Caitlin

Tag: sex

  • 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.

  • Counted Seconds On The Condom

    I have a maths degree. That should be useful. It is. Just not when you are standing there with your knickers round one ankle and a man looking at you like you have grown a second head.

    Thursday. After work. The sort of night that starts with one pint and a lie. I said I was only staying for one because I had emails. I did not have emails. I had a vape, a decent bra, and the particular restlessness that turns up when the office has been dull and my brain wants something warmer than a spreadsheet.

    He was at the bar near the station. Not a colleague. Thank God. I have a promotion I actually want and I am not stupid enough to mix that with the other thing I am good at. He was just a man I had been messaging, the usual back and forth, a bit of cheek, a photo that did not look like a passport reject. In person he was better. Tall enough. Clean shirt. Hands that looked like they knew what they were doing. He bought the second round without making a speech about it, which I respect. I can talk. I do not need a man narrating the pint.

    We stayed longer than I planned. I always do. Pub got louder. I got happier. That baseline mood of mine, the one that sits on a bit of smug and a bit of heat, started doing what it does. I leaned in when he spoke. He noticed. Of course he noticed. I am not subtle when I have decided I like the look of someone. I vaped outside once, came back smelling like mango and cold air, and he laughed at the cloud like it was charming. It is charming. I make it charming.

    By nine I had already done the maths that actually matters. Time to last train. Time to his place. Likelihood of my flatmates being in and making it weird. His won. He lived alone, ten minutes in an Uber, no clown memorabilia as far as the conversation had revealed, which I do check now because I have standards and also trauma. We split the fare. I am not paying a man’s whole night just because I plan to sit on him.

    His flat was fine. Not impressive. Not grim. The sort of place a bloke keeps tidy enough because he has had people back before and learned. Jacket on the chair. Telly on standby. Kitchen that had seen a meal deal and survived. I clocked the exits out of habit and then stopped clocking anything useful, because he kissed me in the hallway and it was good. Proper good. Not teeth. Not wet in the wrong way. Just that slow confidence that makes my brain go quiet for once.

    Clothes came off like we both had somewhere to be and nowhere else we wanted to be. I like that part. I am good at that part. Smart casual hits the floor and suddenly I am not the girl who spent eight hours being polite on email. I am Cat, who knows what she wants and does not pretend otherwise. He got my shirt. I got his belt. We made it to the bedroom without taking a lamp with us, which I count as competence.

    He was hard. I was wet. The usual honest facts. I had him on the edge of the bed and I was already thinking about putting my mouth on him because I like being good at things and I like the look men get when they realise I am not guessing. He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, smiling, and reached for the drawer.

    Fair. Sensible. I like sensible. I am a personal assistant. I live in calendars and dates and other people’s mistakes. A condom is the least romantic object in the world and still the most attractive one when you have a brain.

    He handed me the packet. That was the first little warning, though I did not know it yet. Some men rip it open like they are in a film. He handed it over like he wanted me to approve the paperwork. I should have found that sweet. I did, for half a second.

    Then I looked at it.

    The wrapper was not new-new. Not ancient either. Just that slightly tired look foil gets when it has lived in a wallet or a drawer through more than one season. I turned it over. Expiry date printed in that tiny unhelpful font they use when they do not want you doing exactly what I was about to do.

    I stood there naked. He sat there naked. The heating was on too high. My hair was a state. His hand was still on my hip like the night had not changed temperature.

    And my degree woke up.

    I am not joking. It was like someone flicked a switch behind my eyes. All the heat in my stomach took a seat and the numbers walked in. Day. Month. Year. Current date. How dating actually works when a packet says end of a month. Whether they mean the last day or the first. How long foil really lasts if it has been somewhere warm. I could feel myself doing it. I could not stop myself doing it.

    He noticed the pause.

    “You all right?”

    “Yeah,” I said, which was a lie so bald I nearly laughed. “Just checking.”

    Checking. Like I was about to sign off a delivery.

    I held it closer to the lamp. Squinted. The numbers were worn. Of course they were. Of course the one night I am actually in the mood, properly in the mood, the print looks like it has been through a wash. I tilted it. I am twenty five years old with my tits out in a stranger’s flat doing forensic accounting on rubber.

    “Is this one expired,” I said, “or am I thick?”

    He made a sound that was not sex. More like a man watching a car stall.

    “What?”

    “The date.” I tapped the foil with a nail. “I cannot tell if that is a three or an eight and it matters.”

    It did matter. I know it mattered. I also know that saying it out loud while he was sitting there with his cock cooling in the air was not the move. I said it anyway. I have a mouth and a habit of using it.

    He took it off me, looked, frowned, looked again. Two naked adults passing a condom back and forth like it was a utility bill. The sex left the room. I felt it go. It shut the door politely on the way out.

    “I think it is fine,” he said.

    “You think.”

    “It looks fine.”

    “Looks fine is not a date.” I heard myself. I hated myself. I kept going. “If that is March it is grand. If that is May we are in a different conversation. And I am not being funny but I am not doing mental gymnastics with my actual body on the line because you keep emergency supplies next to old chargers.”

