I still think about that Uber more than I think about some of the actual sex I have had, which is saying something, because I have had some decent sex. Not all of it. Some of it has been mid and forgettable and done in a rush before someone had to get a night bus. This one I remember because nothing properly finished and I still left the car feeling like I had been caught nicking something.
Thursday. After work. Stratford. The kind of night where your feet hurt in the work shoes and you tell yourself you are only staying for one, which is a lie you have been telling since you were nineteen.
I had been in the office since half eight, answering emails for a man who cannot attach a PDF without having a small breakdown, smiling on calls, fetching things, looking like the sort of girl who has her life together. I do, sort of. I have a degree, a flatshare, a vape, and a habit of making decisions with my mouth before my brain has caught up. That last one is relevant.
Jamie was from another team. Not my office exactly, but close enough that we had been circling each other around the coffee point for weeks. Tall enough. Nice hands. That slightly smug look I recognise because I wear it too. After-work drinks were his idea. I said yes like I had to think about it. I did not.
We did not stay for one. We stayed for the kind of session that starts as a civilised pint and turns into you both leaning in a bit too close every time someone goes to the bar. I had my smart-casual on, the blazer I can get away with at work and the top underneath that is not strictly for work. He noticed. I let him. That is the whole point of that top.
Outside I had a vape and he had a cigarette he did not really want, just something to do with his mouth while he looked at me. It was that ugly in-between weather Stratford does, not raining, not nice, just orange lights and traffic and people pouring out of Westfield with bags. He said we should share an Uber. I said yeah, go on then, like I was doing him a favour. I was not. I wanted his hand on my leg in a dark car and I wanted it sooner rather than later.
That is the thing people pretend they do not understand about me. I am not mysterious. I am tired and horny and good at pretending those two things are separate. They are not.
The car turned up quicker than I wanted it to, which should have been a warning. When you want five more minutes of flirting on the pavement and the car arrives instantly, the night is already running ahead of you. Silver thing. Quiet driver. I clocked him for half a second, the way you do, then forgot he existed. That was my first mistake.
I got in first. Jamie got in after me. The second the doors shut I felt that little click in my chest, the one that says right then, we are doing this. His knee found mine. I did not move mine away. The car pulled off toward the dual carriageway and I thought, genuinely thought, the partition was up. Some of them have that glass. Some of them have the screen. Some of them just have a driver who puts music on loud enough that you can be a bit filthy and nobody has to live with it. I decided we were in one of those. I decided it with no evidence whatsoever, which is how I make most of my best and worst choices.
His hand went to my thigh like it had been waiting all evening for permission. I gave it by opening my knees a fraction. Not a big gesture. Just enough. He smiled without looking at me, the way men do when they know they are about to get somewhere and they are trying not to look too pleased about it. I hate that smile and I also want it on me, which is an annoying combination.
We kissed before the first set of lights. Not a polite kiss. The sort you do when you have already decided you are not going back to yours for tea and a documentary. He tasted like lager and mint and a bit of smoke. I had my fingers in the front of his shirt. He had his hand higher than was reasonable for a public car. I made a noise into his mouth. A small one. Then a less small one when his thumb found the edge of my underwear.
That is when I should have clocked the silence in the front. No radio. No podcast. No phone call. Just the engine and the indicator and two idiots in the back acting like they had booked a private room.
I did not clock it.
I got greedier, because I do. I undid his belt with the sort of confidence that comes from practice and from being slightly pissed and from knowing I am good with my hands. He swore under his breath. I liked that. I wrapped my fingers around him and he was already hard, which did something stupid to my ego. I stroked him slow at first, then not slow, and I told him to look at me while I did it. He did. His mouth was open. Mine was too. I was not being quiet. I never am once I have decided I am allowed to want something.
“Fuck,” I said, not quietly. “You have been thinking about this all day, have you.”
