Caitlin

Author: caitlinkidd

  • Tesco Meal Deal Struck Back

    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.

  • Counted Seconds On The Condom

    I have a maths degree. That should be useful. It is. Just not when you are standing there with your knickers round one ankle and a man looking at you like you have grown a second head.

    Thursday. After work. The sort of night that starts with one pint and a lie. I said I was only staying for one because I had emails. I did not have emails. I had a vape, a decent bra, and the particular restlessness that turns up when the office has been dull and my brain wants something warmer than a spreadsheet.

    He was at the bar near the station. Not a colleague. Thank God. I have a promotion I actually want and I am not stupid enough to mix that with the other thing I am good at. He was just a man I had been messaging, the usual back and forth, a bit of cheek, a photo that did not look like a passport reject. In person he was better. Tall enough. Clean shirt. Hands that looked like they knew what they were doing. He bought the second round without making a speech about it, which I respect. I can talk. I do not need a man narrating the pint.

    We stayed longer than I planned. I always do. Pub got louder. I got happier. That baseline mood of mine, the one that sits on a bit of smug and a bit of heat, started doing what it does. I leaned in when he spoke. He noticed. Of course he noticed. I am not subtle when I have decided I like the look of someone. I vaped outside once, came back smelling like mango and cold air, and he laughed at the cloud like it was charming. It is charming. I make it charming.

    By nine I had already done the maths that actually matters. Time to last train. Time to his place. Likelihood of my flatmates being in and making it weird. His won. He lived alone, ten minutes in an Uber, no clown memorabilia as far as the conversation had revealed, which I do check now because I have standards and also trauma. We split the fare. I am not paying a man’s whole night just because I plan to sit on him.

    His flat was fine. Not impressive. Not grim. The sort of place a bloke keeps tidy enough because he has had people back before and learned. Jacket on the chair. Telly on standby. Kitchen that had seen a meal deal and survived. I clocked the exits out of habit and then stopped clocking anything useful, because he kissed me in the hallway and it was good. Proper good. Not teeth. Not wet in the wrong way. Just that slow confidence that makes my brain go quiet for once.

    Clothes came off like we both had somewhere to be and nowhere else we wanted to be. I like that part. I am good at that part. Smart casual hits the floor and suddenly I am not the girl who spent eight hours being polite on email. I am Cat, who knows what she wants and does not pretend otherwise. He got my shirt. I got his belt. We made it to the bedroom without taking a lamp with us, which I count as competence.

    He was hard. I was wet. The usual honest facts. I had him on the edge of the bed and I was already thinking about putting my mouth on him because I like being good at things and I like the look men get when they realise I am not guessing. He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, smiling, and reached for the drawer.

    Fair. Sensible. I like sensible. I am a personal assistant. I live in calendars and dates and other people’s mistakes. A condom is the least romantic object in the world and still the most attractive one when you have a brain.

    He handed me the packet. That was the first little warning, though I did not know it yet. Some men rip it open like they are in a film. He handed it over like he wanted me to approve the paperwork. I should have found that sweet. I did, for half a second.

    Then I looked at it.

    The wrapper was not new-new. Not ancient either. Just that slightly tired look foil gets when it has lived in a wallet or a drawer through more than one season. I turned it over. Expiry date printed in that tiny unhelpful font they use when they do not want you doing exactly what I was about to do.

    I stood there naked. He sat there naked. The heating was on too high. My hair was a state. His hand was still on my hip like the night had not changed temperature.

    And my degree woke up.

    I am not joking. It was like someone flicked a switch behind my eyes. All the heat in my stomach took a seat and the numbers walked in. Day. Month. Year. Current date. How dating actually works when a packet says end of a month. Whether they mean the last day or the first. How long foil really lasts if it has been somewhere warm. I could feel myself doing it. I could not stop myself doing it.

    He noticed the pause.

    “You all right?”

    “Yeah,” I said, which was a lie so bald I nearly laughed. “Just checking.”

    Checking. Like I was about to sign off a delivery.

    I held it closer to the lamp. Squinted. The numbers were worn. Of course they were. Of course the one night I am actually in the mood, properly in the mood, the print looks like it has been through a wash. I tilted it. I am twenty five years old with my tits out in a stranger’s flat doing forensic accounting on rubber.

    “Is this one expired,” I said, “or am I thick?”

    He made a sound that was not sex. More like a man watching a car stall.

    “What?”

    “The date.” I tapped the foil with a nail. “I cannot tell if that is a three or an eight and it matters.”

    It did matter. I know it mattered. I also know that saying it out loud while he was sitting there with his cock cooling in the air was not the move. I said it anyway. I have a mouth and a habit of using it.

    He took it off me, looked, frowned, looked again. Two naked adults passing a condom back and forth like it was a utility bill. The sex left the room. I felt it go. It shut the door politely on the way out.

    “I think it is fine,” he said.

    “You think.”

    “It looks fine.”

    “Looks fine is not a date.” I heard myself. I hated myself. I kept going. “If that is March it is grand. If that is May we are in a different conversation. And I am not being funny but I am not doing mental gymnastics with my actual body on the line because you keep emergency supplies next to old chargers.”

    He laughed, a bit helpless. “You are really doing maths right now.”

    “I have a degree,” I said, as if that helped. As if that has ever helped a woman mid-hookup. “I can do this. I am doing this. I just need the year to stop looking like a smudge.”

    Silence. The sexy kind of silence is heavy and useful. This one was fluorescent. I could hear his fridge in the kitchen. I could hear my own pulse and it was not doing anything useful anymore. I was still holding the packet. He was still looking at me. I became extremely aware of being naked in a way I usually enjoy and suddenly did not.

    I did the sum anyway.

    Current month. Printed month. Year either this one or last, depending on whether the worn number was generous. I counted on my fingers at one point. I actually counted on my fingers. Twenty five, good job, decent at communication, standing in a stranger’s bedroom using Year One methods on contraception. If my old lecturer could have seen it he would have wept, then asked why I was unemployed from the thing I trained for.

    “It is in date,” I said at last. “Just. Like, only just. The sort of just that makes you think about the factory and the warehouse and how long it sat in Superdrug under a bad light.”

    “Right.”

    “Which is still in date.”

    “Yeah.”

    “So we can use it.”

    “We can.”

    Neither of us moved.

    That is the worst bit. Not the talking. The bit after the talking when the body should pick the conversation back up and instead everyone is thinking about latex shelf life. He was not fully hard anymore. I was not exactly a river. I could have salvaged it. I know I could. Mouth, hands, a bit of filth in his ear. I am not shy and I am not easily put off. I like sex. I like being good at it. I like the way it shuts my head up. That is the honest part I do not put on a CV. It makes me feel held. It makes the day smaller.

    But there is a moment where the spell breaks and you can feel yourself standing outside the scene, watching. I was watching. I was also still holding the condom like a receipt.

    “Do you want to…” he started.

    “Yeah,” I said. Then I did not. I sat on the edge of the bed instead, packet in my lap, and let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I have ruined it, have I not?”

    He was decent about it. I will give him that. Some men get sulky when their evening develops an audit. He just rubbed his face and said it was all right, which is what people say when it is not all right but they are trying not to be a dick. I appreciated the effort. I still wanted a hole in the floor.

    We put clothes on in the wrong order. Shirt before dignity. I found my knickers half under the bed and had a brief, violent conversation with myself about whether I should still offer to get him off so the night was not a total waste. I nearly did. I like finishing things. Then I pictured saying “shall I just use my mouth then” in the same voice I had used to query a printed date, and the cringe was so physical I put my coat on instead.

    We talked for ten minutes like people who had just shared a mildly upsetting PowerPoint. Work. Trains. Whether the pub on the corner does food after ten. I vaped out of his window because I needed something in my hands that was not a contraceptive. Mango again. The room smelled like a corner shop and missed opportunity.

    I ordered the Uber before it could get tender. Tender would have been worse. Tender would have meant sitting on his sofa pretending we might do this again when we both knew the story of the night was already the story of the night. He walked me down. Kissed my cheek. Called me funny. I am funny. I am also the woman who turned a sure thing into a word problem.

    In the car I opened Notes like I was going to write a to-do list for work and instead wrote “buy own condoms, check dates in daylight, never say am I thick while naked again.” Then I deleted it because I am not actually going to become a better person. I am going to do the same thing in a different postcode and hope the foil is clearer.

    Back at the flat my housemates were on the sofa with the telly on. One of them took one look at my face and said, “That bad?”

    “I did maths,” I said.

    “On a date?”

    “On a condom.”

    They screamed. The good scream. The one that means I will never live it down and also I am among my people. I made tea. I told it properly, including the finger counting, including the silence, including the fact that I still finished the sum correctly and felt a stupid little spark of pride about that. I did. I got it right. Expired or not, I got it right. My brain, traitor that it is, wanted a gold star.

    I lay in bed later with music on low because that is what I do when the day has been too much and sex did not get to do its job. I thought about his mouth in the hallway and how good it had been before I decided to become a quality control inspector. I thought about the look on his face when I said the date might be an eight. I thought about texting him something filthy to reset the tone and then I did not, because some nights need to stay a story.

    Would I see him again? Maybe. If he can handle a woman who talks too much and thinks in numbers at the worst possible time, he can handle me. If he cannot, there are other Thursdays. I am not short on want. I am just occasionally cursed with competence.