    He laughed, a bit helpless. “You are really doing maths right now.”

    “I have a degree,” I said, as if that helped. As if that has ever helped a woman mid-hookup. “I can do this. I am doing this. I just need the year to stop looking like a smudge.”

    Silence. The sexy kind of silence is heavy and useful. This one was fluorescent. I could hear his fridge in the kitchen. I could hear my own pulse and it was not doing anything useful anymore. I was still holding the packet. He was still looking at me. I became extremely aware of being naked in a way I usually enjoy and suddenly did not.

    I did the sum anyway.

    Current month. Printed month. Year either this one or last, depending on whether the worn number was generous. I counted on my fingers at one point. I actually counted on my fingers. Twenty five, good job, decent at communication, standing in a stranger’s bedroom using Year One methods on contraception. If my old lecturer could have seen it he would have wept, then asked why I was unemployed from the thing I trained for.

    “It is in date,” I said at last. “Just. Like, only just. The sort of just that makes you think about the factory and the warehouse and how long it sat in Superdrug under a bad light.”

    “Right.”

    “Which is still in date.”

    “Yeah.”

    “So we can use it.”

    “We can.”

    Neither of us moved.

    That is the worst bit. Not the talking. The bit after the talking when the body should pick the conversation back up and instead everyone is thinking about latex shelf life. He was not fully hard anymore. I was not exactly a river. I could have salvaged it. I know I could. Mouth, hands, a bit of filth in his ear. I am not shy and I am not easily put off. I like sex. I like being good at it. I like the way it shuts my head up. That is the honest part I do not put on a CV. It makes me feel held. It makes the day smaller.

    But there is a moment where the spell breaks and you can feel yourself standing outside the scene, watching. I was watching. I was also still holding the condom like a receipt.

    “Do you want to…” he started.

    “Yeah,” I said. Then I did not. I sat on the edge of the bed instead, packet in my lap, and let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I have ruined it, have I not?”

    He was decent about it. I will give him that. Some men get sulky when their evening develops an audit. He just rubbed his face and said it was all right, which is what people say when it is not all right but they are trying not to be a dick. I appreciated the effort. I still wanted a hole in the floor.

    We put clothes on in the wrong order. Shirt before dignity. I found my knickers half under the bed and had a brief, violent conversation with myself about whether I should still offer to get him off so the night was not a total waste. I nearly did. I like finishing things. Then I pictured saying “shall I just use my mouth then” in the same voice I had used to query a printed date, and the cringe was so physical I put my coat on instead.

    We talked for ten minutes like people who had just shared a mildly upsetting PowerPoint. Work. Trains. Whether the pub on the corner does food after ten. I vaped out of his window because I needed something in my hands that was not a contraceptive. Mango again. The room smelled like a corner shop and missed opportunity.

    I ordered the Uber before it could get tender. Tender would have been worse. Tender would have meant sitting on his sofa pretending we might do this again when we both knew the story of the night was already the story of the night. He walked me down. Kissed my cheek. Called me funny. I am funny. I am also the woman who turned a sure thing into a word problem.

    In the car I opened Notes like I was going to write a to-do list for work and instead wrote “buy own condoms, check dates in daylight, never say am I thick while naked again.” Then I deleted it because I am not actually going to become a better person. I am going to do the same thing in a different postcode and hope the foil is clearer.

    Back at the flat my housemates were on the sofa with the telly on. One of them took one look at my face and said, “That bad?”

    “I did maths,” I said.

    “On a date?”

    “On a condom.”

    They screamed. The good scream. The one that means I will never live it down and also I am among my people. I made tea. I told it properly, including the finger counting, including the silence, including the fact that I still finished the sum correctly and felt a stupid little spark of pride about that. I did. I got it right. Expired or not, I got it right. My brain, traitor that it is, wanted a gold star.

    I lay in bed later with music on low because that is what I do when the day has been too much and sex did not get to do its job. I thought about his mouth in the hallway and how good it had been before I decided to become a quality control inspector. I thought about the look on his face when I said the date might be an eight. I thought about texting him something filthy to reset the tone and then I did not, because some nights need to stay a story.

    Would I see him again? Maybe. If he can handle a woman who talks too much and thinks in numbers at the worst possible time, he can handle me. If he cannot, there are other Thursdays. I am not short on want. I am just occasionally cursed with competence.

    The moral is not “do not check the date.” Check the date. Always check the date. Check it in the shop like a person with a future. Put a box in your bag. Be the organised one. I am the organised one at work. I can be the organised one with latex.

    The other moral, the real one, is that a maths degree will wait in the dark for you. It will let you be hot and sure and halfway to exactly what you wanted. Then it will tap you on the shoulder, point at a smudged number, and ask you to show your working.

    I showed my working.

    I got it right.

    I still went home hungry.

