Caitlin

Tag: kissing

  • Cramp Hit Mid Footjob

    I still walk with a tiny limp when I think about it too hard, which is mental because it was only a cramp. A cramp. Like I am fifty and I have just done a fun run. I am twenty five. I do Pilates when I remember. I vape more than I stretch. That last bit is probably the problem.

    It started like most of my better ideas. After work. Thursday. That dangerous night where you tell yourself you are only going for one and then you are three deep and your smart casual is suddenly doing a lot of heavy lifting. I had been in the office since half eight pretending to care about a calendar clash that was not my fault. By six I wanted noise and a drink and something that was not a spreadsheet. He was already at the bar when I got there. Work adjacent. Not my team, thank God. Tall enough. Clean enough. The sort of bloke who laughs at your jokes a beat too quick because he already knows where the night is going. I liked that. I like knowing.

    We did the usual. Pint. Then a double because I am not made of patience. He talked about a promotion he wanted. I talked about mine like I was not already mapping the pay jump in my head. I vaped outside between drinks because I am classy like that. He watched my mouth when I did it. I let him. I was in that mood where I feel slightly invincible and slightly bored at the same time. Dangerous combination. The one that makes me decide I am going to be impressive.

    We ended up back at mine because my flat is closer and I had already decided I was not getting an Uber to Zone whatever at gone ten on a school night. The girls were out. One at her sister’s. One on a date that I had already predicted would be mid. The place was ours. Shoes off. Telly on low for the noise. I chucked my blazer over the chair and felt that little click in my chest that says yes, this is happening, and I am going to be good at it.

    He kissed like he had been thinking about it since the second pint. Fine. Hungry. A bit clumsy with the buttons, which I do not mind because it makes me feel like I am the one running it. We made it to the sofa because the bedroom felt like effort and I was already in my head planning the bit I wanted to do. People assume I lead with my mouth. I do, often. I am not shy about that. But there is something about using my feet that makes me feel properly smug. It is a skill. It looks ridiculous if you do it badly. It looks filthy if you do it well. I do it well. I have had enough practice and enough feedback to know I am not imagining it.

    I told him to sit back. He did, grinning like he had won something. I peeled my tights off slower than I needed to because I like the look on their faces when they realise I am not joking. Work skirt still on, shoved up. Bare legs. Dark polish that was two days past needing a redo, not that he was going to be studying the pedicure. I warmed my feet first, which sounds clinical written down and feels filthy when you are actually doing it. Palms on his thighs. Then the soles. Slow. I watched him try to keep his face normal and fail.

    “Christ,” he said, which is not poetry but I will take it.

    I got into it. That is the problem. When I am good at something I lean all the way in. I used the arch. The ball of my foot. A bit of pressure, then less, then more, the way you do when you actually give a toss about whether they enjoy it instead of just waving a limb about and hoping. He was hard fast, which I took as a personal compliment even though men are not complicated. I talked a bit. Not baby voice, I would rather die. Just filthy and pleased with myself. Told him he was easy. Told him I knew I was good. He swore and laughed and dropped his head back against the sofa like he had been personally attacked by competence.

    It was sexy. I am not going to pretend it was not. There is a particular quiet that happens when someone is trying not to finish too quick and you can feel it in their breathing. The telly was still muttering some property show in the background. My vape was on the coffee table. I remember thinking I would have one after, like a cigarette in an old film except mango and slightly tragic. I shifted my weight. Put more into the right foot because the angle was better. I was showing off. Properly showing off. The smug little engine in my chest was purring.

    Then my calf turned into concrete.

    It was not a twinge. It was not a warning. It was a full lock, vicious, like someone had reached into the muscle and twisted it with a wrench. My foot seized mid stroke. Toes clawed. The whole lower half of my leg went from useful to enemy in half a second. I shouted. Not a sexy shout. Not even a surprised little oh. A proper, ugly, I have been shot noise.

    He jerked like I had kicked him on purpose.

    “Alright, yeah, harder,” he said, breathless, still in it, still thinking I was performing.

    “It is not a bit,” I said, or I think I said, because my voice came out strangled. “It is not a fucking bit.”

    I tried to pull my foot back and the cramp doubled down, spiteful. My leg would not straighten and it would not bend. I was stuck in this stupid elegant pose that was no longer elegant, half on the sofa, skirt rucked, one foot still vaguely in the vicinity of his cock like the world’s worst magic trick. He sat there with his trousers open looking between my face and my leg as if the answer was going to appear in subtitles.

    “Cat?”

    “Kitchen,” I managed. “I need the kitchen.”

    I do not know why the kitchen. In my head there is tiles and cold water and a chance to swear properly. I tried to stand. Bad idea. The second I put weight through it the muscle screamed again. So I hopped. One foot. Skirt still up. No tights. Dignity in a pile by the coffee table with my vape. I hop-hobbled across the living room making a noise I will take to my grave, this mix of pain and fury and leftover horniness that had nowhere to go. He stood up with his dick out and his hands useless.

