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.