Just below the Cheekbone

First Published in Prosetrics, Feb 2026

He was from Walkinstown. He slapped me across the face. Twice. Once on Valentine’s Day. 

Do you know what it feels like to get hit? You hear the sting before you feel it. Then your whole head, not just your face, feels like it’s going to explode. A stunning ache in your jaw that lasts for days. It hurts to eat. Teeth tender. An unexpected blush lands just below where it’s supposed to, highlighting the wrong part of your face, just below the cheekbone, not above. An asymmetric glow of the wrong sort.

I met him in our first year of university. We were the same age. Nothing at all about him that I liked. He was loud with a thick Dublin accent and auburn hair with some bleach in it. Short and stocky with a ruddy complexion. He always wore black jeans with a patterned collared shirt. I don’t even think he liked me that much either with my short, self-cropped dirty-blonde hair and damaged undertones. I ringed my eyes with ink black liner and wore a uniform of doc martins and wide-legged jeans, the hems always ripped, dirty with the secrets of the streets. But he paid attention. To the neediness. The yearning for closeness. He knew I would stay. The first time I lay underneath him, I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting it to be over and hoping it would never end. 

I followed him everywhere. My hand clasped in his. Waiting for the bus with a group of friends I would allow his hand to meander under my sweater. I felt edgy. Nonchalant. Turmoil on the inside. I wanted this. Did I want this?

One weekend we took the three-hour train ride to his childhood home and he introduced me to his mother. She was tiny, like a small robin red breast. Round glasses perched on her tiny nose and frail arms that embraced me after a five-second pause. Who was this city princess dating her favourite son? Welcoming in miniature. Unable to stand up to him. He was the youngest of four children. She showed me to my room separate from his because this was a good Catholic household. It was dark, small and musty, a pile of cardboard boxes half full in the corner. Her son upstairs in his childhood bedroom. Did she know that he crept downstairs at night and crawled on top of me. Persistent. The inevitable sharp sting of connection. Louder than it needed to be. Claiming something that wasn’t his.

I was lauded on his arm at the local pub. Low ceilings, the smell of peat, dark corners, sticky floors. He dared me to kiss his friend. Sure, I shrugged. Slight hesitation. Then I wrapped my arms around his neck, my fake enthusiasm contagious. Inside, I was somewhere else. The taste of smoke and stale beer, bitter in my mouth.  I searched harder, reaching deeper inside. A soft moan and I found it. Intimacy. Who claimed whom? Pulled back by my hair. Resurfacing. I would pay for that.

We had takeout one Saturday night after a particularly gruelling study session. Hurriedly I closed his apartment door behind me as I ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time and out into the fresh air.  I was buoyed up as I made my way to the local chipper, my stomach rumbling. I ordered two curry chips to go and a king creole, a pita stuffed with spicy meat and veggies. An hour later half the order was smushed into the carpet and the grease was shiny on my cheek. The bedroom door was closed. And I sat in the blessed silence. Jaw aching. 

We eventually broke up. Face to face in a parking lot at the end of a long school day. Both of us now two years older. I met someone else three weeks later. His hand slid under my sweater too. Warmer though. The echo of that sharp sting below the cheekbone only in my dreams now.