    “Do you need me to rub it?”

    “Do not touch me,” I snapped, then immediately, “no, wait, yes, just not like that, Jesus.”

    I made it to the kitchen doorway and grabbed the counter like it owed me money. The overhead light was far too bright. There I was, twenty five, personal assistant, maths degree, woman who can talk her way through a board pack, folded over the worktop with one leg hanging like a dead thing. He followed, still half hard, which would have been funny if I could have breathed. I told him to run the tap. Cold. I shoved my calf under it and the shock made me swear so loudly I am surprised the neighbours did not bang the wall.

    He hovered. “Is this a thing you do?”

    “What, cramp mid footjob? Yeah, mate. Signature move. Really gets them going.”

    He had the decency to look embarrassed then. I will give him that. I massaged the muscle with both thumbs, brutal, the way you do when you want it to surrender. It twitched and held and twitched again. Sweat on my back that had nothing to do with being sexy anymore. My foot was still pointed like a ballerina having a breakdown. I started laughing because if I did not laugh I was going to scream and the scream would have been worse. He started laughing too, carefully, like he was checking it was allowed.

    “I thought you were being kinky.”

    “I was being good,” I said. “There is a difference.”

    That set me off again. I was laughing so hard I had to put my forehead on the counter. The cold water ran over my skin and down into my shoe, which I was still wearing on the good foot because of course I was. Work shoe. Smart. A bit scuffed. Soaked now. The whole scene was so far from the version I had in my head that it circled back round to pornographic in a cursed way. Him in the kitchen with his trousers undone. Me treating my own leg like it had personally betrayed the evening. The kettle sitting there judging us.

    The cramp eased in ugly little stages. Not gone. Just less murderous. I could put the foot down if I did not ask much of it. I turned the tap off. Silence except the fridge hum and the telly still talking about open plan living like anyone in this flat could afford it. He passed me a tea towel. I wiped my calf and felt about twelve years old.

    “Do you want to sit?” he said.

    “I want a vape and I want to die in a tasteful way.”

    We went back to the sofa because standing there felt worse. I sat with the bad leg stretched out like I had been in a minor car park incident. He tucked himself away, which I respected. The mood had not survived the hop. It had got as far as the kitchen lino and expired. I hit the vape. Mango. The same one. I offered him it and he took it like we were now in a different kind of intimacy, the post disaster kind, which is honestly more binding than some orgasms I have had.

    “You are actually really good at that,” he said after a minute.

    “I know.”

    “Even with the screaming.”

    “Especially with the screaming. Adds texture.”

    He snorted. I let my head fall back. The smugness was bruised but it was still there, which is how I know I am going to be fine. I do not crumble. I cramp, apparently. I hop. I swear at my own body in the kitchen like it is a colleague who has missed a deadline. Then I sit there and accept the compliment because I earned it before the muscle mutinied.

    He asked if I wanted him to go. I nearly said yes out of pride, then thought about the empty flat and the leftover want sitting in my stomach with nowhere useful to be. I told him he could stay if he made himself useful and put the kettle on properly this time. He did. We drank tea like pensioners. My leg throbbed. I kept flexing my foot to check it still belonged to me. At one point I tried to explain the exact second it happened, the way the arch had been doing something clever and then the cleverness got hijacked by biology. He listened like it was a sports injury. I suppose it was.

    The front door went just after midnight. Housemate number two, date as mid as predicted. She took one look at us, me with my skirt still a mess and one shoe off, him looking like he had witnessed a crime, and she just went, “Do I want to know?”

    “Cramp,” I said.

    “Sure.”

    She went to her room. I heard her laugh through the wall. I will never live it down. I already know it is going into the group chat in some form. Not the explicit bit. The hopping. The kitchen. The fact I shouted like I was being murdered by my own calf during the one act I am genuinely, irritatingly good at.

    He left about one. Kissed my cheek like we had been through something, which we had. I locked the door, vaped on the balcony in my work skirt, and stared at the bins like they had answers. The muscle still jumped if I pointed my toes. I tried it once, experimentally, and swore at the night air.

    Would I do it again? The footjob, yes. Obviously. I am not retiring a skill because my body decided to be dramatic. The hopping, no. Next time I am stretching first, which is a sentence I cannot believe I have to write. I will do the boring circles with my ankle. I will drink water like a person who has heard of consequences. I will not get so carried away showing off that I forget I am made of meat and poor decisions.

    I can still see his face when I shouted. That hopeful little look, like I had just taken things up a notch. Poor bloke. He thought he was getting the filthy version of me. He got the version that has to sidestep to the sink and negotiate with a lump of muscle. Both are me. That is the annoying part. The confident one and the one swearing on one foot exist in the same body, often in the same hour.

    Anyway. Thursday is ruined as a concept now. I see a sofa and I think about arches and timing and the exact pitch of a shout that is not sexy. I went into work the next day walking like I had done a very ambitious spin class. Someone asked if I had started running. I said yes. I have started running from my own legs.