    The moral is not “do not check the date.” Check the date. Always check the date. Check it in the shop like a person with a future. Put a box in your bag. Be the organised one. I am the organised one at work. I can be the organised one with latex.

    The other moral, the real one, is that a maths degree will wait in the dark for you. It will let you be hot and sure and halfway to exactly what you wanted. Then it will tap you on the shoulder, point at a smudged number, and ask you to show your working.

    I showed my working.

    I got it right.

    I still went home hungry.

  • Let One Go Mid-Kiss

    I clocked him before I even sat down. That is the truth of it. After-work drinks, Thursday, that slack hour where everyone pretends they are only staying for one and then nobody leaves. Smart-casual coat on, the black one that makes me look like I have my life together, hair doing what it wanted, vape in the bag. I had been in the office since half eight pretending to care about a calendar invite. By six I wanted a pint, a bit of attention, and if the night went my way, something more useful than either.

    He was at the end of the bar with two lads from the other floor. Josh. Dark hair, that slightly too-pleased-with-himself smile I recognise because I wear one myself. Not my usual type on paper. On paper I like them a bit rougher, a bit quicker to get to the point. But he had good hands. I noticed the hands first. Then the way he looked at me like he already knew I was going to let him.

    I am not shy about that part. I like sex. I am good at it. I do not do the whole coy dance unless it serves me. So when he bought the next round and found a reason to stand in my space, I let him. Close enough I could smell his aftershave and the lager on him. Close enough that when I laughed at something dumb one of his mates said, I did it into his shoulder on purpose.

    Three pints. Then a double. Then the nachos someone in our group insisted on, which in hindsight was the first crime of the evening. Cheese, jalapeños, that sour cream that sits in your stomach like a dare. I ate them because I was hungry and because I was performing being easy and fun, which I am, and because I had already decided I wanted his mouth on me later. Not in a romantic way. In a I-have-had-a-long-week-and-I-want-to-feel-someone way.

    We talked about nothing. Work. Trains. How the office coffee tastes like punishment. He was well spoken enough, a bit pleased with his own jokes. I matched him. I can do that. Degree on the wall at home I never look at, PA by day, and I know how to sound like I belong in a conversation without giving away that I am already picturing him with his jeans round his thighs.

    By nine the group had thinned. My lot were talking about last orders and taxis. His mates were getting loud. Josh looked at me like the question had already been asked. I looked back like the answer was obvious.

    Outside was cold in that early autumn way that makes you pull your coat tighter and pretend you are not bothered. The pub door kept slapping open behind us. Buses on the main road, that wet hiss of brakes, a group of girls screaming at each other in a loving way down the pavement. I lit the vape. Mango. He made a face and I told him to get over it. He laughed. I liked that he laughed.

    We stood under the awning like we had planned it. I was feeling cute. That is the dangerous bit. When I feel cute I get cocky. Coat collar up, a bit of lip left, that warm buzz in my stomach that was half the drink and half the knowledge that I could have him in a cab in ten minutes if I wanted. I did want. I was already thinking about the flat, whether both housemates would be in, whether we would even make it past the sofa. I was thinking about his mouth. I was thinking about putting his hand where I wanted it. I was thinking, very specifically, about how good it would feel to stop performing for one night and just get off.

    He said something about sharing an Uber. I said something about seeing how the next five minutes went. Then he stepped in.

    First kiss outside a pub should be simple. It is a public, stupid, slightly messy thing and I like it for that. No candles. No speech. Just cold air and someone deciding they have waited long enough. He was a good kisser, I will give him that. Soft at first, then surer, hand on my waist over the coat, the kind of kiss that tells you he has thought about it for the last hour. I kissed him back properly. Not polite. I do not do polite when I have already made my mind up. I had one hand on his jacket and the vape still in the other because I am not a person who puts things down when I should.

    And then my body committed a hate crime.

    It was not a little polite escape. It was not something you could blame on a chair or a passing lorry if you really committed to the lie. It was loud. Unmissable. A proper, round, traitorous sound that arrived in the middle of his mouth on mine like it had been waiting all night for its cue. The nachos. The pint. The second pint. My stomach had been muttering for twenty minutes and I had told it to behave, which is not how stomachs work, especially not mine after a week of desk lunches and vape and not enough actual food.

    I felt it leave me. I heard it. Worse, I felt him hear it, because he went still in that awful way people do when their brain has to file a new piece of information mid-kiss.

    I said pardon.

    Like my nan. Like I had bumped someone in Iceland. Little lift of the chin, quick, automatic, the word out of my mouth before I could swallow it back. Pardon. In a smart-casual coat, with his hand still on my waist, mango vape in my fist, having just tried to start a night that was supposed to end with his face between my legs.

    He did not laugh. Not immediately. His eyes flicked past me to the road as if salvation might be coming on two decks. A bus heaved past at the exact wrong useful moment, that big diesel shove of noise, and he seized on it like a man grabbing a life ring.

    Bus, he said.

    Yeah, I said.

    We both looked at the bus like it had personally saved the evening. It had not. The bus had done nothing except exist. The sound had come from me. We both knew. I knew that he knew. He knew that I knew that he knew. There is a special kind of silence that arrives after that. It is not the sexy kind. It is the kind where your pulse is still up from the kiss and your pride is on the pavement.

    I laughed. Of course I laughed. What else was I going to do, faint? I am not built for shrinking. I made it a joke before he could decide it was disgusting. I said something about the nachos filing a complaint. He smiled with his mouth and not quite with his eyes. The hand on my waist loosened. Not gone. Just less sure.

    We stood there. Coat. Cold. The pub door banging again. Someone inside shouted for a taxi. I took a pull on the vape because if I was going to be mortified I was at least going to be occupied. He rubbed the back of his neck. That little tell men do when they are recalculating the night.

    I still wanted him. That is the pathetic, honest bit. The kiss had been good. My body had not got the memo that the mood was dead. I was still warm from it, still thinking about taking him home, still aware of how close his hip was to mine. Embarrassment and being turned on are not opposites for me. They just make a stupid cocktail. I could have recovered it. I am good at recovering things. A filthy comment, a tug on his jacket, walk him towards the rank and make the sound belong to a funnier version of the night.

    I did not. I said pardon again, quieter, which made it worse, and then I looked at my phone like a coward.

    He filled the air. Nice of him, really. Asked if I wanted another drink. I said I should get back. He said fair. We did that little shuffle people do when the script has ripped. He kissed my cheek. Not my mouth. The cheek is where a night goes to die. I let him. I smelt his aftershave again and hated my own guts.

    The walk to the stop was short and long at the same time. He talked about the office. I talked about the office. Two people who had just had their tongues in each other’s mouths now discussing printers. A bus that was not the guilty bus arrived. I got on it. He did not. Through the window I watched him put his hands in his pockets and look at the pub like he might go back in and pretend I had not happened.

    I sat downstairs because upstairs felt like too much commitment. Vape in my coat. Headphones in, not playing anything. My face was hot. Not cute hot. The other one. I kept hearing it. The timing. The pardon. My nan would have been proud of the manners and horrified by the rest.

    The flat was lit and messy in the usual way. One housemate on the sofa with some police thing on the telly, the other in the kitchen eating cereal like it was a personality. I dropped my bag. I took my coat off like it had betrayed me too.

    Do not, I said, before either of them spoke.

    Which of course meant I was going to tell them. I lasted as long as it took to put the kettle on. Then it came out in one run, no dignity, standing there in the kitchen with my work top still on. The pub. The kiss. The noise. The pardon. The bus that did not do it.

    They screamed. Proper screamed. The cereal one had to put the bowl down. The sofa one paused the programme and demanded the sound effect, which I refused to give because I still have standards, just not many. I laughed until my stomach hurt, which felt rude given what my stomach had already done. I called him fit. I called myself a liability. I said I had been this close to bringing him back and ruining the sofa as well as the pavement.

    They asked if I texted.

    I had. Of course I had. I am not fifteen. I sent something light on the bus, the sort of message that pretends you are both in on the joke so he does not get to hold it over you. He replied with a laughing emoji and a yeah that bus was mental. I stared at that sentence for a long time. Then I put the phone face down and ate toast I did not want.

    Later, in bed, it was worse in a different way. Quiet flat, telly off, just me and the replay. I thought about the kiss more than the sound, which says a lot about my priorities. His mouth. The hand on my waist. The plan I had for him that never got out of the starting blocks. I was still wound up. Annoyed at my own body for choosing violence. Annoyed at him for going to the cheek. Annoyed at myself for saying pardon like I was queuing in a post office.

    I did not sleep quickly. I put music on low. I thought about texting someone else, which I nearly did, because I am not above solving one humiliation with a better night. I did not, in the end. Even I know when to leave a scene alone.

    Friday in the office I saw him by the lifts. He did that nod people do when they would like the ground to help. I did the same nod back, smug as I could make it, like I had meant the whole thing as performance art. I went to my desk and answered emails like a person with a future. I thought about the promotion. I thought about money. I thought about how I would tell this story again, tighter, funnier, with me as the one who survived it.

