The train was already twenty minutes late and I was still in my work clothes, vape in my bag, pint settling in my stomach, that particular after-hours itch sitting right under my skin. You know the one. The one that turns a normal Thursday into a terrible idea with nice lighting.
He had been at the same table as the accounts lot. Dark shirt, loosened tie, the sort of mouth that looks like it knows what it is doing. We had been talking too close for colleagues of colleagues. His knee kept finding mine under the table and I let it. I am not mysterious about that. If I like the look of someone I do not do the coy little glance over the glass. I just look. He looked back. That was enough.
Last orders happened. The group splintered. Someone mentioned the delays and everyone groaned like it was a personal insult. I said I was heading to the station anyway. He said he was on the same line. Of course he was. That is how these things start. Not with candles. With a shared misery and a bit of eye contact that has already gone past polite.
We walked it. Smart casual, heels I should not have worn for the cobbles, him with his jacket over one arm like he thought that made him look relaxed. The air outside the pub had that damp London smell. I hit the vape once on the corner and he watched my mouth when I did it. I noticed. I always notice.
The concourse was a mess. Boards flicking. Cancelled. Delayed. Delayed again. A crowd of people staring up like the screens might suddenly grow a conscience. I swore under my breath. He laughed. We ended up standing by the WHSmith with nothing to do except talk and not talk about what we were both thinking.
He asked if I wanted another drink. I said if I had another drink I would miss the next one as well and then we would be here until midnight. He said midnight did not sound awful. I told him I had a flatshare and two nosy friends and a promotion I actually wanted, so midnight in a station bar was not the move. He smiled like he had heard the first half louder than the second.
That is the problem with me. I can hear myself being sensible and still feel my pulse doing something stupid.
The next update said forty minutes. Forty. People started sitting on the floor. A man near us was eating a meal deal like it was a protest. I checked my phone. Nothing useful. Just the group chat from the pub already turning into voice notes I was not going to open.
He asked what I was doing this weekend. I said sleep, laundry, and trying not to think about work. He said that sounded tragic. I said he was welcome to have a more exciting life if he liked, I was twenty five and already tired in a specific office way. He leaned in a bit when I said twenty five, like the number needed inspecting. I let him. I smelled his cologne and the beer and the station and it should not have worked. It did.
We drifted toward the toilets because that is what you do when you have been standing too long and you need a reason to move. The main ones had a queue. Of course they did. Delayed train plus Friday-eve energy and suddenly every woman in the southeast needs a wee at the same time. The accessible one was round the corner, quiet, the kind of door that looks like it has seen things and chosen not to comment.
I do not know who suggested it. That is a lie. I know exactly how it happened. He nodded at the door. I looked at the queue. I looked at him. I thought about forty minutes on a cold platform with this in my chest and no privacy and my housemates asking questions later. Then I thought about his mouth again.
I said we would be quick.
He said yeah.
That should have been the point where a better version of me walked back to the boards and waited like a person with a job and a brain. That version did not show up.
The lock slid across with a sound that felt too loud. The light was that hard white that makes everyone look a bit unwell. Handrails. Baby change. A bin that had already given up. I put my bag on the baby change like it was a bedside table. He laughed at that and I told him not to start. Then he kissed me and I stopped caring about the bin.
It was not gentle. I did not want gentle. My back hit the door and his hand went straight to my waist, then under the hem of my skirt like he had been thinking about it since the pub. He had. I had too. I bit his bottom lip and he made a noise that went straight through me. My blouse was still tucked in from work. That felt filthy in the best way. Smart on top, his fingers already finding the edge of my knickers like we were not standing in a public toilet under a speaker that kept apologising for the delay.
I got his belt undone because I am not the girl who stands there waiting to be undressed like a present. I know what I am good at. I dropped a little, one knee on the floor that I am trying not to think about even now, and took him in my mouth before he could do the whole shall we talk about this thing. He swore. Quiet, but not quiet enough. I looked up at him on purpose. That is half the point. Let them watch. Let them know I am not faffing about.
He was already hard. That helped. I used my hand and my mouth the way I like, unhurried even though the clock in my head was screaming forty minutes, thirty five, whatever it was now. The vape was still in my bag. I thought about that for one stupid second, about the mango and the pub and his knee under the table, and then I stopped thinking.
He pulled me up by the elbow and kissed me again, messier, and pushed my knickers aside. Two fingers, then a third when I rocked onto him, and I had to put my own hand over my mouth because the acoustics in those rooms are a joke. Every sound slaps back at you. My heel slipped on the floor and I grabbed the handrail like I was about to file a complaint with the station. He laughed into my neck. I told him if he laughed again I was leaving. I did not leave.
Skirt up around my hips. His trousers open. The whole thing had that rushed, greedy quality that makes you feel sixteen and twenty five at the same time. I was wet enough that it was almost embarrassing. Almost. I hooked one leg up and he pushed in and the first second was that sharp, perfect fill that makes your brain go blank. I breathed out against his shirt. He muttered something filthy. I told him to shut up and move.