    If you take anything from this, stretch. Or do not attempt your party trick after three drinks and a full day in heels. Or do, and accept that you might end up in the kitchen with the tap running and your dignity somewhere near the remote. I keep telling myself it was hilarious, because it was. It was also hot right up until it was not. That is the split I live with. One minute I am excellent. The next minute I am a cartoon.

    My calf is fine now. Mostly. It twinges when I point my foot too far, which feels like a warning and a joke at the same time. I have not retired the skill. I have just added a warm up, like I am an athlete, which I am not. I am a PA from Essex who got too smug on a Thursday and paid for it in the most unglamorous way possible.

    Still good at it, though. That part stands. The cramp can fight me in the kitchen all it wants. I know what I can do.

  • Foundation Stained His White Pillow

    I have a rule about going home looking like I have given up. I will not do it. I sit at a desk all day booking trains and lying politely to people who think their diary is more important than everyone else’s, and the least I can do for myself is leave the office looking like I meant it. Full face. Hair that still has a shape. Smart casual that can survive a pint without collapsing into something tragic. I am not turning up at some bloke’s flat like I have been crying on the Central line.

    That is how the pillow died.

    I had been in back to back meetings that should have been emails, smiling at a man who cannot use a scanner, and by half five I was already thinking about a drink. Not a big night. Just enough to take the taste of other people’s incompetence out of my mouth. We went to the usual place near the office, the one with the sticky menus and the lighting that is almost flattering if you squint. He works in a different team. Tall enough. Clean enough. The sort of face you notice when you are bored and then notice again when he laughs at something you said on purpose.

    I had the vape in my bag and a second wind I did not entirely earn. He bought the first round. I bought the second because I like the look on their faces when you do that. We talked about nothing useful. Who is leaving. Who is sleeping with who. How the printers only jam when someone important is waiting. I was still in my work face the whole time. Foundation, concealer, the lot. I had done it in the toilets at lunch because the morning layer had started to look tired and I refuse to look tired in public. There is a difference between effort and desperation and I sit on the effort side, thank you.

    By the third drink it was obvious where the night was going. I like that part. The bit where you both know and nobody has to make a speech about it. He lived twenty minutes away in a new build that smelled of paint and ambition. I told my housemates I would not be back. One of them sent a thumbs up. The other sent a knife emoji. That is love, that is.

    His flat was nicer than I expected. Not rich nice. Just the kind of nice that comes from living alone and buying things in matching colours. White sofa. White kitchen. White bedding that looked like it had never met a real person. I should have clocked the bedding then. White pillows are a threat. They are a test you did not agree to sit. I clocked it and I ignored it because I was already thinking about getting his shirt off and I am not a woman who gets derailed by interior design when there is a mouth involved.

    We did not bother with the tour. Kitchen, hallway, bedroom. I like a man who does not narrate his own flat. He kissed me against the door like he had been waiting for permission and I gave it by biting his bottom lip a bit harder than polite. He made that little sound men make when they realise you are not going to be shy about it. Good. I hate shy. Shy wastes time.

    Clothes came off in the usual stupid order. My blazer on the chair. His belt somewhere near the skirting. I kept the makeup on because I had not come this far to look mid under a cheap ceiling light. There is a version of me that washes her face first like a responsible adult. That version does not get laid as much. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him in by the waistband and he looked down at me like he could not believe his luck, which is exactly the expression I am aiming for.

    I am good with my mouth. I know that. I am not going to pretend I stumbled into it. I like the control of it, the way you can take a man who has been talking all night and reduce him to breath and swearing. He put a hand in my hair and I let him, then I took it off again when he got greedy. He said my name wrong the first time, like he had it in his notes and still fumbled it. I laughed with him still in my mouth and that did something unholy to him. He pulled me up after that, kissed me like he was trying to taste himself, and we fell back onto those white sheets that were about to have a very bad evening.

    He was decent. Not the best I have had. Not the worst. Hands a bit eager, rhythm a bit proud of itself, the usual. I got on top because I like the view and I like deciding the pace. Makeup still perfect, or so I thought. You do not feel foundation moving when you are busy. You feel heat and skin and the stupid satisfaction of being wanted. I came first, which I always take as a personal win, and he followed not long after with his face in my neck like he had run a race. We lay there breathing like idiots. I reached for the vape on the bedside table, had a pull, blew it away from him this time because I am capable of learning. He laughed. I laughed. The room smelled like mango and sex and that new paint.

    I should have got up. I should have gone to the bathroom, done the whole responsible wipe and rinse, taken the face off like a person who understands consequences. I did not. I was warm. I was smug. I was the right kind of tired. He pulled the duvet up and I tucked into his shoulder and told myself five minutes. Five minutes is how disasters start. I fell asleep in a full face on a white pillow like an amateur.

    Morning arrived in that grey way new builds have, all thin curtains and the hum of someone else’s boiler. For a second it was nice. His arm heavy across my waist. My mouth dry. That smug little afterglow you get when the night did what it said it would. Then I turned my head.