    Because I did. That is the point. It was mortifying. It was loud. It killed a kiss that was actually going somewhere I wanted it to go. I still replay the pardon and want to walk into the sea. But I also know I looked good in that coat. I know he had been into it until my stomach filed for divorce. I know that if the same night happened again I would still eat the nachos, still stand too close, still let him kiss me outside a pub on a Thursday.

    I would just skip the second pint.

    Maybe.

    He texted a week later. Casual. Drink sometime. I left it on read long enough to feel like myself again, then said I was stacked with work, which was half true. I was stacked with not wanting to stand on that same bit of pavement and hear a bus that was not the problem. He said no worries. That was that.

    The girls still bring it up. Of course they do. Any time someone so much as mentions nachos. Any time I put that coat on. Any time I say I am popping out after work and might be late back. I tell them to shut up and I laugh anyway, because it is funny, and because if I do not laugh I have to sit with the other feeling, the one where I was about to get exactly what I wanted and my own body shouted over it.

    So yes. First kiss. Outside the pub. Cute coat. His mouth. Then me, announcing myself to the whole street like a brass band. I said pardon. He blamed the bus. It was not the bus.

    And if you are eating nachos before you try to pull someone, learn from me. Or do not. I am going to do it again at some point. I know I am. I just hope the next time my stomach waits until we are somewhere with a door.

  • Boss Sat In Next Room

    I should have gone home. That is the whole article, really. I should have got on the last train like a person with a job she actually wants to keep, vaped on the platform, eaten a supermarket wrap over the sink and gone to bed smelling like Prosecco and printer paper. Instead I stayed for one more, then one more after that, then decided a Travelodge two streets from the venue counted as a grown up decision.

    The work do was the usual mess. Too warm, too loud, someone from accounts crying in the toilets about a man who was also in the room eating cocktail sausages. I was in the smart casual thing I always wear when I want to look like I tried without looking like I tried too hard. Blazer. Nice top. The sort of shoes you regret at eleven and defend at midnight. I had been good most of the night as well, which is how I always get myself in trouble. Good meaning I talked about the promotion like I was already halfway in the chair. Good meaning I laughed at Helen’s jokes. Helen is my manager. Helen has a laugh that could strip wallpaper. Helen also booked herself a room because she lives in Kent and refuses to do the late train on principle.

    I knew that. That is the bit that makes me want to walk into traffic.

    The bloke was Tom from the Manchester office. In town for two days, leaving in the morning, the exact type of situation I tell myself is clean. Tall enough. Nice hands. The sort of northern accent that makes ordinary sentences sound like he has already decided you are coming upstairs. We had been circling since the speeches. He bought a round I did not need. I let him. I vaped outside with two girls from reception and told them I was going home. I was not going home.

    By the time the bar started putting chairs up I had already done the maths. Train missed. Uber surge looking filthy. Hotel next door with the company rate still sitting in my inbox from when I booked Helen’s room three weeks ago like the helpful little PA I am. I booked a second one on my phone in the queue for the cloakroom. I told myself it was practical. It was not practical. It was me being horny and smug and a bit drunk and very sure I could keep my voice down.

    The room was fine. Beige. Thin carpet. A kettle that had seen things. Tom kissed me against the door before I had even put the keycard in the slot properly and I laughed into his mouth because I always laugh when I already know I am going to be filthy. He tasted like lager and those mints people suck when they think they are being considerate. I dumped my bag on the chair, kicked the shoes off, and had my hand in his jeans before the light was fully on.

    I am not shy about it. Never have been. If I want something I tend to just get on with it, and I wanted him on the bed with his shirt half off and my mouth on him before he could start doing that polite checking-in voice men do when they are not sure if you are actually like this. I am actually like this. I got on my knees on that cheap carpet and took him out and I was good at it, which I know, and I did not pretend otherwise. He swore under his breath and put his hand in my hair and I looked up at him because I like watching a man realise he is not running the room anymore.

    That should have been the point where I thought about the walls.

    I did not think about the walls.

    The headboard started tapping when he pulled me up and bent me over the end of the bed. Not dramatic. Just that cheap hotel knock, knock, knock against whatever was on the other side. I heard it. I heard it and I decided it was someone else’s problem. I was wet and impatient and he was saying my name like he had only just learned it, which he had. Cat. Then louder. Then I started talking back because I do that when I get close and I cannot help it. Filthy stuff. Ordinary stuff. The sort of sentences you do not want attached to your Outlook calendar. I told him harder. I told him not to stop. I made that noise I make when it is actually good and not just polite good. He got a hand between my legs and I came first with my face in the duvet, swearing into the polyester like it had personally wronged me.

    We should have stopped for water. We should have laughed and gone quiet and remembered we both had to be in the same building as other people in a few hours. Instead I rolled him onto his back and sat on him and I was not quiet then either. The bed complained. I did not. I put my hands on his chest and rode him like I had something to prove, because I always do, and I said things I would not say in a meeting even if you paid me. Explicit. Specific. The sort of running commentary that sounds hot when you are in it and sounds like a court transcript when you replay it sober.

    There was a thump next door at one point. I thought it was pipes. I thought it was a suitcase. I thought a lot of convenient things.

    Tom lasted longer than I expected, which I would normally put in the plus column. He flipped me again, got my leg up, and the headboard really went for it. Knock knock knock, proper little drum solo against the wall. I laughed. I actually laughed, breathless and smug, and said something like they can file a complaint in the morning. He laughed too. Then he came with this broken sound and collapsed on me and we lay there in the dark breathing like we had done cardio.

    I vaped out of the window after, because of course I did. Night air. Mango. The street still wet from earlier. Tom was on his back talking rubbish about trains and how he hates London. I made agreeable noises and already knew I would not see him again in any way that mattered. That was fine. That was the point.

    I slept in my makeup. I always do when I have been an idiot.

    Morning came in that grey hotel way where the curtains never quite close. My mouth was dry. My head was doing that polite throb. Tom was already in the shower talking to himself. I checked my phone and had three emails I should have answered last night and a calendar alert for breakfast that Helen had put in the shared invite weeks ago. Complimentary breakfast. Same hotel. Same dining room. I sat on the edge of the bed in last night’s top and felt the first little drop of dread, like rain through a ceiling you have been ignoring.

    I told myself she would have gone home. I told myself Kent women of a certain management level do not stay in Travelodges next to the work do. I told myself a lot of things while putting on yesterday’s knickers and trying to make my hair look like I had planned this.

    The dining room was already busy. That smell of hotel eggs and cheap coffee. People from last night in slightly softer clothes, doing that morning after voice. I saw Tom first, which was awkward enough. He lifted his eyebrows like we were in on a joke. I gave him the smallest smile and went for the coffee machine because I needed something to do with my hands.

    Then I saw Helen.

    She was at a table by the window with a poached egg and the face of a woman who had not slept. Not tired exactly. Aware. She had her glasses on. She had a notebook open like she might start a performance review in the baked beans. Our eyes met and I knew. I knew the way you know when you have sent an email to the wrong person. There was no confusion on her face. No polite blankness. She had heard me. She had heard the headboard and the swearing and the bit where I told Tom exactly what to do with his mouth. She had heard me come. More than once, if we are being honest, which I am trying to be.

    I walked over because not walking over would have been worse. My voice came out normal for about four seconds.

    Morning. Sleep alright?

    Helen looked at me over the glasses.

    I slept, she said. Eventually.

    That eventually did more damage than if she had just sworn at me.

    I sat because my legs asked me to. Tom had the good sense to stay at the buffet poking sausages like they held classified information. Helen poured tea with the calm of someone who has raised teenagers. I asked about the last train. She asked if my room had been comfortable. I said yes. She said the walls in these places are a disgrace. Then she took a sip and added, almost kindly, that she hoped I had a glass of water.

    I wanted the floor to open. I wanted to be back in the flat with my housemates and the telly on and no career. I wanted my mum, which is a rotten thought to have over hotel tomatoes when you are twenty five and supposed to be chasing a promotion.

    We ate. Or she ate. I moved food. Someone from reception waved and I waved back like a hostage. Helen talked about the morning’s debrief as if my sex life had not been the late show on the other side of her headboard. She mentioned the promotion pack. She mentioned that she needed me sharp next week. She did not smile when she said sharp. I said of course. I sounded like I was presenting a passport.

    When the waitress came I asked for the bill in a whisper. I do not know why I whispered. The room was full of talking. It just happened. My voice went small and guilty, like I had been caught stealing biscuits. Helen heard it anyway. She signed for her room on the company card and I signed for mine on mine, because I was not putting last night on expenses even in my head. Tom appeared with a backpack and a look that said he would like to die in Manchester. He said nice to meet you properly to Helen. Helen said she believed they had already been introduced last night, in a manner of speaking.

    I could have left the country.

    Outside I vaped so hard my throat hurt. Tom tried to do a goodbye that involved a hug. I let him, because I am not actually cruel, and then I told him to have a good journey in the same voice I use for couriers. He got in a taxi. I stood on the pavement in last night’s blazer feeling like my skin was on inside out.

    The fallout did not arrive as one big explosion. It arrived in pieces. Helen put me on the note taking for the next three meetings even though that is not my job anymore. She did not mention the hotel. She did not need to. Every time she said Cat in that even tone I heard myself on the other side of the wall saying it much louder for a completely different reason. I started wearing quieter shoes. I started leaving work dos at ten. I started checking hotel wall thickness like a woman inspecting a crime scene.

