I should have clocked the bed the second we walked in. It was one of those flatpack numbers you assemble half pissed on a Sunday with an Allen key and a prayer. Pale wood. Wobbly if you so much as sat on the edge to put socks on. I had been meaning to tighten the slats for weeks. Had not. Obviously. Because I am a grown woman with a job and a vape and a very specific set of priorities, and furniture maintenance is not one of them.
He was from after work. Not office after work, the proper kind. Drinks in that sticky place near the station where the wine is warm and the lighting is doing everyone a favour. He was tall enough, clean enough, laughed at the right bits, and looked at me like he already knew how the night ended. I like that. Saves time. I finished my drink, told my work lot I was getting an Uber, and we were in the back of a Corolla before the second round landed.
The flat was quiet when we got in. One housemate out. The other one, Sophie, had her door shut and some true crime thing murmuring through the wall. I put a finger to my lips like we were in a film. He grinned. I dumped my bag, kicked off the heels, and went straight for his mouth in the hallway because I had been thinking about it since he put his hand on my lower back at the bar.
We did not make it to niceties. Jacket off. Shirt half undone. I had him against the fridge for a minute, hand in his hair, that smug little heat already sitting in my chest like I had won something. Then I pulled him down the hall by his belt and we fell onto my bed in a heap that should have been a warning.
It bounced. Not in a sexy way. In a cheap way.
I ignored it.
I always ignore it.
He was a good kisser, I will give him that. Hands sure, not grabby, the sort who waits half a second to see what you want and then gives you more of it. I got his jeans open and he made that low sound men make when they realise you are not messing about. I like that sound. I like being the reason for it. I got my mouth on him just long enough to make a point, just long enough that he swore under his breath and reached for me like he had lost the plot a bit. Then I pushed him back, climbed on, and sat there for a second looking down at him like the bed was a throne and I had paid for it in cash.
I felt like a goddess. I am not even being cute about it. Lights from the street coming through the cheap blinds, my hair in my face, him looking up at me like I had invented the concept. That is a dangerous feeling for me. I get cocky. I get rhythm. I start performing for an audience that is not even there.
I rolled my hips slow at first, the showy version, the one I know looks good. He grabbed my waist. I took his hands off and put them on my thighs instead because I wanted to be the one driving. Pride again. Always pride. I picked it up. Found the angle. That particular grind that makes my head tip back whether I want it to or not. He swore again. I smiled with my eyes closed like I was doing him a favour, which, to be fair, I was.
The bed complained.
A little creak. Then a longer one. The sort of noise that sounds like a question.
I did not stop.
Of course I did not stop.
I leaned forward, hands on his chest, and gave it the sort of bounce you only do when you are showing off. Skin slapping. Breath going ragged. That tight, greedy feeling building where I wanted to be loud and knew I should not because Sophie was ten feet away with headphones that never actually work. I bit my lip. He thrust up to meet me. The slats made a sound like someone snapping a breadstick.
Still going.
I am not joking. There is a version of me that would have paused, laughed, said hold on a sec. That version did not turn up. The version that did turn up was already halfway to coming and had decided the furniture could cope. I rode him harder. Properly. The unladylike kind. Hair in my mouth, one hand on the headboard that was only headboard in the technical sense, the other one braced on his shoulder. He was saying my name like it was an instruction. I was right there. That sweet, stupid, arrogant peak where your brain leaves the building and your body just clocks in for overtime.
Then the universe filed a complaint.
It was not a gentle give. It was a full structural resignation. One second I was on him, hips rolling, feeling like I could charge admission. Next second the slats surrendered as a group. The mattress dropped through the frame like it had been waiting years for the opportunity. We went with it. All of us. Me, him, the duvet, a pillow, and whatever dignity I had left.
The sound was obscene. Not sexy obscene. DIY fail obscene. Wood cracking, metal feet skittering, the mattress hitting the floor with a thud that went through the whole flat. My knee banged the frame. His head missed the wall by an inch. I landed on him in a heap that knocked the air out of both of us and made my teeth click.
Silence.
Then Sophie, through the wall, proper pissed off:
“CAT. I SWEAR TO GOD.”
A bang. Not a polite knock. A fist on plaster.
I was still on top of him. Still, technically, in him. The mattress was now a pit. The frame was a crime scene around us. One slat had popped up like it wanted a word. He looked at me with this stunned little laugh already forming and I did the worst possible thing I could have done.
I started moving again.
Not even smoothly. Just this stubborn, stubborn roll of my hips like if I pretended hard enough the last five seconds had not happened. Pride is a disease and I have a chronic case. He made a noise that was half groan half are you serious. I put a hand over his mouth. Not sexy. Survival. Sophie banged again.
“I CAN HEAR THE WOOD, CAT. I CAN HEAR THE ACTUAL WOOD.”
I hissed at him to shut up, which was rich coming from me, and tried to find the rhythm on a mattress that was now sitting in a wooden grave. It was not the same. Nothing about a collapsed Ikea bed is erotic once you have time to think. My knee was in a gap. His shoulder was on a broken slat. Every movement made the frame give another sad little crack, like it was dying in instalments.
He started laughing.
That did me in more than the fall.
Once he laughed, I laughed, and then I was laughing so hard I had to climb off him or risk a tragedy of a different kind. I sat back on the wreckage in my bra and nothing else, hair everywhere, trying to breathe, and the whole thing looked like we had been burgled by sex. He had a red mark on his chest from my hand. I had a bruise coming up on my shin. The headboard was at a slant that felt personal.