    The pillow looked like a crime scene.

    Not a cute smudge. Not a little transfer you can laugh off. It was a full Jackson Pollock of beige and bronzer and whatever I had used under my eyes to look awake at 8am the day before. There was a perfect side-of-face print, like I had been outlined in foundation and then left as evidence. A streak of lip near the corner. A ghost of my cheekbone. It was obscene. It was also, and I hate this, quite impressive. I had really gone for it. Hours of work, transferred in one unconscious slump onto a pillow that had probably cost more than my weekly food shop.

    He was already awake. Of course he was. Lying there looking at the ceiling like a man doing maths in his head. I waited for the joke. Nothing. He did not say you look rough. He did not say Christ what happened to my bedding. He just breathed. That silence is worse than a comment. A comment you can bat back. Silence sits there and makes you fill it.

    I sat up and felt the rest of my face crack in that special morning way makeup has when it has been to war. I caught myself in the wardrobe mirror and laughed out loud. I looked like I had been in a fight with a cosmetics counter and lost. Hair flat on one side. Mouth a bit swollen. Pillow murder behind me. He glanced over then. Still nothing. Just that polite, slightly stunned look men get when they do not know if they are allowed to be annoyed.

    “I will buy you a new one,” I said.

    It came out too fast. Too PA. Too I can fix this with a purchase order. He shook his head.

    “Don’t bother.”

    Do not bother. Two words. Soft. Final. The kind of thing you say when you have already decided the night was fun and the morning is a separate country. I hated how much that got under my skin. I can take being messy. I can take being filthy. I struggle with being treated like an inconvenience you are too polite to name.

    I got dressed in last night’s clothes and did that walk of almost-shame that is not quite shame because I still felt good in my body. Kitchen light was brutal. I drank his water from the tap like I lived there. He made coffee and did not offer me any in a way that was almost funny. I stood in his white kitchen with my ruined face and thought about the promotion emails waiting on my phone and the fact that I had left a biological sample of my entire contour on his bedding.

    In the Uber home I caught my reflection in the black window and started laughing so hard the driver looked at me twice. I texted the group chat a photo of my face and the words pillow homicide. One housemate replied with a invoice template. The other asked if he was fit enough for the damage. He was fit enough. That was never the problem. The problem was I knew, even then, that I was going to replace the pillow.

    I went to John Lewis on my lunch the next day like a woman paying penance. Stood in bedding like I had any business having opinions about tog ratings. White, obviously. Better than his, which is petty and I stand by it. I could have gone cheap. I did not. Secretly I like money and I like the idea of leaving something nicer than I found. Also I could not stop seeing that print. My own face, stamped there, smug even in sleep.

    I had it sent to his work reception under my name because I am not turning up at his door with a pillow under my arm like a breakup. He messaged later. Just a photo of it on the bed and a thumbs up. No thank you. No joke. No invitation back. Fine. I did not buy it for a second night. I bought it because I made a mess and I do not like leaving messes I can afford to clean.

    Would I do it again. Yes. Not the pillow bit. The rest of it. The drinks, the door, the mouth, the lazy fall onto someone else’s sheets while I still looked like I had a job to be at in the morning. I like sex. I like being good at it. I like falling asleep wanted. I also like my face done. Those things were always going to collide. I just thought I would get away with it longer than I did.

    If you take anything from this, take the obvious. Take the makeup off or accept that your face is going to live on his linen forever. White pillows are not romantic. They are a trap for women who refuse to look mid. I am still that woman. I will still leave the office looking like I tried. I will still go home with someone if the night tilts that way. I will just pack a wipe. Maybe two. And if I forget, which I will, I will buy the nicer pillow and pretend it was manners.

    It was manners. It was also pride. I stained the thing. I replaced the thing. I still think about the way he said don’t bother, like the night had already been priced and paid. Maybe it had. I got what I wanted. He got a story and better bedding. Everybody walks away slightly ahead, except the original pillow, which never stood a chance.

  • He Stopped For A Vape

    It started the way a lot of my bad decisions start, which is to say a Thursday after work when somebody suggested one more and I said yeah go on then like I had never met myself.

    We were in that pub near the office that pretends it is not an office pub. Sticky tables, warm wine, a playlist that thinks it is cooler than the room. He was from another floor. Fit enough. Clean shirt. That look men get when they have been watching you all week and finally clock that you have noticed. I had. I am not shy. I finished my drink, let him buy the next one, and by half eight we were already doing that thing where the conversation is just an excuse to stand closer.

    I vaped outside with him between rounds. Mango. His was some ice mint nonsense that makes your tongue feel like a freezer aisle. We laughed about it. I remember thinking he was easy. Not in a tragic way. Just easy. No big speech. No “what are we doing.” The kind of night where you already know you are going home with someone and the only real question is whose kettle you will be ignoring in the morning.

