his hardness is pressed against her. And it’s this that makes her bite his lip a little too hard, but he shakes his head, says, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” a glazed, concentrated expression on his face that is very attractive.
When they make their way to his bedroom, she vaguely notices that it is neat, like he has just tidied it. They undress each other, at first slowly and then more quickly. The bedsheets are cool against their bare skin. There is the Kian she knew growing up—the boy who was both sensitive and angry, the man she has been speaking to the past few months who is confident, well-adjusted to adulthood; and then there is this Kian, who she is seeing with fresh eyes. He is tender in the way he handles her, in the way his hands skim over her abdomen, in the way he touches her in exactly the right places, like he knows her body, like he has been with her many times before. She can finally let out a breath when he begins stroking her, and it is like she has been holding it since they were last together, like she needs him to breathe now. She wants him so badly it feels like she might burst. When he enters her, he kisses the side of her neck and she thinks they fit together so perfectly, which makes her lift herself higher and wrap her legs tighter around his waist, wanting all of him—all of this—right now. He groans in her ear, his breath warm, her own sounds quiet and uncontrollable. She hates how right this feels, how she thinks that only in this moment does she feel most herself, unclothed with Kian atop her. It feels like such an unfeminist, un-Shirin thought, but it’s truthful.
“I’ve missed you,” she breathes, and she isn’t even sure what she is referring to, whether she is saying she has missed him in the three days they’ve been apart, or during the ten years they weren’t speaking.
“Shirin,” he says, moving slowly. “I’ve not stopped thinking about you.” His eyes bore into hers. She feels a bubbling within her, and the urge to say something that she thinks can’t be true, so she presses her lips against his to stop it from coming out.
After, they lie on his bed, her head against his chest. He smells of aftershave and sweat, his sheets of washing detergent.
“That was nice,” he says.
“It was,” she agrees. “When are your housemates back?”
“Tomorrow. Will you stay over tonight?”
“I could do, yeah,” she says, having already brought her toothbrush, contact lenses, and three-step skin-care routine with her.
He smiles, a genuine smile, like this greatly pleases him. She feels high—it is an unfamiliar feeling, this kind of happiness. But unlike when they were having sex, Shirin can see their situation more clearly: that while she does feel herself when she’s with Kian, there is still the thing they’ve not spoken about hanging between them. The incident. The words that were spoken after, especially given what he told her about his brother, about the guilt he still carries. It is this thought that makes her pull away from him and reach across for her slip dress. Without her tights or cardigan it looks more like lingerie. She puts it on and turns to see Kian lying there, frowning. His abs are tight—and she thinks how, even now, can her brain fixate only on how hot he is? It incites somewhat mild panic in her because she hasn’t liked someone like she likes him before.
“Something wrong?” he says.
She shakes her head, says no, and that she needs to pee.
It is just past 3 P.M. when they go back downstairs for food. Kian rummages in his fridge and retrieves grapes, olives, hummus, and crusty bread. Shirin jokes that these are very middle-class snacks, and he tells her to do one. She wonders whether this food they’re eating now is something he’s bought especially for her, because when he transfers the food from the packets into bowls and plates, she notices they haven’t been opened yet.
He asks if he can paint her, properly this time. He says he has always wanted to, and the tops of his ears go a wonderful pink, and her pathetic heart goes pitter-patter , which prompts her to say, “Okay, why not?”
On their way to the summerhouse he grabs her hand between his, lifts it to his lips, and kisses it. A ginger cat is walking along the wooden fence that separates the gardens from each other, and Kian tells her the cat often comes into their house, and she is nodding but can barely concentrate; even his hand on hers is enough to completely distract her.
The summerhouse is more homely. The boxes are no longer there, and neither is the record player. He tells her it’s in the sitting room now, and in its place are a pair of black Bluetooth speakers on his desk. He unfolds a chair that has been leaning against the wall and indicates for her to sit on it. Shirin watches as he sets up his easel and paints, a look of concentration on his face. She finds it enticing, seeing a person focusing on something they are talented at. “You don’t have to stay in the exact spot or anything,” he says. “But try not to move too much.”
The easel is now holding up a medium-size canvas, and in his hand is a wooden palette with various blobs of paint on it, ranging from creams to pinks and reds. He smiles to himself, his face half hidden by the canvas in front of him. The last of the daylight shines into the room, creating the patterns of the windowpanes on Shirin’s face as she poses.
“That seems like a contradiction, but okay.” She debates how to sit, never quite liking photographs of herself sitting down. She crosses her legs and leans to one side, looking off out of the window.