He did.
It was good. That is the annoying part. If it had been bad I could have blamed the setting and gone home clean. It was good in that slightly wrong way, the kind where you can hear your own heartbeat and a tannoy in the distance talking about platforms and you are still rolling your hips because your body has already voted. My blouse had come untucked. His hand was under it, on my ribs, thumb brushing the underside of my bra. I thought, very clearly, I am going to come in a disabled toilet and then get on a train and sit next to a man eating crisps. That thought did not stop me. It made it worse. Better. Same thing.
I was close. He was getting sloppy with it, which I like, that little loss of manners. I had one hand in his hair and the other braced on the wall and my mouth open against his jaw when it happened.
A knock.
Not a shy one. A proper knock, two sharp hits, the kind that means someone has already tried the handle.
We froze like we had been unplugged.
His eyes went wide. Mine did too. He was still inside me. That detail feels important. You do not get to pause a film at a dignified frame when you are mid-thrust in a station toilet with your skirt round your waist.
Another knock. Then a voice, muffled, asking if anyone was in there.
I do not know why I whispered. There was no reason to whisper. The damage was already done. I heard my own voice come out small and stupid and twelve years old.
Occupied.
Silence on the other side. Then a sigh. Then footsteps that did not go far enough away.
He looked at me. I looked at the door. I could feel him still hard, which would have been funny if I could have found the joke. I could not. My face was hot. My heart was doing that ugly thud. All the sex left my body in one go and got replaced by the sudden, vivid image of a member of staff with a master key and a high vis.
I mouthed get out.
He did not need telling twice. We came apart in this graceless scramble, him tucking himself away, me yanking my knickers up so fast I nearly overbalanced. Skirt down. Blouse shoved back in, crooked. I caught sight of myself in the steel dispenser. Smudged mouth. Bright eyes. Hair that had been fine at the pub and now looked like I had been in a fight with a hand dryer. I grabbed my bag. He unlocked the door with fingers that were not as steady as he wanted them to be.
We did not leave together. That was the one intelligent decision of the night.
I waited three seconds, which felt like a year, then stepped out like I had only been washing my hands and considering my life. There was a woman by the wall with a suitcase and a face like she knew. Maybe she did. Maybe she did not. I did not check. I walked.
He went the other way, toward the opposite end of the platform once we both filtered back out onto the concourse. I saw him again two minutes later because of course I did. Same platform. Same delayed service. Same electronic voice apologising like it had not just witnessed my downfall.
We did not speak.
We did not even do the little nod.
He stood by the Costa. I stood by the pillar like the pillar was my husband. A family with a pushchair parked themselves between us and I have never been more grateful for a stranger’s child in my life. When the train finally crawled in I got on three carriages down from him. I know because I watched. I am not proud of that either.
The carriage was packed. I sat opposite a girl eating a wrap and scrolling. My thighs were still warm. My knickers were a crime. I put my headphones in and played something loud enough to drown the thought of that knock. It did not work. I kept hearing my own voice. Occupied. Like I was hiding in a wardrobe at a sleepover.
My vape was in my bag. I wanted it so badly I could have cried. You cannot vape on the train. I sat there with my hands in my lap like a person who had not just had a man’s fingers and then the rest of him in a toilet while the whole station waited for a signal.
By the time I got home the flat was half lit and one of my housemates was on the sofa with Love Island on pause. She took one look at me and said you look like you have been running. I said delays. She said your blouse is done up wrong. I looked down. It was. Two buttons off. I laughed too loud and went to the kitchen and drank water like it might rewind the last hour.
I told them a version later. Not the full one. The funny one. The one where I am still the smug girl who nearly got away with it. They screamed. They called me a liability. They were not wrong.
Work the next morning was a special kind of punishment. Same smart casual. Same train line, thankfully a different hour. I kept waiting to see him on the concourse. I did not. I do not know if that made it better. I sat at my desk answering emails with the posture of someone who has never been on her knees on a station floor. My manager asked if I had a good night. I said it was fine. Fine is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Here is the thing I will not pretend. Part of me still thinks about the good bit. The door locked. His mouth. The way it felt when I stopped being a personal assistant on a delay and became just a girl who wanted it badly enough to be stupid. That part was hot. Proper hot. The kind I would do again if the universe handed me a better lock and a worse conscience.
The rest of it lives in my body like a flinch. The knock. The whisper. The walk of not-quite-shame across a platform full of people who only wanted to go home. We never spoke after. No text. No accidental meeting by the barriers. Just two adults who shared a terrible idea and then boarded a train like it never happened.
I still take that line. I still stand under those boards. Sometimes the accessible toilet door is open and I look at it like it might wink. It never does. I hit my vape outside and tell myself I have learned.
I have not.
I have just learned to check the handle twice.
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