I should have known. That is the whole article, really. I should have known the second I clocked the sandwich looking a bit too shiny under those Tesco lights and still thought, yeah no, I will be fine.
It was late. Proper late for a Wednesday. I had been at work since half eight, answering emails like my life depended on it because the promotion thing is sitting there in the back of my head every hour of the day. By seven I was starving and smug in that dangerous way where you start making decisions with your stomach and your knickers at the same time. He messaged. Come over. I have wine. I have a flat that is not currently hosting two other girls and a vape cloud the size of Essex. I said give me forty minutes.
Forty minutes is how long it takes to convince yourself a meal deal is a personality.
I went into Tesco like I had a plan. I did not have a plan. I had a rumbling gut and a man waiting in his boxers, probably, and the kind of confidence that only shows up when you have already decided you are getting laid. Ham and cheese looked sad. The chicken one looked like it had been through something. I picked the meal deal anyway because I am twenty five and I still treat that little yellow sticker like it is a treat from the government. Sandwich. Crisps. A drink that was far too fizzy for a girl about to be on her back. I ate half of it walking to the station and the rest on the train, picking bits out of my teeth in the window like a lady.
It sat in me. I felt it sit. That heavy, polite little weight right under the ribs. I told myself it was just food. Food does that. You eat, you digest, you go and have sex like a functioning adult. I even had a vape on the walk from his station and told myself I felt mint.
His flat was nicer than I expected. Not posh. Just clean in that way that makes you think, oh he might actually rinse a mug. Shoes off. Wine poured. Music on low enough that you could still hear yourself think and I do not like that, generally, but I let it happen. He kissed me in the kitchen like he had been waiting all day and I kissed him back like I had not just committed a crime against my own intestines.
I will give him this. He was good with his hands. Not frantic. Not that awful stabby thing some of them do like they are looking for a light switch. He got my shirt off without making it a performance and when he put his mouth on my neck I made that noise I only make when I am actually into it. We barely made it to the bedroom. My skirt ended up on the chair. His jeans ended up in a heap that said he had not planned this as carefully as he wanted me to think. I was already wet and a bit too pleased with myself, which is usually when the universe starts writing notes.
I like being on top. I know that about myself. I like the control and I like watching their face when they realise I am not just going to lie there looking pretty. I pushed him back on the bed and climbed on and for a few minutes it was exactly what I had come for. His hands on my hips. That thick slide of him inside me. Me rolling my hips like I had somewhere to be and all night to get there. I was talking a bit. I do that. Nothing poetic. Just filthy little bits, half laughing, telling him harder when I wanted it and slower when I wanted him to feel it. He swore under his breath and I felt that smug heat in my chest like, yes, Cat, you still have it.
Then my stomach spoke.
Not a cute gurgle. Not the little polite bubble you can pretend is the radiator. This was a long, low, traitorous roll from somewhere south of my belly button, the kind of sound that has a beginning, a middle and a punchline. It happened while I was mid-grind, while he was looking up at me like I was doing something impressive. The noise filled the room. It was not sexy. It was not even human in a useful way. It was a meal deal announcing itself.
I froze. He froze. For one awful second neither of us pretended it had not happened.
I laughed. Of course I laughed. That is what I do when I want the floor to swallow me. I said something like, ignore that, and tried to keep moving because I am arrogant enough to believe I can out-sex a sandwich. I lasted maybe ten more seconds. Another noise came, sharper this time, and with it a cramp that made my whole face change. That was it. The mood did not die. The mood was assassinated in its sleep.
I got off him so fast I nearly kneed him in the chest. I said bathroom, now, sorry, and I was already walking like a woman who knew the next thirty seconds would decide her entire reputation. His hallway felt longer than it had any right to be. I found the door, locked it, sat down and accepted my fate.
Twenty minutes.
I am not proud of what happened in that bathroom. I am also not going to dress it up. The meal deal had been waiting. The fizzy drink had been waiting. The train sandwich that should have stayed in the fridge had been waiting. They all arrived at once, like they had planned it in a group chat. I sat there with my knickers round one ankle, forehead on my knees, listening to my own body betray every sexy thing I had done in the last half hour. At one point I thought, this is it, this is how I die, on a stranger’s toilet, still wearing mascara, while a hard man in the next room wonders if he should put trousers on.
He knocked once. Soft.
You alright?
I said fine, which was a lie so bold I almost respected myself for it. Then I said give me a minute, which became five, which became the kind of silence that makes a man start boiling a kettle because he does not know what else to do with his hands.