Sophie opened her door.
I know because I heard the handle. Then I heard her stop in the hallway, clock the state of my room through the gap I had not fully shut, and make this sound of a woman who pays half the council tax and has reached her limit.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“It is fine,” I called, which was a lie so bold I almost respected myself for it.
“The bed is on the floor, Cat.”
“I know where the bed is, thanks.”
He had the duvet pulled up to his waist like that was going to help. I reached for my vape on the bedside table, except the bedside table had also shifted in the collapse and the vape was on the carpet next to a screw. I picked it up anyway. Priority management. That is what PAs are good at.
Sophie did not come in. Mercy. She just said, very clearly, that if I woke her up again she was putting my name on the group chat under “reasons we need a deposit,” and then her door shut hard enough to make the lightshade swing.
We sat there.
Him, naked, in a hole where a bed used to be.
Me, vaping, trying to look like a person who had this under control.
“You all right?” he said.
“I am great,” I said. “Never better. This is exactly how I pictured Thursday.”
He laughed again, softer. Looked at the wreckage. Looked at me. There was still that heat in the room, the unfinished kind, the kind that makes you do something stupid twice. I could feel it. He could feel it. I shifted on the mattress and the frame gave one last pathetic tick, like a clock giving up.
I thought about it. I am not going to pretend I did not. Pride does not clock out just because the furniture has. I even put a hand on his stomach, that lazy confident thing I do when I want to start again without having to ask. He raised his eyebrows. I glanced at the wall. Sophie’s show had gone back on, louder, a pointed volume increase if I ever heard one.
“If that thing makes one more sound,” I whispered, “she will actually kill me.”
“We could move,” he said.
“Where? The sofa? Emma will be back in an hour. The kitchen floor? I eat breakfast there.”
He snorted. I liked him for that. A lesser man would have got weird, or sulked, or tried to make it tender and ruined the joke. He just lay in the wreckage like we had survived a small car crash and were waiting for the breakdown service.
I climbed off the mattress properly this time, found his shirt, threw it at him, and stood there in my underwear taking in the damage like I was about to write a strongly worded review. Two slats snapped clean. One of the side rails had come away from the corner bracket. The whole thing had the energy of a student house in week three of term.
“How much was that bed?” he asked.
“Sixty quid in the sale. I assembled it myself.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I can tell.”
Rude. Accurate. I flicked his arm with the shirt.
We did not finish. That is the tragic part, if you ask the version of me who had been thirty seconds from making a noise Sophie would have reported to the landlord. The fall, the wall bang, the laughing, it all knocked the filthy momentum out of the room and left this giddy, ridiculous aftermath instead. I pulled on his shirt because it was closer than mine. He pulled on his jeans without the underwear, which I found unnecessarily optimistic. We sat on the edge of the collapsed mattress like two people at a bus stop that had been hit by a lorry.
I told him about the time the shower rail came off in my hands. He told me about a sofa that ate a remote and never gave it back. We were doing that thing where you pretend the night has become wholesome now, even though I could still feel him on my skin and he kept looking at my legs like the meeting had only been postponed.
Sophie stomped to the bathroom with the energy of a woman fetching water in a drought. She did not look in. She did flush like it was a political statement.
When she was gone I put my head in my hands and laughed until my stomach hurt.
Because of course it was my bed. Of course it happened when I was on top, showing off, doing the goddess bit. Of course I tried to keep going. Of course the housemate heard the wood. There is no version of my life where I have a sturdy oak four poster and a quiet landing. I have a sixty quid frame, thin walls, and a personality that does not know when to stop.
He ended up leaving around one. Not in a bad way. In a this mattress is now a pit and your flatmate wants me dead way. I walked him to the door in his shirt and my underwear, kissed him against the same fridge, and told him to text when he got in. He did. He sent a photo of a bruise on his shoulder and the words you owe me a bed. I sent back a middle finger emoji and then, because I am like this, a photo of the wreckage from above, captioned structural review pending.
I slept on the mattress on the floor. Obviously. I was not dragging it onto Sophie’s goodwill at that hour. The slats stuck up around me like a broken fence. I vaped out the window, watched some rubbish on my phone with one earphone in, and every time I shifted the frame gave a little tick, like it was reminding me who won.
Morning was worse. Emma came back from her night out, stood in my doorway with a breakfast wrap, and just said, “Jesus Christ.” Sophie, over coffee, told me I was buying a new bed before the weekend and I was putting felt pads on whatever I bought next. I said fine. I said I would get a sturdier one. I said I had learned my lesson.
I have not learned my lesson.
I spent Friday lunch looking at bed frames on my phone under the desk like I was planning a crime. I added two to the basket. Then I added a tool kit I will not use correctly. Then I thought about him looking up at me right before the world dropped out, that stupid arrogant heat in my chest, and I smiled at my spreadsheet like a menace.
The new one is coming Tuesday. Metal this time. Reinforced slats. Weight rating I actually read. Sophie has already told me that if she hears so much as a squeak she is moving out and taking the kettle.
She can take the kettle.
I am getting the bed that can take a proper riding without filing for bankruptcy. And if it dies anyway, I will still try to keep going. That is the problem with me. I do not stop because something collapses. I stop when I have decided I am done, or when a housemate is hammering the wall loud enough to raise the dead.
Until then I am on the floor, on a mattress in a wooden grave, texting a bloke I nearly crushed, and feeling, against all available evidence, like I still had a good night.
Pride is a disease.
I have it bad.
And I am not taking anything for it.
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