Nina

Michael sits on the edge of the single bed in his room, the duvet cover still showing the creases from where he'd made it this morning with his usual precision. The bedside lamp casts a warm circle of light that doesn't quite reach the corners of the room, leaving them in shadow. His hands are trembling slightly, and there's a tightness in his chest that won't release, no matter how many times he tries to breathe deeply the way the self-help article suggested.

He's just turned eighteen years old, and he feels like he's failing at being human.

The feeling isn't new. It's been there since he was a toddler, really, though he's never quite been able to name it. It's like there's a wall made of invisible glass between him and the rest of the World. He can see through it perfectly well. He can watch other people laughing, touching, connecting with what seems like effortless ease. But when he tries to reach through it himself, his hands just press against something solid and unyielding, and everyone on the other side looks at him strangely, as if he's doing something wrong that he can't even perceive.

Growing up, it was supposed to become different. That's what he'd told himself. All those years at school... the confusion, the isolation, the way people would snigger when he spoke in class, the lunchtimes spent alone because every attempt to join a group somehow went wrong. All of that was going to end, given time. 

But it didn't.

He'd tried. God, how he'd tried. He'd gone to every social event, forcing himself through the anxiety that made his stomach churn. He'd stood behind the bar at house parties, watching people chat and laugh, trying to work out the pattern, the secret code everyone else seemed to know instinctively. He'd rehearsed conversation starters in his head, practised them in the mirror of his parents' bathroom. But when he actually spoke to someone, something always went wrong. He'd talk for too long about something, and their eyes would glaze over. Or he'd misunderstand a joke and respond seriously, and people would laugh in a way that made his skin prickle with shame. Or worst of all, he'd try to share something he genuinely cared about, like the beautiful patterns in spiral galaxies, the way quantum mechanics suggested reality was far stranger than anyone imagined, and he'd see them looking past him, already seeking an escape route.

"You're a bit intense, mate," one of his few friends had said to him, not unkindly but with a sort of awkward honesty. "You might want to, like, dial it back a bit."

But Michael doesn't know how to dial it back. He doesn't even know what he's dialling up in the first place. He's just trying to be himself, trying to share the things that make his heart race with excitement. He doesn't understand why that's wrong.

By his final year at secondary school, he'd mostly given up on the social side of things. He'd thrown himself into his passion for astronomy instead, finding comfort in the precision of the laws that govern the Universe, the elegance of the endless dance of the stars. The stars don't judge you and they certainly don't laugh behind your back. The Universe follows rules, even if human beings are an incomprehensible chaos.

But he couldn't entirely give up on the dream of connection. The loneliness was too heavy, too constant. So he still went to things sometimes. School socials. Pub nights. And especially the annual summer party of his village, hoping every time that this would be the night something changed.

It wouldn't.

Michael closes his eyes, but he can still see it all playing in his head like a film he can't stop. The enormous tent in the village green, strobe lights strung on the poles, the DJ's speakers thumping out music that made his teeth ache. Every youngster from the local area seemed to be there, clusters of people who'd known each other since primary school, their friendships forged in ways he'd never been part of.

He'd stood at the edge of the dance floor for nearly an hour, nursing a plastic cup of coke that had gone warm in his hand. He'd watched people dancing, their bodies moving together with an unselfconsciousness he couldn't imagine. He'd watched couples form and reform, hands touching waists, lips meeting lips, and felt something in his chest that was part longing, part despair.

Then midnight came. The music changed, slowed down. All around him, people were pairing off, and the tent seemed to transform into something more intimate, more romantic. The lights dimmed. The DJ's voice came over the speakers: "Time for some slows, lads. Grab someone special."

That's when he saw her. Linda. She was in the year below him at school, though he barely knew her. She was beautiful in a way that made his breath catch with her dark blonde hair, brown eyes, a smile that seemed to light up the space around her. She was standing with a group of friends, laughing at something, her head thrown back.

Michael felt his heart hammering. This was it. This was his chance. She was still single, he'd ascertained that through careful observation throughout the evening. She seemed kind. She hadn't been one of those who'd been cruel to him at school. Maybe she would say yes. Maybe she would see him, really see him, and recognise the ocean he carried inside.

He walked over, each step requiring enormous courage. His palms were sweating. His mouth was dry. But he'd rehearsed what to say, practised the right tone, the right words. He could do this. He could.

He reached out and tapped her gently on the shoulder. She turned, and for a moment, her face had been neutral, questioning. Then recognition flickered across it, and something that made his stomach drop even before she spoke.

