Eleven years ago, back in an odd corner of Tulsa, I saw you at this mall months before it shut down. Back then, teenagers had shaggy dyed hair with strips of neon. Girls wore low waisted skinny jeans and converse, scrawled all over with sharpie. Wrist accessories, ripped pants, skintight band tees—it was all the rage. But I looked at you as I sipped my drink.

You were plain. If anything, you dressed like you were two decades too late. I watched you sit on a bench in front of the bathrooms with empty eyes. You wore a large black tee with long grey sleeves underneath. Your jeans were too long, and you paired them with large white sneakers that should have belonged to a middle-aged man. Honestly, I would’ve thought you were some teenage boy if I hadn’t seen you lift your shirt to scratch your tit. Did you think nobody was watching? That’s not how a lady should behave.

I stared at you for a moment, the only other person in this mall with black hair and eyes like mine. I stared until the small novelty of your presence started wearing off. Almost turning to walk away, I stopped when a man stepped into my line of sight. He was white, in his 30s, had a slight grin on his face, and his gaze locked on you.

He snuck closer to you, careful to make sure you didn’t see him. But with the empty gaze in your eyes, I didn’t think he needed to be so careful. I chewed on my straw and blinked. He got close enough and waited for a moment, inspecting you as if to make sure he had the right person. Then, suddenly, he smacked the side of your head.

My lips let go of my straw. What a bold thing to do in public, I thought, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. I kept watching. You didn’t get mad. You didn’t cry, either. You didn’t shout or run or make a scene. You just held the side of your head briefly in shock, and your face shifted, turning into something that actually looked alive. Then you tilted your head back to look at him. And you smiled.

You opened your mouth and exchanged a few words before walking off together, his arm around your shoulder. You were so casual. With the image of your smile still in the back of my eyes, I stared, transfixed by how your face lit up from being smacked, like you were some kind of idiot.

I made my way out of the mall, hoping to catch a glimpse of you when I left—maybe in a corner of a store or in the back of the man’s car. My eyes desperately scanned every inch of the mall, then the parking lot, but I found nothing. I lost you.

I drove back home listening to nothing but the pittering AC, then thought about you as I twisted my worn down key aimlessly in the lock of my apartment door, over and over.

Stepping in, I picked up my mother’s dirty lingerie from the couch, gifted by her second boyfriend of the year. It was a guy who I hadn’t met yet, nor ever met before she eventually broke up with him.

I tossed the skimpy piece of synthetic silk into her hamper and replayed the scene of the man hitting you in my mind over and over. And your smile. I kept thinking, “She liked it.”

You liked it.

I didn’t know why. I don’t like it when I’m hit. I don’t like it when people push me around, dragging me here and there. Telling me to do this or that. I hate it. I wanted to know more about your smile. I wanted to know why that made you happy—how something like that could make anyone happy. I wanted to know if I could make someone smile, too.

Not necessarily you, but I would have been lying if I didn’t imagine what led up to your meeting and what happened after—wondering what went through your mind. I was eighteen, so I wasn’t at my smartest. My mind ran and ran. I wanted to know if you ever cried.

I fell into bed later that night. Images of my hand against someone’s hair drifted into mind, half asleep. That scene melted into another of closed hands, fists, and a smile. Underneath me. Willing, loving. Wet eyes that seemed to beg for only me—not that man. Not anyone else.

You laid there, bare chested. Each blow, each stroke, each point of collision, whether it’s your cheek, your torso, or deep inside—it would bring us closer together. And then, maybe... At the end, once I’ve finally entered you, crawled into you, all the way into the depths of your insides, leaving every piece of me, warm, giving, pleading, maybe only then you would allow me to lay my head between your breasts and press my chest against the stretch marks across your womb.

I really hope you’d allow me such a thing, because by then you would be mine.

Right?

Please never say no.