He said yeah. He said my name. He put two fingers under the fabric and found me wet enough that there was no pretending this was going to stay at kissing. I rocked onto his hand and made a sound that was not office-appropriate and not pavement-appropriate and definitely not Uber-appropriate. It came out of me anyway. I am loud when it is good. I am loud when it is only starting to be good. I am loud because I like being heard and because sex makes me feel like someone is actually in the room with me, not just near me.
His fingers moved. I gripped him tighter. The car went over a bump and I gasped like I was on a rollercoaster, which would have been funny if I had any self-control left. I did not. I got my mouth on his neck. I told him I wanted him to fuck me when we got in. I said it clearly. I said it twice. The second time I was almost in his lap, skirt rucked up, one knee on the seat, working him with my hand while he had his fingers inside me and his mouth on my tit through my top like we had all the time and privacy in the world.
That was when I looked up.
I do not know why I looked up. Maybe the car slowed. Maybe some animal part of my brain finally asked a useful question. I lifted my head from his throat, still breathing like I had run for the train, and I met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
He was looking.
Not a glance. Not a flicker. Looking.
He did not speak. He did not smile. He did not do that fake cough people do when they want you to know they know. He just held my eyes for a second that lasted about a year, then looked back at the road like he had seen a spilled coffee and not a twenty-five-year-old PA with a bloke’s hand up her skirt and a cock in her fist.
I froze so hard I think my soul left my body and sat in the front passenger seat.
Jamie was still going. Of course he was. He had not seen. He made another low sound against my chest and I had to put my hand on his wrist like I was stopping traffic.
“What?” he whispered.
I could not answer at first. My mouth was still open from the last moan and I was suddenly aware of every wet sound in that car. The road noise was not loud enough. Nothing was loud enough. I could hear myself breathing. I could hear him breathing. I could hear the indicator. I could hear my own pulse in my ears like I had been sprinting.
“The driver,” I said, barely.
Jamie turned his head. Too fast. Too obvious. The driver did not look again. That was worse. The not looking again felt like manners, and manners in that moment felt like a verdict.
I sat back properly. Pulled my skirt down with as much dignity as a woman can manage when she is soaked and shaking and still holding another person’s dick. I let go. I wiped my hand on my own thigh because I am not wiping it on his work trousers after that. Jamie did his belt up. The click of it was obscene. Everything was obscene. The air in the car felt used.
Nobody spoke.
That is the part I cannot get over. If he had said something, even something shit, I could have laughed it off. I am good at laughing things off. I could have said sorry mate, long day, and made it into a story before we even got to the next roundabout. He said nothing. He drove. We sat there like two people who had been caught in a storage cupboard at a wedding.
The rest of the journey took six years. Stratford traffic is never kind but that night it was personal. Every red light felt like a spotlight. I stared at my phone like it had the answers. It did not. I opened the Uber app and stared at the little car on the map and thought, you stupid girl, you absolute stupid girl. Jamie tried to hold my hand. I let him for about ten seconds then needed both hands free so I could sit on them and stop them doing anything else idiotic.
When we finally pulled up I said thank you to the driver in the smallest voice I own. He nodded once. Still nothing. I got out so fast I nearly left a shoe. Jamie tipped. I tipped as well, separately, like extra money might rewind time. It did not.
On the pavement I laughed. It came out wrong. Too high. Too bright. The laugh you do when you have just publicly come apart and you need to put a lid back on yourself before you cry or get horny again, and with me those two can arrive together, which is a problem.
“Well,” I said. “That was romantic.”
Jamie rubbed his face. He looked like he wanted the ground to take him as well, but there was still heat in him. I could see it. I could feel it on me. That was the cruel bit. My body had not received the humiliation memo. I was still turned on, still wet, still half a minute away from dragging him into the stairwell. My head had received the memo in high definition.