    His place was closer. Fine by me. My flat has two other people in it and I have done the walk of not-quite-shame past a housemate eating cereal too many times. His was a one-bed that smelled like clean laundry and a candle he definitely bought because somebody once told him to. Shoes off. Lights low. He kissed like he had been waiting to all day, which I like, because I had been waiting too.

    Clothes came off the way they do when you are both a bit pissed and both pretending you are not in a rush. Shirt, trousers, that stupid belt men wear like it is doing a job. I pushed him back onto the bed and he made that little sound men make when they realise you are not going to sit there waiting to be directed. Good. I hate being directed.

    I was in a mood for showing off. Not going to lie about that. When I know I am good at something I want the other person to know it as well. He was already hard when I got my mouth on him, which helps, and I took my time on purpose. Slow first. Wet. Looking up because I like watching their faces go stupid. He put a hand in my hair and I let him, then I took more of him and he swore under his breath in that grateful way that always makes me feel a bit smug.

    It was good. Proper good. The kind of good where you stop thinking about work and the inbox and the fact you have a nine o’clock tomorrow. I settled in. Found a rhythm. Used my hand where my mouth needed a second. He was making those low noises that tell you to keep going and I was thinking, yeah, this is why I came back here, this is exactly the point of a Thursday.

    Then he tapped my shoulder.

    Not a stroke. Not a “yes like that.” A tap. Two fingers. The exact tap a builder gives you when the kettle has boiled and he is clocking off for five minutes.

    I froze with him still in my mouth.

    “Two seconds babe.”

    I pulled off and looked up at him like he had just asked me to file an expense report.

    He was already reaching for the bedside table. Not a condom. Not water. The vape. His little silver one, sitting there next to his watch like it had been invited.

    I sat back on my heels, mouth still open, lipstick probably somewhere near my chin, and watched this man spark up in the middle of getting his dick sucked.

    He hit it. Held it. Blew a pale cloud straight at the ceiling like he was in a beer garden and not naked from the waist down with me kneeling between his legs.

    The romance was deceased. Instantly. I felt it leave the room, put its coat on, and get in an Uber without me.

    “You what?” I said.

    He looked faintly proud of himself, which made it worse. “Needed a hit. Carry on in a sec.”

    Carry on. In a sec. As if I was a podcast he had paused.

    I laughed. I could not help it. It came out too loud and a bit unhinged. Because I vape. I vape all the time. I had vaped with him two hours earlier. I am not a nun. But there is a difference between sharing one outside a pub and tapping someone on the shoulder mid-blowjob like you are on a building site and the tea van has arrived.

    “Are you actually serious?”

    He shrugged, still holding it. “Takes the edge off.”

    Takes the edge off what? You were getting head. What edge?

    I stayed there for a second because my brain needed to catch up with my dignity. My knees were starting to hurt. My mouth was wet. He was still hard, which felt rude, and the room smelled like mint ice and sex and whatever cheap candle he had lit to make himself look like a grown up.

    “I was in the middle of something,” I said.

    “I know. You are really good.” He said it the way you compliment a sandwich. Nice. Fine. Next.

    I stood up. Not dramatically. Just up. Because if I stayed on my knees I was going to either finish him out of spite or bite him, and I was not in the mood to explain a dental situation to anyone.

    He looked confused, which I found fascinating. “You alright?”

    “Am I alright? You just clocked off.”

    “It was two seconds.”

    It was not two seconds. It was the principle. It was the tap. It was “babe” said like I was a temporary contractor.

    I found my knickers. Then my top. He sat there on the bed with his vape and his dick out, looking like a man who could not understand why the meeting had been cancelled.

    “Cat, come here.”

    “No.”

    “I am done. Look.” He even held the vape up as evidence, as if that helped.

    I should have left then. That would have been clean. Instead I stood there half dressed and did what I always do, which is talk when I am annoyed.

    “You do realise I was actually trying,” I said. “Like, putting in a shift. And you tapped me. Like I was in the way of your little mint break.”

    He laughed, which was the wrong move. “You vape more than I do.”

    “Not while I have someone in my mouth, mate.”

    That landed. He had the good sense to look a bit sorry. Only a bit.

    “Alright. Fair. Come back to bed.”

    I looked at him. He was still attractive, which was irritating. The night had been easy right up until it became a health and safety briefing. Part of me, the part that had come out for exactly this, wanted to get back on the bed and pretend the tap never happened. The other part of me, the smug part, the part that knows I am good at this and does not like being paused, wanted him to sit in the consequence.

    I sat on the edge of the mattress instead of getting back between his legs. Compromise. I am generous like that.

    “You can have two minutes,” I said. “Then you put that thing down and you do not touch it again unless the building is on fire.”

    He grinned like he had won. He had not won. I had just decided I was still horny and he was still there.

    He had his two minutes. I checked my phone like I was waiting for a tradesman. He hit the vape once more, smaller this time, guilty about it now, and put it face down on the table as if that made it invisible.

