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This story featured in The White Review 18, published in 2016       On the way to the dental clinic they talk about going home for Christmas It’s November and Marianne is having a wisdom tooth removed Connell is driving her to the clinic because he’s her only friend with a car, and also the only person in whom she confides about distasteful medical conditions like impacted teeth He sometimes drives her to the doctor’s office when she needs antibiotics for urinary tract infections, which is often They are twenty-three   Connell parks up around the corner from the clinic and the radio switches itself off He has taken the morning off work to drive Marianne to the appointment, which he hasn’t told her He’s doing it partly out of guilt A week previously Marianne gave him head in his apartment and complained afterwards that her jaw hurt, and he was like, do you have to complain about everything all the time? Then they argued They were both a little drunk   Marianne remembers the incident differently She remembers giving Connell head for a while on his sofa and then she stopped because her mouth hurt He was pretty nice about it and they had sex on his couch instead Only afterwards, when she started talking about her mouth again, did Connell say: you complain a lot more than other people They were lying side by side on the sofa then Marianne said, you mean your other girlfriends And Connell said no, he meant people, as in everyone He said no one he knew in any capacity complained as much as Marianne   You don’t like hearing people complain because you’re incapable of expressing sympathy, Marianne said   I already told you I was sorry the first time you complained   You like women who don’t complain because you don’t want to see women as fully human   Every time I criticise you, it turns into a thing about me hating women, he said   Marianne started to sit up then She gathered her hair into a roll and felt for a clip to put through it   I find it suspicious, she said That you always