We went up to mine anyway. Of course we did. I am not a monk. I have two flatmates and a thin door and a vape on the balcony and a very specific way of dealing with a night that has already gone feral. We were quieter in the flat. Not quiet. Quieter. I put music on so I would not hear myself the way I had heard myself in that car. He fucked me against the kitchen counter first because I did not want to wait for the bedroom and because I needed to finish what I had started before my brain could turn the whole thing into shame soup. It was good. It was messy. I came with my hand over my own mouth, which I almost never do, and that alone tells you how cooked I was.
After, on the balcony, I vaped and he stole my hoodie and we both kept doing that laugh that is not really a laugh.
“Do you think he watched the whole time?” Jamie said.
“Do not.”
“I am just asking.”
“I will throw you off this balcony.”
He grinned. I grinned back despite myself. That is the problem with me. I can be mortified and still a bit pleased. I had wanted him. I had had him. The universe had simply added a silent audience and a professional driving licence.
Morning was worse in a different way.
I woke up to the rating notification before I even woke up to my alarm. No five stars. Of course not. The trip sat there looking ordinary, pickup Stratford, drop-off mine, and the little glow of approval I am used to seeing was just gone. Vanished. Fair. I would not have given us five stars either. I would have given us a silent stare and a prayer.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, makeup still faintly on his pillow from my face, and thought about every sound I had made in that car. The moan when his fingers first pushed in. The way I told him I wanted to be fucked. The gasp over the bump. All of it had gone straight into the front of the vehicle like a podcast nobody asked for.
I got up, showered like I could wash the memory off, put on a more boring top than usual, and went to work with the posture of a woman who has never had an inappropriate thought in her life. I answered emails. I booked a meeting room. I brought someone a coffee. At lunch I told one of my housemates over voice note and she screamed so loud I had to take the phone away from my ear.
“You thought the partition was up?”
“I did think that, yes.”
“Cat.”
“I know.”
“In Stratford.”
“I know.”
“You are a liability.”
“I know.”
She was not wrong. I am a liability with good hair and a high sex drive and a talent for assuming I am more private than I am. I have done worse things than get loud in a car. I have also done cleaner things. This one sits in a special drawer because it had no villain except me and my inability to check a bloody screen.
Jamie texted at eleven. A single eye emoji and then, later, you still coming out Friday. I looked at the message for a long time. Part of me wanted to say no and become a nun. A very small part. The rest of me is still me. I said maybe. Then I said yes. Then I added, we are getting the train.
I have thought about the driver more than is normal. Not in a fantasy way. In a hot-faced way. I wonder if he went home and told someone. I wonder if he told no one and just added us to the pile of nights he can never unsee. I hope it is the second one. I also know I have no right to hope for anything after using his car like a lay-by.
What I keep coming back to is the moment of eye contact. There was no joke in it. No wink. No disgust even, not really. Just a man doing his job, looking up, and finding two people who had forgotten the world contained anyone but themselves. That look took all the heat in my body and turned it into static. I can still feel the exact second my moan died in my throat. It is impressive, in a horrible way. I have been interrupted by flatmates, by phones, by a cramp, by my own terrible timing. Never by a rearview mirror.
Would I do it again?
Not like that. I am arrogant, not stupid. Next time the screen goes up or the music goes on or, radical idea, we wait until we are behind an actual door like people with jobs and references. I still wanted him. I still want that feeling of being so into it that the rest of the city falls away. I just need the city to actually fall away, not sit in the front seat with a licence and a clean interior, listening to me beg for it between Stratford and home.
The five stars are gone. My dignity took a short holiday. The story is already funnier than it was while I was living it, which is how you know you have survived. I vape on the balcony now and every time an Uber goes past I have a tiny flinch, then I laugh, then I remember his eyes in the glass and I want to fold myself into a very small square.
Fair enough. He heard the back seat. I gave him plenty to hear. Next time I will keep my voice down, or I will not get in the car at all until I have checked the partition with my own two hands, like a woman who has learned something.
I have learned something.
I just cannot promise I have learned enough.