“No,” Kian says. “Look at me.”
“I like my profile,” she says. Her mum would always ask her to look down or away for pictures—something about her eyes being a bit too wild, not soft enough.
“I want to see you, properly. It’s important for me to see your eyes.”
“They are the window to the soul,” she says with an eye roll, though taking his direction and looking at him.
Kian had told her that he had a specific interest in painting people. He said that he was interested in the different sides of people, of what can be communicated in the way they hold themselves, in their stare.
He picks up his phone and then “Here Comes the Sun” plays over the speakers.
“I didn’t know you liked the Beatles. It feels a very white thing to like.”
He barks out a laugh. “So rude. I was never a massive fan, but I’ve got into them lately.” He smiles bashfully and her heart soars. She has never really considered the Beatles before and would rather hear a different song, but doesn’t say anything more about it. Kian returns to the canvas, concentration back on his face.
“So, tell me, do you always paint the girls you’ve been with?” she asks.
The side of his mouth turns upward in a smirk. “The girls I’ve been with,” he repeats slowly.
She remembers the painting she saw in here last time, which is now gone. He doesn’t say anything else, which prompts her to say, “Come on. I’m curious.”
He puts his utensils down but does not walk toward her, the canvas a barrier between them. “No, not really.”
It doesn’t answer her question, but she nods anyway, accepting this. She doesn’t know why she particularly cares. She thinks she must want confirmation that this moment between them is special, because she doesn’t always get these things right—but this time it feels different.
He begins his painting in earnest now. He mixes red, blue, and yellow together, so it makes a brown color. Then he adds white and more yellow to make her skin tone. Lightly his paintbrush caresses the canvas. He is skillful in his approach. They discuss the fallout from Rob Grayson’s book being canceled. Although Kian has the appearance of being unbothered, she can see excitement in his eyes. She feels bolder now around him so asks him why he pretends not to care—and he says he thought if he pretended, it would eventually be a reality. She remembers that that’s what she used to do at school. It’s curious, she thinks now, how their roles are reversed. How it’s often Kian giving Shirin advice, when before he leaned on her—and part of her liked that.
To preserve her unsteady sanity, yesterday she muted Rob Grayson’s name on all her social media platforms. Over the past month she would see his name pop up—in a news article, Twitter thread, or one of his own tweets that someone she knew had retweeted and so it appeared on her feed, and it wouldn’t quite derail her, but she would feel a heaviness inside her, like she is still bound by her past.
“Did your brother come over for Christmas?” she asks.
He nods. “With his family, yeah. You can bet I got a roasting from everyone about doing my master’s and not settling down with a ‘real’ job. Somehow they still compare me to Mehdi—only now I should be more like him, less ‘artsy’ and more realistic.” He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that now.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I want to talk about you. I feel like you’ve asked me about my dating life before but have never actually told me about yours.”
One eyebrow raised in amusement, she says, “I mean, there’s not much to say.”
“When was your last relationship?”
She lets out a laugh, the kind of laugh that is more to preface that you’re not bothered about what you’re going to say next when really you are. “I don’t know—years ago. I’ve only really had one official boyfriend. I was twenty-one and had just graduated. We were together for two years. I’ve seen people since, but nothing serious.”
Shirin met Paul at Rye Wax on a night out with Hana, and their relationship was tumultuous. They consistently broke up and got back together again. She lost her virginity to him. It was this that made her cling to him and want to make it work. Hana calls him a softboi, which Shirin googled to find out means an artsy fuckboy. He fits the criteria. Paul is with a lifestyle influencer now, who has 104K followers on Instagram, and Shirin respectfully hates them both.
“So you’ve not had a boyfriend since then?”
“No,” she says. “But I don’t think that’s me being picky, like Millie often says. I’d say selective, rather.” She thinks if the person she is dating might eventually be inside her, it makes sense to be selective, and she says this, too, to Kian.
He bursts out in a surprised laugh at this. “Jesus! Fair enough.”
“What I’d like to know is,” she begins, “what really happened with Salma? You were vague before.”
His smile falters for a brief moment, his hand gripping more tightly onto the paintbrush between his fingers. “I just realized we weren’t right for each other. I think I was forcing it, to be honest.”
Is it toxic that she wants to smile at this? She bites down on the inside of her mouth, lightly, and nods. “I hope you’re not forcing it with me,” she says, basically blurts it out, and then scolds herself. This is not how a cool girl would speak. But since when was she a cool girl?
He looks at her. It’s a sincere, earnest look, and he says, “I could never force it with you, Shirin.”