    Tom texted once. Good night, sorry about breakfast. I sent back a thumbs up like a coward and muted the thread.

    My housemates got the edited version first. Then they got the real one, because I cannot keep anything in when I have had a drink and a vape on the balcony. They screamed. One of them fell off the sofa. The other one said I should put it in a risk assessment. I laughed until I felt sick, then I went quiet, then I laughed again because what else are you meant to do when you have moaned your way through a thin wall into your manager’s ear and then asked her for the bill like a child in a library.

    I still want the promotion. That is the stupidest part. I am good at the job. I can run a diary and a crisis and a room full of men who think they are being charming. I can also, it turns out, be loud enough to brief the woman who decides my pay rise.

    Would I say I regret the sex? Not really. It was good. I came. He was decent. I liked being wanted after a night of nodding at speeches. I regret the venue. I regret the wall. I regret every filthy sentence that left my mouth as if the Travelodge had been soundproofed by God himself.

    Mostly I regret thinking I am smoother than I am.

    If you need me I will be at my desk, speaking at a normal volume, drinking tea like a person who has learned a lesson. I have not fully learned it. I know myself. But I have learned this much. Next time I do something that stupid I am checking who is booked either side of me, and I am keeping my mouth busy in ways that do not carry.

    And if Helen ever brings it up properly, I am going to look her in the eye and ask if the headboard kept her up, because there is no point pretending now. She already knows I am not as polished as the calendar makes me look. She has heard the evidence. I just have to survive the next appraisal without whispering.

  • His Dog Joined Uninvited

    I should have clocked the dog bowl.

    That is the sentence I keep coming back to, usually at 1am with the vape in my hand and something mindless on the telly, because of course I should have clocked the dog bowl. Big ceramic thing by the kitchen bin. Name painted on in wonky letters. Bertie. You do not get a Bertie by accident. Bertie is a decision. Bertie is a lifestyle. Bertie is a wet nose and a wagging arse and, as it turns out, the single most effective mood killer I have met since that bloke who asked if I had a five year plan during oral.

    We had been in the pub after work. Nothing glamorous. The one near the office that smells of gravy and floor polish and has those sticky menus nobody ever wipes. He was the friend of a friend of someone in accounts, which is how half my nights start if I am being honest. Tall enough. Nice mouth. Talked like he knew he was fit but had not quite worked out how to be clever with it. I liked that. I like a bit of confidence I can outrun.

    Three drinks in I already knew I was going home with him. Not because he said anything special. Because I wanted to, and I am not in the habit of pretending I do not. He bought the fourth round and I let him, which I do not always, and then we were outside sharing my vape like we had known each other longer than an evening. Mango. Always mango. I told him if he coughed I would take the piss and he coughed anyway, which I respected.

    His place was a ten minute walk, which is dangerous information to give a woman who has already decided. New-buildish. Cleaner than my flat, which is not hard when you live with two other girls and a mountain of laundry that has developed its own personality. The second I stepped in I should have seen it. The lead on the hook. The muddy towel. The faint smell of biscuit and damp fur that no candle ever quite covers. I saw the bowl. I clocked the name. And I still took my coat off.

    Bertie was in the garden when we got in. Spaniel. Liver and white. The sort of face that looks permanently delighted and slightly stupid, which I usually find charming. He barked once at the back door like he had opinions about my existence. Callum, that was his name, Callum let him in and did the whole voice people do with dogs. Who is a good boy. Who missed daddy. I stood there in my work trousers thinking I should probably go home and not shag a man whose first guest of the evening had four legs and no sense of timing.

    I did not go home.

    We ended up in the bedroom with the door not quite shut, which I will also be adding to the list of things I should have clocked. Coat on the chair. Shoes kicked under the bed. That lovely stretch of time where you are still a bit smug about how easy it was. He was a good kisser, I will give him that. Hands in the right places. Not in a rush, which I like, because I am in a rush enough at work. I had been thinking about this since the second pint. That itchy, greedy feeling I get when the day has been long and I want someone else’s skin more than I want another episode of whatever I have been half watching.

    Clothes came off in that messy way they do when nobody is trying to put on a show and both of you are a bit pissed. I was on him first. Mouth. Hands. The stuff I know I am good at, and I am not going to pretend I am modest about it. He made that low sound men make when they have overestimated how average the night was going to be. I liked that too. I like being right about myself.

    Then I turned over.

    All fours on his duvet, work hair still up from the office, feeling properly pleased with myself. That is the honest version. Not some soft focus nonsense. I knew how I looked. I knew what I was doing. He was behind me with a hand on my hip and I was already in that greedy little headspace where the rest of the week can do one. The door was still not shut. I heard the collar tag before I understood it.

    Clink.

    Then weight.

    Then a very wet, very cold tongue on the back of my thigh.

    I shrieked.

    Not a cute shriek. Not a film shriek. The sort of sound you make when something warm and alive and completely uninvited puts its mouth on you in the one place you were not advertising. I shot forward so hard I nearly went off the end of the bed. Bertie, delighted with his contribution, hopped fully up like this was a family activity. Tail going. Ears flapping. That spaniel grin. He licked the air where my leg had been and then tried again, because spaniels are not known for reading a room.

    Callum laughed.

    That is the part that still makes my skin crawl in a different way. He laughed. He said something like oh my god that is so bad and then, I swear this is true, he said it was kind of hot. Kind of hot. A dog had just tasted my thigh mid-shag and this man, this fully grown employed adult with a named pet and a decent sofa, thought the erotic temperature of the room had gone up.

    I grabbed the duvet. Bertie took this as an invitation to sit on it. His tail slapped my calf. I could feel dog on my skin. Not in a sexy way. In a I need bleach and a priest way.

    Get him off, I said.

    Callum was still behind me, still half in the moment, still holding my hip like we were going to resume after a brief spaniel interlude. I twisted round and looked at him properly. He had the face of a man who thought this might become a funny story they told together in six months. I had the face of a woman calculating the fastest route back to my flat and whether I still had baby wipes in my bag.

    Bertie, I said. Off. Now.

    He lifted the dog down. Bertie immediately put his front paws back on the mattress and looked at me like I had personally betrayed him. I do not hate dogs. I will not have that put on me. I like dogs. I would die for a dog. I would not, under any circumstances, like a dog to join in. There is a line. The line is fur. The line is a wet nose on the back of a thigh while you are trying to get fucked after a long day of emails and other people’s calendars.

    I sat back on my heels. The mood had not dipped. The mood had been shot in the street. Callum reached for me again, softer this time, like we could kiss our way past it. I let him for about three seconds because I am greedy and I am stubborn and part of me still wanted the night I had walked in for. Then Bertie sneezed on the duvet and I felt my soul leave through the window.

    I cannot, I said.

    You can, he said, which was bold.

    I cannot do this with him watching.

    He is not watching, Callum said. He is just being friendly.

    He licked me.

    He licked your leg.

    That is my thigh, I said. That is a different postcode.

    We both looked at Bertie. Bertie looked at us like we were the entertainment. His tail had not stopped. There was a tennis ball under the radiator I had not noticed until that exact second. Of course there was a tennis ball. This whole flat was a shrine to Bertie and I had taken my knickers off in it.

    I got up. Not dramatically. Just the quiet, doomed getting up of a woman who knows the night is over and is already rewriting it into a story she can bear. Bra. Shirt. Trousers that were still warm from the pub. I could feel where the lick had been. Cold. Specific. Branded.

    Callum sat on the edge of the bed with his dick out and his dog at his feet and the expression of a man who had not planned for this particular ending. I almost felt bad. Almost. Then I remembered kind of hot and the feeling passed.

    I am not mad at the dog, I told him, because I needed that on record. Bertie did not know. Bertie thought we were playing. Bertie is a spaniel. Spaniels think everything is a picnic. You, though. You thought it was a bit.

    It was funny, he said.

    It was not funny in the moment, I said. It is going to be funny tomorrow. Tonight I want to go home and wash my leg until the skin comes off.

    He offered to put Bertie in the garden. He offered tea. He offered to start again like you can just peel a spaniel off a sexual encounter and carry on. I put my shoes on and found my vape in my coat pocket like it was the only adult in the room.

    At the front door Bertie tried to come with me. Of course he did. I crouched down despite myself and scratched his ears because I am not a monster and he had done nothing except be a dog with poor boundaries and an owner who needs his head seeing to. Good boy, I told him. Stay. Please, for the love of god, stay.

    Callum asked if he could text me. I said he could, which was generous of me, and then I walked back toward the main road with my thigh still tingling in a way that had nothing to do with him.

    The fallout was exactly as undignified as you would hope.

    I got home and both my housemates were in the living room with a film on and a bag of crisps between them. They took one look at my face and knew. Not the details. Just the shape of a night that had gone wrong in a specifically Cat way. I stood in the doorway, kicked my shoes off, and said his dog licked me.

    There was a pause.

    Where? one of them asked.

    I pointed.

    They screamed. Proper screamed. The good kind. The kind that makes it slightly better. I told the whole thing standing up because if I sat down I was going to feel Bertie again. I vaped out the window. I made a cup of tea I did not want. I had a shower so long the boiler started making that noise it makes when it is judging you.