    When I went back to him I was less sweet about it. I told him to lie back and not speak. He did. I took him in my mouth again and this time I was doing it because I wanted to finish what I started, not because I was impressed. He kept his hands in the sheets, which was wise. Every time I thought about the tap I went a bit rougher, and he made a noise that suggested he understood the assignment even if he did not understand the offence.

    It got good again, I will give him that. Bodies are stupid. You can be properly offended and still wet. I climbed on him after a while because my knees had had enough and because I wanted to look him in the face while I took what I came for. He held my hips. I set the pace. No shoulder taps. No little breaks. When he reached sideways once I actually slapped his hand, not hard, just enough to say do not even think about it.

    “Jesus, Cat.”

    “You had your break.”

    He came with his mouth open and both hands on me, which I decided counted as an apology. I did not come, not properly, because the mood had a dent in it that even a decent fuck could not fully hammer out. Close. Not the same. I sat on him for a second after, catching my breath, hair in my face, feeling that mix of satisfied and slightly robbed.

    Then he reached for the vape again.

    I got off him so fast the mattress bounced.

    “You are joking.”

    “What? We are done.”

    “We are not even wiped down.”

    He had the grace to freeze with it halfway to his mouth. I took it out of his hand and put it on the windowsill. Not thrown. I am not unhinged. Just relocated.

    “You can have it back when I have my shoes on.”

    He laughed into the pillow. “You are so dramatic.”

    “I am so right.”

    I used his bathroom. Washed my face. Looked at myself in the mirror and had a private cackle because the whole thing was so stupid I could already hear myself telling it. The tap. Two seconds babe. The ceiling cloud. Me on my knees with my mouth open like I was waiting for further instruction from management.

    When I came back he had pulled his boxers on and was looking at me like he wanted me to stay. I did not. Thursday has a Friday attached to it and I like my own bed when the joke has already peaked.

    At the door he tried to kiss me and I let him, because I am not cruel, and because he did fuck me after the incident, which is more than some of them manage. He smelled like mint and my perfume.

    “Text me,” he said.

    “Maybe.”

    “I will leave it in the other room next time.”

    Next time. Bless him.

    In the Uber home I vaped the second the door shut. Of course I did. That is the bit I cannot tell without looking like a hypocrite, so I tell it anyway. Mango out the window, city sliding past, lipstick ruined, thighs still a bit shaky. The driver did not look at me. Good man.

    I got in and one of my housemates was on the sofa with a bowl of pasta.

    “Good night?” she said.

    I dropped my bag. “He stopped for a vape.”

    She blinked. “During?”

    “During.”

    She put the fork down. “No.”

    “Tapped my shoulder and everything. Two seconds babe. Like I was holding him up at the self checkout.”

    She screamed into a cushion. I made tea. I told it again with the voices. By the time I got to the part where I confiscated the vape she was crying.

    I have thought about it since, usually when I am on my own balcony with mine in my hand, which is most evenings. The sex was fine. He was fine. The night was going to be a story either way. What I cannot get over is the confidence. The complete lack of panic. Some men would rather die than interrupt a woman when she is making them feel like that. This one treated it like a scheduled break in a shift.

    Would I go back? Maybe. I am not going to pretend I am above a second round when the first one already ended with me on top of him. But the vape stays in another room. I will say it when I walk in. I will point at the windowsill. I will be smug about it.

    And if his hand even twitches towards that bedside table I am putting my clothes on. I do not care how good his mouth is after. There is a time and a place. Outside a pub. After. In the morning when you are both being disgusting and honest.

    Not when I have just got going.

    Not with a tap on the shoulder.

    Not with two seconds babe.

    I still laugh when I think about my face. Mouth open. Knees sore. Him blowing mint at the ceiling like he had all the time in the world. If that is not the death of a moment I do not know what is.

    Anyway. I finished my tea. I charged my own vape. I went to bed smelling like him and mango and the kind of irritation that turns into a good story by Saturday.

    If you take one thing from this, take it from a girl who will happily get on her knees after three after-work drinks: do not pause the person who is doing you a favour. Finish first. Smoke later. It is not complicated.

    He texted in the morning. A little flame emoji and “still thinking about it.”

    I sent back a photo of my vape on the kitchen counter and nothing else.

    He can sit with that.

  • Sneezed Straight Onto His Lap

    I still think about the sound more than the mess. That is the bit that lives rent free. Not even the splash. The actual noise. Like a goose getting kicked down a stairwell.

    Hayfever had been taking the piss out of me all week. Eyes itching on the Central line. Nose doing that little pre-sneeze twitch every time someone walked past with a bouquet or a dusty coat. I had taken a tablet at lunch and told myself I was fine. I was not fine. I was a loaded gun with mascara on.

    We had been circling each other since the Thursday drinks. He worked two floors up, something with numbers that was not quite as good as my numbers, which I enjoyed more than I should. Tall. Clean shirt. The sort of mouth that looks like it has been waiting for an excuse. I had a pint. Then another. Then I did that thing I do where I decide the night is already decided and everyone else is just catching up.

