“I wasn’t sure if he really knew more about women than me or not, but he liked it to look that way, so I believed him. Yet I was sure that we both had the same doubts, which we had never shared with each other, about the unlikelihood of our fat bodies ever appealing to anyone. Not saying these things aloud was one of the secret agreements between us.”

This is a tender, funny story about friendship, loss and sexual awakening. Reading it immediately took me back to my mindset as a teenager. It reminded me of the lack of confidence one could harbour towards one’s developing body, as well as one’s ever-present sexual curiosity and hard-to-contain desires.

Published online on Words Without Borders, What Unites Us: Turkish Short Stories, 2017 and can be read here