    Callum texted twice. First one was sorry about Bertie, with a little dog emoji, which I will admit made me snort. Second one was you looked so good though, which I ignored because I have some standards left and they live in a very small box marked do not compliment me while your pet is sampling my leg.

    I told work nothing, obviously. I am a personal assistant. I organise other people’s lives. I do not need accounts asking why I look like I have seen god and not in a sexy way. I did the diary. I answered emails. I thought about Bertie’s face at the worst possible moments, like in the lift, like over a salad, like when my boss said fetch and I had to bite the inside of my cheek.

    The funny thing, and there is always a funny thing once the hot water has done its job, is that I was not even angry for long. Embarrassed, yes. Horrified, absolutely. A bit robbed, if I am honest, because I had been having a very good time and I am good at that part of my life. I had been right there, smug, on all fours, doing exactly what I wanted after a dull day, and then a spaniel rewrote the scene.

    I keep thinking about Callum saying it was kind of hot. That is the bit I will not forgive quickly. You can laugh. You should laugh. I laugh now. What you cannot do is decide a dog’s tongue is part of the foreplay and look at me like I am the one being uptight. I will do a lot of things. I have done a lot of things. I will not add Bertie to the list.

    Would I go back? No. Would I meet him for a drink if Bertie was at his mum’s? I have not decided, which means I probably would, because I am like that. I want what I want and I am not good at pretending a near miss puts me off forever. I just want it without an audience. A closed door. No collar tags. No tennis ball under the radiator watching me like a tiny yellow witness.

    I still want a refund on the evening. Not the drinks. The drinks were fine. I want the ten minutes back. The ones where I felt like myself, greedy and sure and a bit arrogant with it, before a liver and white face appeared at the exact height of my dignity and said, in dog, hello, I live here actually.

    Poor Bertie. He was only being friendly. I hope he got a treat. I hope Callum washed the duvet. I hope the next girl clocks the bowl on the way in and asks the only question that mattered.

    Does he come in the bedroom.

    If the answer is yes, she should put her coat back on. I did not. That is on me. I saw Bertie written on ceramic in wonky letters and I still got on my hands and knees like the night belonged to me.

    It did not. It belonged to the spaniel. And if I am being honest, which I usually am when it is too late to be useful, that might be the funniest and most insulting part of the whole thing.

  • Clown Mask Behind His Coats

    I went back to his after the pub feeling proper cocky. That is the sentence I keep repeating in my head like it might make me sound less mental. It does not. I am twenty five. I have a degree. I can do a spreadsheet in my sleep. I can talk a supplier down from a stupid quote before my second coffee. None of that matters when your brain clocks a clown face in a stranger’s wardrobe and decides the only reasonable response is to scream like you are being murdered and then flee in one shoe.

    This is that story. I am telling it because if I do not, I will keep replaying it at 1am with a vape in my hand like a woman who has made better choices.

    It started ordinary. That is always how the worst nights start. After work drinks on a Thursday because someone in the office had a birthday and the birthday person is the sort who books a table and then looks wounded if you do not stay for “just one more.” I had the smart casual on. Blazer. Nice top. Boots I can walk in but still look like I tried. Hair doing that thing where it looks expensive if you do not inspect it too close. I was in a good mood. Baseline happy, which for me means I already knew I was going out and I already knew I was not going home early.

    He was at the end of the bar with a pint and a face that suggested he knew he was good looking and had decided not to work too hard about it. Tall enough. Dark hair. Clean. The sort of man who smells like a decent shower and a spray he actually paid for. We got talking because I am not shy and he is not shy and the music was just loud enough that you have to lean in. I like that. I like the lean. I like watching someone realise I am fun and a bit much and then decide they are into it.

    I vaped outside twice. He came with me the second time. That should have been the first little warning, not because there was anything wrong with him, because I was already clocking exits and bedrooms in my head like a woman with a diary and no patience. We talked rubbish. Work. Trains. How Essex gets judged by people who have only ever driven through it on the way to somewhere they think is better. I told him I was a PA and he did that nod men do when they are trying to work out if you are clever or just pretty. I let him wonder. I am both. I am also smug about it.

    By the third drink I was touching his arm when I laughed. By the fourth I had already decided. That is the bit people pretend is romantic. It is not. It is practical. I like sex. I like the heat of it. I like being wanted in a room that is not my flat and is not my office. I like leaving with my make up a bit ruined and my mouth a bit used and my head quieter than it was at 6pm. He asked if I wanted to come back. I said yeah. No big speech. No pretending I needed convincing. I finished my drink. I checked my phone. I told the group chat I was getting a lift so they would not start a search party. One of my flatmates sent back a row of eggplants and a clown emoji. I ignored the clown emoji. That is how the universe works. It teases you first.

    His place was a newish block, the kind with a lobby that smells of paint and other people’s dinners. In the lift he kissed me. Proper kiss. Not shy. Hand on my waist, thumb under the blazer like he had been thinking about that exact move for an hour. I kissed him back harder because I do not do half measures when I have already said yes. He tasted like lager and mint. I had the vape in my bag and the thought crossed my mind that I should have one before we got inside. I did not. I was too busy being the version of myself I like best. Confident. A bit arrogant. Already imagining how I was going to look on my knees in his hallway if the timing worked.

    His flat was fine. Tidy enough that I did not immediately want to leave. Shoes by the door. TV too big. Kitchen that had been used but not destroyed. I put my bag on the side and he got two glasses of water like a man who has done this before and does not want a headache later. Good. I respect a man who plans for the hangover and the hookup at the same time.

    We did not make it to a polite sit down. I did not want a polite sit down. He pushed the blazer off my shoulders and I let it drop. His mouth was on my neck and my back hit the fridge and I laughed into it because I get happy when it is good. Hands under my top. My thigh hooked around his hip. He was hard against me through his jeans and I rubbed against it like I had all the time in the world. I did not. I never do. That is half the point.

    We moved to the bedroom in that clumsy shuffle people do when they refuse to stop kissing. Lights on low. Bed made, which I noticed and filed under “he expected this.” Fine by me. I undid his belt. He got my top off. Bra stayed for a minute because I like the look of it and I like watching a man work for the next bit. He got there. Mouth on my tits, a bit greedy, the right side of greedy. I had my hand in his hair and my other hand down the front of his boxers and I was already thinking about how I was going to take him in my mouth and make a whole performance of it. I am good at that. I know I am good at that. It is one of the few things I am allowed to be openly smug about without someone calling it unprofessional.

    He got his jeans off. Socks stayed. They always stay at that stage, do they not? There is a moment in every hookup where a grown man is standing there in socks and an erection and you have to decide whether it ruins it. It did not ruin it. It made me want to laugh and suck him off anyway. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him toward me by the hips. Kissed his stomach. Looked up at him with that face I know works. He swore under his breath. I liked that.

    Then I decided I wanted a towel.

    That is the detail that makes me sound unhinged. It is not unhinged. I had a drink on my chest. His mouth had been wet. I was about to get more wet. I like to have something to wipe my mouth on after. I like not leaving a slick patch on a stranger’s duvet if I can help it. I am messy in the ways I choose. I am not messy in the ways that make me feel cheap in the morning. So I said, “Have you got a towel?” like a normal person. He pointed at the wardrobe without looking, because he was busy watching my mouth and thinking about where it was going next.

    I stood up in my underwear and boots because I had not taken the boots off yet. That is another image I cannot get rid of. Me, tits out, knickers on, work boots, crossing a man’s bedroom like I owned it. I opened the wardrobe door with that little smugness still in my shoulders. I was thinking about his cock. I was thinking about how I was going to make him make that sound again. I was thinking about whether I would stay the night or get an Uber at two and eat cereal in my own kitchen like a queen.

    The clown was on the rail.

    Not a little novelty thing. Not a joke shop bag in the corner. A full face. White. Red mouth stretched too wide. Blue around the eyes. The hair bit frizzed out like it had been loved. It was hanging there between a coat and a hoodie like it paid rent.

    I made a noise I did not know I had. Not a cute shriek. A proper scream, the sort that comes from the bit of you that is still six years old and convinced something in the dark wants you. I stumbled back so hard I hit the bed with the back of my legs and sat down on it without meaning to. He said “what” and then he saw my face and then he saw the wardrobe.

    I was already moving. Shoes. I needed shoes. One boot was half off from when he had been kissing down my stomach. I jammed my foot in and could not get the zip. My hands were useless. The mask was still looking at me. That is the worst part of a clown. It keeps looking when nothing living should look like that. I grabbed my top off the floor and pulled it on backwards. I did not care. I snatched the blazer. I could not see my bag for a second and that made it worse, because leaving without my bag meant leaving my keys and my vape and my whole adult life in a room with that thing.

    “It is just a costume,” he said.

    Just. Just a costume. Men love that word. Just. As if the word shrinks the object. As if I had not just had his hand in my knickers and then opened a door onto my actual nightmare.

    “Why,” I said, and my voice came out husky and wrecked and not sexy anymore. “Why have you got that.”

    He started explaining. Work do. Fancy dress. His niece. A mate’s birthday last Halloween. The words piled up and none of them mattered because the mask was still there, hanging, smiling with that painted on joy that is not joy. I could feel my pulse in my teeth. I could feel the room getting smaller. I do not do well with clowns. I have never done well with clowns. People think it is a cute little fear, like spiders or lifts. It is not cute. It sits in me wrong. It makes my skin feel like it belongs to someone else.