    His place was closer. Flatshare, same as mine, except his housemates were out and mine would have been sat on the sofa with Love Island and a bag of extra mature, offering commentary I did not need. We kissed in the hallway like people who have already agreed on the ending. Jacket off. Vape in the dish by the door because I am not an animal. Shoes kicked under the radiator. I was already pleased with myself and we had not even made it to the bed.

    His room smelled like clean sheets and a candle that was trying too hard to be sandalwood. Window cracked. That was the mistake. London spring air is not air. It is pollen with a travelcard. I should have clocked it. I did clock it. I just thought I was better than biology.

    We got on the bed and it was good in that first twenty minutes way. Hands, mouth, the usual competence. I like being good at this. I know I am good at this. There is a particular satisfaction in watching a man who spends all day pretending he is busy forget how to form a sentence because you decided to get on your knees. I like that bit. I like the shift in the room. I like knowing I put it there.

    So I did.

    Belt. Zip. That little pause where you both pretend this is still casual. It was not casual. I was already committed. I had my hair twisted out of the way and my knees on his rug and I was doing the thing properly, not the lazy half-hearted version some girls do when they want a medal for showing up. Tongue, pace, the occasional look up because I am not above a bit of theatre. He made that sound men make when they have underestimated you. I felt smug enough to bottle.

    Then my nose started.

    Not a cute sniffle. The deep one. The one that sits behind your face and rings a bell. I ignored it. Of course I ignored it. I have ignored worse. I have given head with a stitch, with a cramp, with a housemate walking past the door humming. A tickle is nothing. I breathed through my mouth and carried on like a professional.

    It got worse.

    You know that moment where your whole head fills and you think if I just swallow or freeze or think about spreadsheets it will pass. I thought about the Q2 report. I thought about my promotion. I thought about the fact I had a smear of lipstick on his thigh and I was still winning. None of it helped.

    The sneeze announced itself like a bus.

    There is no elegant way to sneeze when you are on your knees with a dick in your mouth. There is especially no elegant way to do it when you have been holding it for forty seconds like a martyr. It came out of me at full volume, no warning, no ladylike little achoo. Just a violent, wet, full-body explosion that I could not aim, could not stop, and definitely could not pretend was anything else.

    It went everywhere.

    I mean everywhere. His lap. His stomach. The base of him. A bit on my own hand which felt like a personal insult. For a second the room went completely silent except for the tail end of the sneeze still rattling in my sinuses. I could feel it on my lip. I could see it on him. There was a string of it catching the lamplight in a way that should be illegal.

    I looked up.

    He looked down.

    There is a particular expression a man gets when the night has taken a left turn and his brain has not caught up with his cock. That was the face. Shock. A bit of horror. A bit of something that was not horror at all, which I will come back to because it still winds me up.

    And then my mouth, traitor that it is, said, “Bless me.”

    Like a child. Like I had just sneezed on a packed District line and an old woman had given me a look. Not “sorry.” Not “fuck.” Not even a laugh. Bless me. I heard it leave my face and wanted to climb into the wardrobe.

    He blinked.

    I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, which did nothing except spread the evidence. “I am so sorry,” I said, except it came out as a laugh I could not swallow. Once I started I could not stop. Not a cute giggle. The ugly one. The one where your shoulders go and you make a noise like a kettle.

    He started laughing too, thank God, because if he had gone quiet I would have put my shoes on and walked into traffic. “Are you alright?” he said, which is the most English sentence in the world to say while someone has just sneezed on your erection.

    “Hayfever,” I said, as if that explained the Jackson Pollock on his thighs. “Tablet wore off. Your window. I should have… yeah no. That was grim.”

    I sat back on my heels. My knees were imprinted with the rug. My pride was somewhere near the skirting board. I reached for the box of tissues on his bedside like it was a fire extinguisher. He watched me mop at him with the sort of tenderness usually reserved for spillages in Waitrose.

    “You do not have to,” he said.

    “I do,” I said. “I absolutely do.”

    Here is the bit that still makes me cackle in the Tesco queue. He was still hard. Through the sneeze. Through the blessing. Through me wiping his lap like I was on a shift. Still going. Still interested. Still looking at me like the night had not, in fact, ended in a biohazard.

    Men are simple. I say that with love and a bit of despair. You can cough a lung onto them and as long as you do not say their mum’s name they will find a way to keep the plot.

    “We can stop,” I said, because I have manners even when I have ruined a moment.

    “Do you want to stop?” he said.

    I thought about it. Properly thought about it. My nose was still buzzing. My eyes were watering. I looked like I had been maced. There was a used tissue in my fist that I did not want to examine. And underneath all that I was still turned on, which is a character flaw I have stopped apologising for.

    “Give me two minutes,” I said. “And close the window.”

    He closed the window. I went to his bathroom and washed my face like I was preparing for surgery. Looked in the mirror. Mascara doing a runner. Hair a state. The smugness had left the building and been replaced by something closer to hysteria. I vaped out of the bathroom window because I needed a reset and also because I am who I am. Mango. The universe has a sense of humour.

