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.