"Would you like to dance?" he asked, proud that his voice had come out steady, polite, respectful. "With me, I mean. If you'd like to. Please."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Oh," she'd said, and there was already an apology in her tone. "I'm actually not feeling very well. I think I need to sit down for a bit."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said quickly. "Can I get you some water? Or..."

"No, it's fine, thanks," she said, already turning away from him.

He stood there, frozen, and then he watched as another boy, someone he vaguely recognised from another class, approached her. Watched as the boy said something to her, something Michael couldn't hear. Watched as Linda's face had transformed into a bright smile, and she nodded eagerly, taking the boy's hand and moving with him onto the dance floor.

She hadn't been unwell at all.

Michael felt something crack inside him. All around him, kids were watching. Some were smirking. Others were whispering to each other, their eyes flicking between him and Linda swaying in another boy's arms. Someone laughed, a sharp, cruel sound that cut through the music.

He tried to hold it together. He tried to walk calmly towards the exit, but his vision blurred with tears, and his breath started coming in gasps. By the time he reached his bicycle in the car park, he was openly crying, desperate sobs that he couldn't control. He cycled home through the dark country lanes, tears streaming down his face, the summer air warm against his skin but doing nothing to touch the cold emptiness inside of him.

Now, having just returned and sitting in his bedroom, Michael feels that emptiness like a physical weight. He's cried himself out. His eyes are sore and swollen. His head's aching. And there's a question that keeps circling in his mind, the same question that's haunted him all his life: What is wrong with me?

He's trying so hard. He's kind. He's respectful. He would never hurt anyone, never pressure anyone, never be anything less than gentle. He has so much to give, such depths of feeling, such capacity for tenderness and devotion. He looks at the stars through his telescope and feels an awe that brings tears to his eyes. He reads poetry and it moves him to his core. He has this vastness of emotion inside him, this universe of love and wonder and yearning.

But nobody ever sees it. Nobody ever wants it.

His hands move almost without his conscious decision, opening the drawer of his desk. Beneath his astronomy textbooks, there are three magazines. He'd bought them from a shop in town, working up the courage for days before finally walking in, his heart pounding so hard he thought he might faint. The woman behind the counter had looked at him with such disdain as he'd placed them on the counter, such obvious judgment, that he'd wanted to explain: This isn't what you think. I'm not like that. I just... I just need something. Someone.

But he'd said nothing, just paid and fled.

He knows what people would think if they knew. They'd assume the worst. They'd think he was sad, pathetic, objectifying, a stupid young sod, a bloody wanker who can't have a real girl. But that's not what this is. Not for him. He doesn't look at these images and see objects. He doesn't see sex. He sees girls, women with their own stories, their own lives, their own depths. He wonders about them constantly, who they are, what they dream about, what made them decide to pose for these photographs.

And there's one in particular.

He pulls out the magazine in question, the pages already soft from handling, edges slightly worn. He turns to the spread he knows by heart, and there she is.

Nina.

That's probably not her real name. He knows that. The magazine calls her Nina, says she's from Denmark, nineteen years old, passionate about ice hockey. It's probably all invented by an editor somewhere, a fiction designed to sell copies. But Michael doesn't care. To him, she's Nina. She's real. She matters.

She has platinum blonde hair, held together by a yellow butterfly clip and eyes the colour of a summer sky. According to the brief description, she's five foot two, petite but with a huge bosom, which the magazine describes in crude terms that Michael hates. He doesn't think of her like that. To him, every curve, every line of her form is something that deserves respect, worship even. He looks at her and sees beauty that makes his chest ache.

In the photographs, she's naked, yes. That's the point of the magazine. But when Michael looks at her, he doesn't just see nakedness. He sees someone who seems to be looking directly at him, her eyes meeting the camera with something that might be confidence or might be vulnerability... he can never quite tell. In some photos, she's smiling, a small, knowing smile. In others, her expression is more serious, contemplative.

He's studied these images hundreds of times. He knows every detail. The way her hair falls across her shoulder in the third photograph. The way the light catches on her skin, making it seem to glow. The way she's pulling her yellow bikini bottoms across her thigh to reveal some but not all of her glorious pussy. 

But what he loves most is her eyes. In every single photograph, it appears like she's looking at him. Seeing him. Not looking through him or past him the way everyone else does, but actually perceiving him as a complete person worthy of attention.