    When I came back he was sitting up against the headboard trying to look normal. He did not look normal. He looked like a man who had been sneezed on and decided to be a gentleman about it.

    “Come here,” he said.

    I did. Not straight back to my knees. I am not a machine. We kissed and I was careful with my face in case another one was brewing. Nothing came. The tablet, the closed window, the sheer force of embarrassment had scared the pollen into retirement. His hands were on my waist. Mine were in his hair. The laugh was still sitting between us like a third person.

    Then I went back down.

    I will not pretend I was as polished the second time. There was a self-consciousness now. A little check every few seconds in case my sinuses had another opinion. But I am good at this, and being good at something is how I claw dignity back from the wreckage. He lasted longer than I expected, or maybe it just felt longer because I was narrating the whole thing in my head like a crime reconstruction.

    When he finished I stayed where I was for a second, then sat up and said, “If you tell anyone I said bless me I will deny it until I die.”

    “I would not dare,” he said.

    He dared. Of course he dared. Not in a nasty way. In the way men do when they have a story and a pint and no sense of self-preservation. I found out the following Tuesday because a girl from his floor gave me a look in the kitchen that was fifty percent pity and fifty percent impressed.

    The walk home that night was its own comedy. I got an Uber. The driver had the window down. I nearly asked him to shut it and then remembered I have no authority over other people’s pollen. Sat in the back with my coat zipped up like a suspect. Texted my housemate: do not ask. She asked immediately. I typed the whole thing out, deleted it, typed it again, sent it, and put my phone face down.

    She was on the sofa when I got in. Pause button already hovering.

    “Tell me.”

    I told her. All of it. The window. The tablet. The noise. Bless me. The fact he still came. She screamed into a cushion. Proper screamed. Then she said, “That is the most you thing I have ever heard,” which I chose to take as a compliment.

    Sleep was a joke. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the look on his face. Not disgusted. That would have been easier. It was the slightly stunned, slightly fond look of a man who has just discovered you are a disaster and decided that is fine. I hate that look. I also chased it.

    Next morning I did my makeup like I was going to court. Smart casual. Blazer. The armour. I vaped on the balcony until my lungs filed a complaint, then went to work prepared to never make eye contact with the second floor again.

    He messaged at 11.42.

    You alive?

    I stared at it longer than a grown woman should stare at two words. Then I wrote: barely. my nose has retired.

    He sent a laughing emoji and then: still thinking about bless me.

    I put the phone in the drawer. Took it out. Put it back. I am twenty-five. I have a degree. I can do mental arithmetic in a meeting. And some bloke from two floors up had reduced me to a woman hiding her mobile from herself.

    We did not have a big conversation about it. That is not how these things go when you both have jobs and housemates and a shared kitchen at work that smells of burnt toast. We just… kept going. Not every night. Not a relationship. Something in the middle that I refuse to name because naming it makes it needy and I am not doing that.

    The second time at his, the window stayed shut. I took two tablets. I still felt my nose twitch once and I froze like a meerkat. He noticed.

    “You alright?”

    “If I sneeze on you again I am leaving the country.”

    He grinned. “I will risk it.”

    That grin. That is the problem. That is why I went back. Not because the first night was smooth. It was a car crash with good lighting. I went back because he laughed at the right time and did not make me feel small for being a human body with hayfever and a filthy streak.

    I told the other housemate a week later because secrets in a three-bed last about as long as a packet of biscuits. She said, “At least you did not cry.” I said, “Give me time.” We put Love Island on and I pretended I was watching it.

    Work became a minefield in the funniest way. Every time someone sneezed in a meeting I had to bite the inside of my cheek. A bloke from finance did a massive one in the Monday briefing and I had to look at my notepad until the urge to cackle passed. My manager asked if I was coming down with something. I said allergies. Which was true. Just not the whole truth.

    Would I change it?

    I think about that on the train sometimes, forehead on the glass, city smearing past. The dignified version of the night is boring. We go back. We have competent, quiet sex. I get an Uber. Nobody says bless me. Nobody has a story. I hate that version. It is tidy and it is dead.

    The real version is me on his rug with mascara everywhere, a tissue in my fist, laughing so hard I nearly set another one off. It is him still hard like the plot had not changed. It is my housemate screaming into a pillow. It is a Tuesday look from a girl two floors up. It is a text I should not have smiled at.

    I am not going to pretend I came out of it looking cool. I did not. I looked like a woman who lost a fight with spring. But I also looked like a woman who got back on her knees after wiping a sneeze off a man and still made him finish, which, if we are being honest, is the sort of stubbornness I respect in myself.

    Hayfever season will come round again. It always does. I have already bought better tablets. I have already decided that if I am going to anyone’s flat between March and June the window stays shut and the candle can do one.

    And if it happens again, I will not say bless me.

    I will say sorry.

    Then I will probably say bless me anyway.

    Some habits are deeper than pride.

  • 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.

  • 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.