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.