    He reached toward the wardrobe like he was going to take it down and show me it was plastic and harmless. That was when I properly lost it. “Do not touch it. Do not bring it closer. I am leaving.”

    I found the bag. I found the other boot. I did not put the boot on properly. I hopped to the door with my top on backwards and my blazer over my arm and my knickers still the only thing covering the fact that five minutes earlier I had been about to have a very good night. He followed me in his socks. Just the socks. Cock still half interested because bodies are stupid and do not understand fear the way brains do. I would have found that funny on a different night. On this night I wanted him to put a wall between me and the rail.

    In the hallway I tried to breathe like a person. He stood in the doorway looking baffled and a bit rejected, which I understand, I do, because from his side of it a girl went from licking his stomach to screaming at a piece of polyester in under ten seconds. He asked if I wanted water. He asked if I wanted him to put it in another room. He asked if I was serious.

    I was serious.

    I got in the lift and the doors took a year to close. My reflection in the metal looked like a woman who had been interrupted mid crime. Hair wrecked. Mouth smeared. Top backwards, tag sticking out under my chin. I fixed the top in the lobby with my hands shaking. The night air hit me and I vaped so hard I made myself cough. Mango. Same flavour as always. It did not help as much as I needed it to.

    Then the walk of shame that is not even a walk of shame because I did not get the sex. That is the insult. I did all the work. I did the chatting and the leaning and the after work pint and the lift kiss and the fridge and the belt and the look up through my lashes. I was ready. I was wet. I was in the mood in that specific way where my head goes quiet and my body takes over and I feel like myself. And instead I was on the pavement at half eleven with one boot zipped and one boot sulking and a man upstairs who now thinks I am unhinged.

    I ordered the Uber. I sat on the little wall outside the block. I texted the group chat “do not ask.” They asked immediately. I sent a photo of the empty street and the words “clown in the wardrobe.” One flatmate thought I was joking. The other one sent the same clown emoji from earlier. I told her I would kill her in the morning, affectionately.

    In the car I caught the driver glancing at my face. I did not explain. What would I even say. Excuse me mate, I was about to suck a man off after Thursday drinks and then I found a full clown face hanging with his coats and now I need to go home and watch telly until my nervous system remembers I am an adult. You cannot say that to an Uber driver. You sit there and stare at the map and pretend you are normal.

    Fallout lasted longer than the scream.

    He texted. Of course he texted. First message was “you ok?” Second was a photo of the mask in a bin bag on his kitchen floor, like evidence. Third was “I chucked it, swear down.” I left him on read for an hour because I was on the sofa in the flat with a blanket and last night’s pasta and a programme I was not watching. My flatmates came in one after the other and I had to tell the story twice. I did the scream again for effect. I did the socks. I did the top on backwards. They howled. I howled. Then I went quiet because under the joke there is still that jolt, that old stupid jolt, the one that makes me feel six and unprotected and ridiculous for being twenty five and scared of a face that cannot even blink.

    I almost went back. That is the part I do not love admitting. Not that night. The next afternoon, after work, after I had done my emails and booked three meetings and acted like a competent human. He had been decent. He had not laughed at me in the doorway. He had offered to bin it. My body still remembered his mouth on my chest and my hand down his boxers and the sound he made when I looked up. I like finishing what I start. I like getting what I came for. I nearly typed “put it in the building bin and I will come over.”

    I did not.

    Because I could still see it on the rail. Between the coat and the hoodie. Smiling.

    Work the next day was a special kind of comedy. I had a mark on my neck I had to hide with the blazer collar. I had no sleep. I had a manager asking if I was “a bit peaky” and I had to say late train. I sat at my desk doing actual maths on an actual budget and every time someone opened a cupboard in the kitchen I flinched like a cartoon. One of the girls asked what I got up to. I said drinks. I did not say I abandoned a half naked man because his fancy dress from October had been stored badly.

    He tried again at the weekend. Different tone. Softer. Said he felt bad. Said he would like to take me for food in a public place with no wardrobes. I nearly said yes because food is food and he was still fit and I am still me. Then I pictured standing in his bedroom again, even empty, even cleaned, and my stomach did that drop. I told him I was snowed under at work. Which was true enough. Promotion season. I need my head. I need to look like the girl who can handle a diary and a crisis, not the girl who screamed at a mask and ran.

    People love to tell me I am dramatic. I am. I know I am. I also know what my body does when it sees that face. It does not negotiate. It does not care that I was wet and willing and good at what I was about to do. It slams the door. It grabs the shoes. It leaves the man in his socks.

    So that is the night. After work pint. Kiss in the lift. Hands, mouth, belt, the start of something that would have been filthy and fun and exactly what I wanted. Then a wardrobe door and a painted smile and me on the street with my top on backwards, vaping like it could rewind ten minutes.

    Never again. Not his flat. Not a surprise costume. Not a man who stores his nightmares next to his coats and thinks “it is just” is a sentence that helps.

    If you take nothing else from this, take the practical bit. If you are going to bring someone home, check the wardrobe. Check the top shelf. Check whatever you think is harmless because you have lived with it so long it went invisible. Some of us are fine with mess and noise and being a bit slutty on a Thursday. Some of us can handle a lot.

    A full clown face at dick height is not a lot. It is the end of the night.

    I got home. I showered. I put the telly on. I did not sleep well. In the morning I did my make up and my job and my little smirk for the office and nobody knew. That is the other side of me. The part that can fall apart at half eleven and still send a calendar invite at nine.

    And if I ever go back to his, which I will not, that rail had better be empty. I am fun. I am cocky. I am not doing that scream twice.

  • Flatmate Walked In Mid-Footjob

    I have always said a shared flat only works if everybody understands the unwritten timetable. You go out. I come in. You stay out long enough for me to be a problem on the sofa and then you come home when I am already in the shower pretending I was watching telly. That is the deal. That is civilisation. That is why I pay my third of the council tax and buy the decent bin bags.

    Jess does not believe in civilisation. Jess believes in coming back early for her keys.

    It started like every good bad idea starts. Thursday. After work. Smart casual still on because I could not be arsed to go home and change and then leave again. Pub two streets from the office that smells like lime and wet coats. I had a pint. Then I had another one because the first one made me feel like I deserved the second. He was at the bar, tall enough, clean enough, laughing at something that was not that funny, which is usually my type when I have had a long day of emails and other people’s calendars.

    We talked. I was on form. That smug little run of sentences I do when I already know how the night ends. He kept looking at my mouth. I kept looking at his hands. Standard. By the time we were outside I had already decided the flat was empty. Leah had said she was staying at her sister’s. Jess had a date. A proper one, with a reservation, which in our house is basically a written guarantee she will not be back before midnight.

    I told him we could go back to mine. I said it like I was doing him a favour. Because I was.

    The walk home was that nice charged quiet you get when both of you have already agreed what is happening and you are just delaying it for the sake of looking like adults. He put his hand on my back. I vaped. Mango. Classy. The stairwell light was broken again so we went up in that yellow half dark that makes everything feel cheaper and better at the same time. I unlocked the door with my shoulder because my hands were busy and I like a bit of theatre.

    Empty. Beautiful. Shoes by the radiator. Leah’s cardigan on the chair. The sofa looking at me like it knew.

    I did not take him to the bedroom. That is the first thing people always ask, like I am stupid. The bedroom is for when you want to sleep after. The sofa is for when you want to be seen, even if the only person seeing you is the bloke you have just dragged home and your own reflection in the telly. I like the sofa. I like being a bit on display. I like the idea that I could stop and make a cup of tea and start again. I am twenty five and I live with two other girls and I work as a personal assistant and I am good at my job and I am better at this. That last bit matters. I do not do half measures when I have decided I am going to be good at something. Maths degree. English degree. Footjobs. Same energy.

    He sat down like he thought we were going to ease into it. Cute. I dropped my bag, kicked my shoes under the coffee table, and told him to stay there. He laughed. That little nervous laugh men do when they realise the night is running on my timetable. I like that laugh. It makes me feel generous.

    I kissed him first, properly, the kind of kiss that is already a promise. He tasted like lager and mint. His hands went to my waist and I let them, for a minute, because I am not a monster. Then I pushed him back into the cushions and climbed on, skirt still on, blouse half undone, that smart casual thing doing the exact job it always does. Look employable. Come apart later. His mouth was on my neck and I could feel him getting hard under me and I thought, yeah, this is fine, this is exactly what I wanted after a day of being polite to people who cannot use a shared inbox.

    We got further. Clothes became optional. His jeans ended up on the floor next to the remote. I left my shirt on because I like the contrast, office girl from the ribs up, everything else not. He was into it. Of course he was. I had my hand around him and he made that sound men make when they are trying not to look too pleased too early. I could have done the obvious thing. I am very good at the obvious thing. I have been told. Repeatedly. Sometimes with a sincerity that would be embarrassing if I did not already agree.

    But I was in the mood to show off.