He knows it's not real. He knows she was looking at a camera, at a photographer, probably in one or the other exotic location. She doesn't know Michael exists. She'll never know how much these photographs mean to him.

But in his loneliest moments, like this one in particular, that doesn't matter.

"Hi, Nina," he whispers to the image, his voice hoarse from crying.

He imagines, as he's imagined so many times before, what it would be like if she were real, if she were here. Not even anything sexual, though he won't deny that he feels desire. But more than that, he imagines conversations. He imagines telling her about the things he loves, about how galaxies spiral, about the poetry that moves him. He imagines her listening, really listening, her blue eyes focused on him with interest rather than the glazed tolerance he usually sees. He imagines her sharing things with him too, her sport, her studies, the things that fascinate her, the texture of her inner world.

He imagines, sometimes, that she would understand. That she would see past his awkwardness, his intensity, his failure to grasp the invisible rules everyone else seems to know instinctively. That she would see the person he is underneath all of that, the person with so much love to give, so much tenderness, so much capacity for devotion.

"I went to a party tonight," he tells her photograph quietly. "It didn't go well. But you probably guessed that."

The image, of course, doesn't respond. Nina's photographed face looks at him with that same enigmatic expression, somewhere between a smile and something more serious.

"I don't know why I keep trying," he continues. His voice cracks slightly. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm polite. I'm respectful. I try to be interesting. But it's like... it's like I'm speaking a different language, and everyone can tell, and they just... they don't want to deal with it. They don't want to deal with me."

He runs his finger gently along the edge of her body, careful not to damage the page.

"You're the only one who doesn't look at me like I'm wrong," he says. "Even if it's not real. Even if you're just a photograph. You're the only one who seems to see me as... as someone worth looking at."

He knows this isn't healthy. He knows that forming an attachment to a woman in a magazine, a woman who doesn't know he exists, is a sign of how isolated he's become. But what else does he have? He's tried real connection, tried it over and over until the repeated rejection has worn him down to nothing. This... this small fiction, this moment of imagined communion... it's all he has left.

"Thank you," he whispers to the image. "For being here. For... for giving me this. You probably don't even know, wherever you are. You probably posed for these photos and forgot about them the next day. But they matter to me. You matter to me."

He feels tears welling up again, hot and shameful. He's crying over a photograph. He's eighteen years old and he's crying because a woman in a magazine is the closest thing he has to feeling loved.

But the gratitude he feels is genuine. Nina, whether she's real or fictional, stranger or construction, has given him something. In his darkest moments, when the loneliness becomes almost unbearable, when he lies awake at night feeling like he's the only person in the Universe who can't crack the code of human connection, these photographs are a small light. A reminder that somewhere, there is beauty. That somewhere, there is someone whose image seems to say: I see you. You're not invisible. You matter.

Even if it's an illusion, it's the only comfort he has.

In his mind, he's making love to her. He has no idea what it's supposed to be like, but he imagines that the hand that's stroking his penis is her and that he's moving inside of her, gently, slowly, almost afraid to cause her pain or discomfort.

"You're so... beautiful...," he whispers and new tears of fathomless emotion are welling up, spilling over his cheeks. He wipes them away with his other hand because he needs to see Nina, see all of Nina.

He cannot understand that making love could mean anything else than this. He thinks about all those girls he's yearned for but who never saw him, instead giving themselves wilfully to blokes who don't care, who only use them for their own little pleasures, a fast fuck and then bragging about it in class. How come those girls don't see? How come they fall into the same trap over and over again whereas they could have someone who'd worship them with all of his heart for as long as he draws breath?

It doesn't matter anymore. He has Nina. At least she loves him back unconditionally.

After he's done, Michael carefully closes the magazine and returns it to its place in the drawer, beneath his astronomy books. Tomorrow, he'll go back to school. He'll return to his studies, to his sketchbook, to the careful structure of his solitary life. He'll keep trying, probably, because the alternative — giving up entirely on human connection — is too bleak to contemplate.

But tonight, in this moment, he's grateful for the small mercy of a stranger's photographed gaze. For the fiction that someone, somewhere, might see him as he truly is. For the imagined tenderness of someone who doesn't flinch away from the intensity of feeling he carries inside.

He switches off the lamp and lies down in the darkness, and for a little while, the weight of his loneliness feels just slightly more bearable.

Outside his window, the summer night is warm and full of stars he can't see through the shutters. The Universe spins on in its vast, incomprehensible pattern. And Michael, small and confused and aching with unexpressed love, closes his eyes and tries to sleep.