I could hear him out there. Cupboard. Tap. The little clink of a mug. That is when the shame properly landed. Not the bathroom part. The tea part. A man making you tea because your stomach has declared war is a specific kind of intimacy I did not ask for. I wanted him to be a bit of a dick. I wanted him to sigh and check his phone. Instead he was being kind and that made it worse. Kindness when you are half naked and detonating is unbearable.
I cleaned myself up like I was prepping for a job interview. Washed my hands twice. Checked my face in the mirror and saw a girl who had been so sure of herself an hour ago and now looked like she had seen God and he was wearing a Tesco uniform. I pulled my skirt back into place. I found my vape in my bag because of course I had brought my bag into the bathroom, like a woman preparing for exile. One hit. Mango. It did not help. It just made me taste fruit on top of humiliation.
When I opened the door he was in a t-shirt and boxers with two mugs on the side. Tea. Actual tea. Not wine. Not a joke. He looked at me the way you look at someone who has been through a mild natural disaster.
I said, so.
He said, food poisoning or just Tesco?
I could have kissed him for that. Or left. I did neither. I sat on the edge of his bed like a guest who had overstayed and wrapped both hands round the mug. The tea was too hot. I drank it anyway. We did not talk about the sex. We talked about meal deals like they were a shared enemy. He said he once ate a prawn one on a night bus and saw things. I said I had a maths degree and still could not calculate risk when I was horny and hungry at the same time. He laughed. I laughed. It was almost nice, which made me want to scream into a cushion.
I did not get back on him. There are limits. Even I have them. The body had spoken and the body had been extremely clear. He offered to call me an Uber and I said yes before he could offer the sofa. I wanted my own bed. I wanted my housemates’ terrible telly and the safety of a bathroom I pay rent for. I wanted to not be the girl who turned a decent shag into a digestive event.
On the way down the stairs I caught myself in the hallway mirror. Hair a bit wrecked. Lipstick gone. That smug look I usually wear had been replaced by something smaller. I still looked fit. That was the insult of it. I looked like a woman who should have been leaving with her legs a bit shaky for the right reasons.
The Uber driver did not speak. Thank God. I vaped out the window and texted the group chat one line.
Do not, under any circumstances, fuck on a meal deal.
One of them replied immediately. Details.
I said later.
I did not say later because I am shy. I said later because I needed to sit in the back of that car and replay the noise in my head until it became funny instead of fatal. It is funny now. It was not funny when I was clenched on his toilet whispering please to my own insides. It is funny in the way all my worst nights become funny once I have had a shower and a bit of distance and a story I can tell with my eyebrows up.
I got home and both housemates were on the sofa. They took one look at me and one of them said, that is not a just-been-fucked face. That is a crime-has-occurred face.
I told them. Not every wet detail. Enough. The sandwich. The ride. The sound. The tea. They screamed. Proper screamed. I sat there eating toast like a nun and swore I would never buy another meal deal after six again.
I bought one the next day at lunch. Of course I did. I am not a changed woman. I am just a woman who now does a quiet little risk assessment before she takes her knickers off.
He texted in the morning. Hope your stomach’s alright. No pressure. Last night was still fit until it wasn’t.
I stared at that for a long time. It was a good message. Decent. The kind of message that almost makes you consider a second attempt, in daylight, after porridge, after your body has signed a peace treaty. I replied with a laughing face and thanks for the tea and left it there. I have a promotion to think about. I have a flat to keep. I have a reputation in my own head as someone who is good at this, and I need a week before I test that theory again.
Here is what I know. I can talk a man into bed. I can get on top and make it look easy. I can be filthy and funny and leave him a bit stunned. What I cannot do is outrun a Tesco chicken sandwich that has been plotting since 8pm.
If you are going to someone’s flat late, eat something boring. Eat toast. Eat nothing. Do not put three questionable items in a paper bag and call it dinner and then expect your pelvic floor to behave like a professional. Your gut does not care that you are confident. Your gut does not care that you have a good arse and a filthy mouth. Your gut has a schedule and it will ruin you on it.
I still think about him sometimes when I walk past that Tesco. Not in a romantic way. In a haunted way. The wine. The bed. The ten minutes where I was actually excellent. Then that noise, like a trombone under the duvet.
Never again.
Until the next time I am starving, horny and convinced I am invincible. Which, being honest, is probably Thursday.
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