    There is a particular kind of smug that lives in my chest when I know I can do something most people treat like a joke. A footjob is a joke until it is not. Then it is a skill. Pressure. Pace. The arch. The way you use the sole like you actually mean it instead of kicking about like you have never seen a body before. I sat back on my end of the sofa, one foot either side of him at first, just teasing, watching his face try to decide if this was sexy or stupid. That pause is my favourite bit. You can see the second it stops being a laugh and becomes a problem he wants.

    I put lotion on my hands first, then my feet, because I am not an animal. He watched me do it like I was performing surgery. I told him to put his hands on the back of the sofa and leave them there. He did. Good boy. I wrapped both feet around him, slow, and the sound he made then was not a laugh. It was the other one. The one that makes me feel like I have just won a small private argument with the universe.

    I took my time. That is the whole point. You do not rush something you are proud of. I used the instep, then the ball of my foot, then both together, squeezing, sliding, letting him feel the difference. He swore under his breath. I smiled. I know how I look when I smile like that. A bit mean. A bit pleased. The telly was on mute with some property show still running, which made it funnier, two people arguing about a kitchen island while I worked him over like I had clocked in for a second shift.

    He started moving with me. Hips lifting. Hands still where I put them, just about. I told him not to come yet. I said it nicely. Then I said it less nicely. He nodded like he was taking minutes in a meeting. I liked him more for that. Not a lot. Enough.

    I was properly in it then. That warm, focused, slightly wicked feeling I get when I know I am good and he knows I am good and the whole flat is quiet enough that I can hear my own breathing. My skirt was bunched up. My shirt was open. His cock was slick between my feet and I was watching him fall apart in that helpless way that always makes me feel generous and greedy at the same time. I leaned back on one hand, gave him more, faster, the rhythm I like when I have decided I am going to finish what I started and I do not care who hears it through the wall.

    That is when the key went in the door.

    Not a polite key. A rushed one. The kind that says I only popped back, I will be two minutes, do not get up. Except I was up. Or rather I was very much down, on our shared sofa, with a man I had known for three hours between my feet and my whole face arranged in the expression of someone who was about to get exactly what she wanted.

    The door opened.

    Jess.

    Coat still on. Date makeup still on. Keys in her hand like a weapon. She took one step in, saw the shoes, saw the jeans, saw me, saw him, saw my feet, and her brain did that horrible little reboot people do when they walk into a room that has become a different room while they were gone.

    She froze.

    I froze.

    He did not freeze. He made a noise that I think was meant to be a word and came out as nothing.

    Jess looked at my feet. Then at his face. Then at me. Then she said, very calmly, like she was telling me the milk was off,

    “Oh for fuck’s sake, Cat.”

    I have heard my name said a lot of ways. Soft. Drunk. Cross. Horny. That one was new. That one had years of shared bathrooms and unpaid takeaways and me eating her leftovers in it. That one had I knew you were like this but I did not need the live demonstration in it.

    She did not scream. I will give her that. She just stood there in the doorway with her keys and her nice coat and the night she had been having dying behind her eyes. I still had him between my feet. I want that on the record. I did not leap up like a Victorian. I sat there, shirt open, caught mid-performance, and for one awful second I considered waving.

    I did not wave. I have some standards.

    Jess closed her mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. Then she did the only sensible thing left, which was turn around, grab whatever she had come back for off the hook, and leave. The door slammed hard enough to make the frame rattle. Her footsteps went down the stairs at a speed that suggested she was never dating again.

    Silence.

    The property show was still on mute. A couple on the screen were pointing at a conservatory.

    He looked at me like I might evaporate. I looked at him like I was deciding whether the night was allowed to continue. Then I did the only thing that made sense to me, because I am stubborn and I had already put the work in and I am not wasting a decent footjob because my housemate cannot keep hold of her own keys.

    I said, “If you laugh I will kill you.”

    He did not laugh.

    I finished him off.

    Yes. On the same sofa. With the door shut this time. With my feet. With a bit more urgency and a lot less smugness, although the smugness came back near the end because of course it did. He came with his head tipped back and one hand still gripping the sofa like he thought it might also walk out on him. I sat there afterwards with my heart going and my pride in two separate piles on the floor. One pile said that was still good. The other pile said Jess is going to put a lock on her bedroom door and possibly mine.

    He started talking. People always start talking when they do not know if they are allowed to get dressed. I told him he could stay twenty minutes and then he had to go, because I needed to face the music and I was not doing that with a witness. He dressed like a man leaving a crime scene. Kissed me on the cheek at the door, which was almost sweet and almost tragic. I vaped on the balcony after he left and stared at the car park like it had answers.

    Jess came back an hour later.

    I know because I heard her on the stairs and I had already put trousers on and wiped the lotion off the coffee table and opened a window like that would erase the last forty minutes. She walked in, put her keys in the bowl very carefully, and looked at the sofa the way you look at a chair someone has died in.

    “Tell me you at least put a towel down,” she said.

    I had not put a towel down.

    She made a noise I can only describe as spiritual.

    We stood in the kitchen after that. Kettle on. The civilised bit. She would not look at me for a full minute. Then she did, and I saw the laugh fighting its way up through the horror.

    “On the sofa, Cat.”

    “I live here.”

    “We live here.”

    “You said you were on a date.”

    “I forgot my keys.”

    “That is a you problem.”

    She stared at me. I stared at the toaster. I am very brave until I am not.

    “I saw your feet,” she said, like she still could not believe that sentence had come out of her mouth.

    “They are good feet.”

    “I do not want to know that.”

    “Well you do now.”

    She put both hands on the counter and breathed in the way people breathe when they are choosing not to move out immediately. Then she started laughing. Not nice laughing. The broken kind. The kind that means I hate you and I love you and I am going to tell Leah and then we are going to have a house meeting about bodily fluids and shared furniture.

    Leah found out in the morning. Of course she did. Jess cannot hold a secret any more than I can leave a good thing unfinished. Leah walked into the kitchen, looked at me eating toast, and said, “The sofa, you dirty cow.” Then she laughed so hard she had to sit down. Then she said we are getting covers. Then she said if I ever do it on her bed she will actually kill me. Fair.

    He texted at lunch. All well? That was intense. I sent back a full stop and then, because I am not completely evil, a little smirk emoji. I am not seeing him again. Not because it was bad. Because every time I think about his face when the door opened I start laughing in meetings and that is not the look I want when I am chasing a promotion.

    Jess has not sat on that sofa since. She circles it. She looks at it. She sits on the chair like a Victorian widow. I sit on it every night on purpose. I put my feet up. I vape. I watch telly. I am not sorry, which is probably the worst part of me and also the most honest.

    Here is what I learned, if we are pretending I learn things. Check the group chat twice. Put a towel down. If you are going to be good at something filthy, be good at it with a door locked and a housemate who does not treat keys like optional accessories. And if you get caught anyway, finish. Obviously. I had already started. I do not leave jobs half done. Not spreadsheets. Not this.

    The flat still smells like fabric spray and stubbornness. Jess still says “oh for fuck’s sake, Cat” when I leave a mug in the sink. It hits different now. She knows. I know she knows. The sofa knows. And I am still going to do something stupid on it again the second I think I have the place to myself, because I am me, and I am smug, and some lessons are just not going to stick.

  • Vaped Straight Into His Mouth

    I still taste mango when I think about it, which is tragic, because I used to like that flavour. Now it just reminds me of a grown man coughing in my face while I had my tongue halfway in his mouth and one hand on his belt. I am twenty five. I have a degree. I can do a spreadsheet with my eyes half shut. None of that saved me.

    It started like most of my bad ideas start. Thursday. Work had been long in that boring, email heavy way that makes you want a drink more than food. I am a personal assistant, which sounds organised and calm on paper and feels like being glued to someone else’s calendar in real life. By half five I was done being polite. Smart casual, dark hair shoved into something decent, vape in the bag because of course it was. I told the girls in the flat I would be late. They already knew what that meant.

    We went to the pub round the corner from the office, the one with sticky tables and a landlord who pretends he cannot hear people being filthy in the corner. After work crowd. Cheap wine. Pints. That warm noise you get when everyone has taken their lanyards off and started acting like they have a personality again. I was in a good mood. Proper good. The kind where you know you look alright and you are not pretending otherwise.

    Callum works two floors up. Not my boss, thank God, because I do actually want that promotion and I am not stupid enough to shit where I eat on purpose. Tall enough. Nice hands. Talks a bit too much about football and not enough about anything else, but I was not there for a TED talk. He bought the second round. I let him. I am not above being bought a drink when I already know how the night is going to go.

    We stood too close at the bar. That was the first tell. Then his knee found mine under the table and stayed there like it had paid rent. I vaped between sips because I cannot sit still and because the mango one makes me feel like I am on holiday even when I am in a pub in zone whatever with a bloke from accounts. He watched my mouth when I did it. I noticed. I always notice.

    By the third drink I was already deciding the logistics. His place was closer. Mine had two flatmates and a hallway that squeaks like it is judging you. I like an audience in theory. I do not like an audience when I am trying to get someone’s trousers off and one of my housemates is heating up leftover pasta. So his. Fine. I said it first, because I am not one of those girls who waits to be invited like it is 1952.

    “You living far?”

    He said ten minutes in an Uber. I said go on then. Just like that. No speech. No pretending I needed another drink to think about it. I wanted him. I wanted to get out of that pub. I wanted to feel like the day had been for something other than calendar invites and smiling at people I do not care about.

    Outside was colder than it looked. I pulled my coat around me and he put his hand on my lower back in that way men do when they think they are being subtle. I did not move it. We waited for the car under some awful office lighting that makes everyone look a bit ill. I had the vape in my right hand the whole time. I always do. It is like a dummy for adults. I hit it twice on the pavement, sweet mango, bit of ice on the back of the throat, and I caught him looking again.

    “You going to share that or what?”

    I laughed. “You can have a go in the car if you are good.”

    I thought I was being cute. I was being an idiot. There is a difference and I only clock it after the fact.

    The Uber pulled up. Clean enough. Driver with the radio on low, some chart thing I half knew. Back seat. That weird polite silence you get for the first thirty seconds while everyone decides whether they are going to behave. We did not behave.

    His place was twelve minutes according to the map. Plenty of time to be a nuisance. Coat still on. My thigh over his. He kissed my neck first, which I like, and I tipped my head back against the seat and let him, vape still loose in my fingers like a cigarette in an old film. The city slid past the window. Wet road. Brake lights. That feeling in your stomach when you know you are about to get exactly what you came out for.

    I turned his face and kissed him properly. He was a decent kisser, I will give him that. Not sloppy. A bit eager, which I do not mind when I am in that mood. My free hand went to his shirt. His went under mine, warm palm on my waist, then higher, thumb brushing the underside of my bra like he was checking I was real. I made a small noise into his mouth. Not even performing. Just that first spark when your body catches up with your mouth.

    The vape was still in my right hand. I want that on the record. I did not forget it. I just treated it like it was part of my body, which, if you vape as much as I do, it sort of is.

    We broke apart for air. I grinned at him, smug as anything, and I went back in.

    That is when I did it.

    I must have lifted the thing as I moved. Muscle memory. Same way you check your phone without thinking. I drew on it as I kissed him. A proper pull. Then I breathed out, because that is what you do after you inhale, and I breathed out into his open mouth.

    Mango. Cold. Thick. Straight down his throat.

    It was not a cute little puff. It was a cloud. I felt it leave me. I saw it for a split second in the gap between our faces, this pale sweet fog, and then it was in him.

    He made a sound I have never heard a grown man make. Not sexy. Not even shocked in a hot way. It was the noise of someone who has just swallowed a scented candle. He jerked back so hard his head nearly hit the window. Then he coughed. Proper coughed. Bent forward, fist to his mouth, eyes watering, the full performance.

    I laughed.

    I did not mean to. It burst out of me before my brain could catch it. That awful bright laugh I do when something is so bad it loops round and becomes funny. I still had the vape in my hand. The little light was on. Mango hanging in the air between us like I had just vaped a dessert into his lungs.

    “Oh my God,” I said, which was useless.

    He coughed again. The driver glanced in the mirror. Of course he did. I wanted the seat to eat me. I wanted the road to open. I wanted to be anyone else, anywhere else, preferably a woman who does not bring a flavoured stick into a snog like it is an accessory.

    “You alright?” I asked, still laughing, which made it worse.

    He nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again, wheezing out, “What the fuck was that?”

    “Mango,” I said, as if that helped. “Ice. I think.”

    “You vaped in my mouth.”

    “I know.”

    “Into my actual mouth.”

    “I know.”

    He coughed a third time and then, to his credit, he started laughing too. Not straight away. There was a horrible five seconds where I thought he was going to tell the driver to pull over and let the mental girl out. Then he wiped his eyes and looked at me like I was a problem he had not budgeted for.

    “You are unbelievable.”

    “I get that a lot.”

    I said it cocky, because that is my default setting even when I have just waterboarded a man with fruit vapour. Inside I was on fire. Not the good kind. The I will remember this in the shower for three years kind.

    The car kept moving. That was the worst part. There was still eight minutes on the map. Eight minutes of sitting there with the taste of mango and toothpaste and shame. My lipstick was smudged. His shirt was creased. The moment that had been heading somewhere very obvious had been replaced by the ghost of a tropical vape.

    I put the thing in my bag like that would undo it. Bit late.

    He cleared his throat and looked out the window, still smiling in that stunned way. I put my hand on his knee because I am incapable of leaving a silence alone.

    “We can pretend that did not happen.”

    “Cat. I can taste mango in my chest.”

    “That is actually quite romantic if you squint.”

    “It is not.”

    Fair.

    I thought that was it. Night over. Embarrassing anecdote for the group chat. I was already writing the message to the girls in my head. You will not believe what I have done. Do not let me go out with the vape again. Burn it.

    Then he looked back at me, eyes still a bit wet from coughing, and he said, “You still coming up or are you going to gas me again?”

    I blinked.

    “You what?”

    “I have water,” he said. “And windows. I am not dying. I am just flavoured.”

    That should not have been attractive. It was a bit attractive. I am not proud of my standards in that moment. I bit my lip to stop another laugh and nodded.

    “Yeah. I am coming up. I will keep it in the bag. Scout’s honour.”

    “Were you ever a scout?”

    “Do I look like I was a scout?”

    He looked at my smudged mouth and the coat slipping off one shoulder and said no. Correct.

    The last few minutes of the ride were quieter. Not dead. Just careful. His hand found my thigh again, higher this time, and I let it, because the heat had not actually gone anywhere. It had just been interrupted by a fruit based war crime. When I kissed him again I did it slow, no props, no accessories, just mouth and a bit of teeth, and he made a better sound that time. The driver turned the radio up. Bless him.

    His building was one of those new ones that all look the same. Lift with a mirror I should not have looked in. I did anyway. I looked like I had been in a fight with a dessert. He unlocked the door and I stepped in, bag still clutched like the vape might leap out and finish the job.

    He got me a glass of water. I drank it. He drank two. Then he backed me into the counter and kissed me properly, and this time both my hands were empty, which felt like progress.

    I will not pretend the rest of the night was ruined, because it was not. Once we got past the coughing and the laughing and me saying sorry for the fifth time, it was good. He was good. I was better, which I say because I know what I am doing and I am not going to be shy about it after I have already admitted to vaping into a man’s respiratory system. Clothes on the kitchen floor. My skirt round my waist because I could not be bothered to take it off properly. His mouth on my neck, my hand in his hair, that first slide of him against me that makes your brain go quiet in the nicest way.

    At one point, when I was on my knees and he was trying very hard to be normal about it, he looked down and said, “No vape.”

    I gave him a look that could have stripped paint.

    “I am busy,” I said, and got back to it.

    He did not last as long as he probably wanted to after that, which I took as a compliment and also as karma for the mango incident. We ended up in his bed after, lights off, my head on his chest, him still smelling faintly of tropical ice like a duty free shop.

    “I am never hitting that thing near you again,” I said.

    “You can hit it,” he said. “Just not in my mouth. I have limits.”

    “Noted.”

    I got an Uber back at half one because I like my own bed and I did not want the morning conversation. The flat was dark. One of the girls had left the bathroom light on. I stood on the balcony in my coat and, yes, I vaped. Mango. I hated that I still liked it. The city was quiet in that fake way London gets at night. I sent the group chat a message.

    I vaped into his mouth. On purpose. Not on purpose. You know what I mean. He coughed like a Victorian child. Then I still went home with him. I am a disgrace. Do not reply, I am going to sleep.

    They replied anyway. Obviously.

    Fallout lasted longer than the cough. The driver must have said something because the rating on my account dipped and I had to sit there the next morning looking at three stars like I had committed a crime against transport. At work I saw Callum by the lifts. He had a coffee. I had a face that said do not speak to me in public. He smirked. I smirked back because I cannot help myself. Later he messaged.

    Still taste it.

    I sent back a mango emoji and nothing else. Let him sit with that.

    The girls would not let it die. Every time I picked up the vape in the living room one of them started coughing on purpose. Very funny. Really mature. I told them they would miss me when I moved out on a promotion wage, which made me sound more sorted than I am, but the bit about the wage was true. I want the money. I want the title. I also want to go out on a Thursday and not assault a man with dessert air. We cannot always have everything.

    I bought a different flavour that weekend. Blueberry. It felt like a fresh start. It lasted four days. I am back on mango. I am weak.

    Here is the thing I keep coming back to, standing on that balcony with the little light glowing in my hand. I am good at a lot of the bits people get awkward about. I know how to use my mouth. I know how to read a room. I can talk someone into leaving a pub with me in under an hour and I do not even think that is a special talent, I think it is just being honest about what you want. And then I will do something so stupid, so completely preventable, that it knocks the whole performance over.

    That is me, I think. Confident until I am not. Smooth until I vape into someone’s lungs. Happy, mostly. Horny, often. A bit arrogant because it is easier than being shy. Essex in the voice even when the emails come out clean.

    Callum still talks to me. We have not repeated the Uber. I have rules now. Vape in the bag before the kiss. Hands free. No flavours in shared airspace. It is not sexy. It is public safety.

    Would I tell the story again? I just did. Would I go back to that Thursday and take the vape out of my hand before I got in the car? In theory. In practice I know myself. I would still have it. I would still lean in. I would still think I was being cute.

    And some poor bloke would still get a mouthful of mango ice at the exact moment he thought he was getting me.

    He coughed. I laughed. Then I wanted the earth to open.

    It did not. So I went upstairs with him anyway.

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