  • Boss Sat In Next Room

    I should have gone home. That is the whole article, really. I should have got on the last train like a person with a job she actually wants to keep, vaped on the platform, eaten a supermarket wrap over the sink and gone to bed smelling like Prosecco and printer paper. Instead I stayed for one more, then one more after that, then decided a Travelodge two streets from the venue counted as a grown up decision.

    The work do was the usual mess. Too warm, too loud, someone from accounts crying in the toilets about a man who was also in the room eating cocktail sausages. I was in the smart casual thing I always wear when I want to look like I tried without looking like I tried too hard. Blazer. Nice top. The sort of shoes you regret at eleven and defend at midnight. I had been good most of the night as well, which is how I always get myself in trouble. Good meaning I talked about the promotion like I was already halfway in the chair. Good meaning I laughed at Helen’s jokes. Helen is my manager. Helen has a laugh that could strip wallpaper. Helen also booked herself a room because she lives in Kent and refuses to do the late train on principle.

    I knew that. That is the bit that makes me want to walk into traffic.

    The bloke was Tom from the Manchester office. In town for two days, leaving in the morning, the exact type of situation I tell myself is clean. Tall enough. Nice hands. The sort of northern accent that makes ordinary sentences sound like he has already decided you are coming upstairs. We had been circling since the speeches. He bought a round I did not need. I let him. I vaped outside with two girls from reception and told them I was going home. I was not going home.

    By the time the bar started putting chairs up I had already done the maths. Train missed. Uber surge looking filthy. Hotel next door with the company rate still sitting in my inbox from when I booked Helen’s room three weeks ago like the helpful little PA I am. I booked a second one on my phone in the queue for the cloakroom. I told myself it was practical. It was not practical. It was me being horny and smug and a bit drunk and very sure I could keep my voice down.

    The room was fine. Beige. Thin carpet. A kettle that had seen things. Tom kissed me against the door before I had even put the keycard in the slot properly and I laughed into his mouth because I always laugh when I already know I am going to be filthy. He tasted like lager and those mints people suck when they think they are being considerate. I dumped my bag on the chair, kicked the shoes off, and had my hand in his jeans before the light was fully on.

    I am not shy about it. Never have been. If I want something I tend to just get on with it, and I wanted him on the bed with his shirt half off and my mouth on him before he could start doing that polite checking-in voice men do when they are not sure if you are actually like this. I am actually like this. I got on my knees on that cheap carpet and took him out and I was good at it, which I know, and I did not pretend otherwise. He swore under his breath and put his hand in my hair and I looked up at him because I like watching a man realise he is not running the room anymore.

    That should have been the point where I thought about the walls.

    I did not think about the walls.

    The headboard started tapping when he pulled me up and bent me over the end of the bed. Not dramatic. Just that cheap hotel knock, knock, knock against whatever was on the other side. I heard it. I heard it and I decided it was someone else’s problem. I was wet and impatient and he was saying my name like he had only just learned it, which he had. Cat. Then louder. Then I started talking back because I do that when I get close and I cannot help it. Filthy stuff. Ordinary stuff. The sort of sentences you do not want attached to your Outlook calendar. I told him harder. I told him not to stop. I made that noise I make when it is actually good and not just polite good. He got a hand between my legs and I came first with my face in the duvet, swearing into the polyester like it had personally wronged me.

    We should have stopped for water. We should have laughed and gone quiet and remembered we both had to be in the same building as other people in a few hours. Instead I rolled him onto his back and sat on him and I was not quiet then either. The bed complained. I did not. I put my hands on his chest and rode him like I had something to prove, because I always do, and I said things I would not say in a meeting even if you paid me. Explicit. Specific. The sort of running commentary that sounds hot when you are in it and sounds like a court transcript when you replay it sober.

    There was a thump next door at one point. I thought it was pipes. I thought it was a suitcase. I thought a lot of convenient things.

    Tom lasted longer than I expected, which I would normally put in the plus column. He flipped me again, got my leg up, and the headboard really went for it. Knock knock knock, proper little drum solo against the wall. I laughed. I actually laughed, breathless and smug, and said something like they can file a complaint in the morning. He laughed too. Then he came with this broken sound and collapsed on me and we lay there in the dark breathing like we had done cardio.

    I vaped out of the window after, because of course I did. Night air. Mango. The street still wet from earlier. Tom was on his back talking rubbish about trains and how he hates London. I made agreeable noises and already knew I would not see him again in any way that mattered. That was fine. That was the point.

    I slept in my makeup. I always do when I have been an idiot.

    Morning came in that grey hotel way where the curtains never quite close. My mouth was dry. My head was doing that polite throb. Tom was already in the shower talking to himself. I checked my phone and had three emails I should have answered last night and a calendar alert for breakfast that Helen had put in the shared invite weeks ago. Complimentary breakfast. Same hotel. Same dining room. I sat on the edge of the bed in last night’s top and felt the first little drop of dread, like rain through a ceiling you have been ignoring.

    I told myself she would have gone home. I told myself Kent women of a certain management level do not stay in Travelodges next to the work do. I told myself a lot of things while putting on yesterday’s knickers and trying to make my hair look like I had planned this.

    The dining room was already busy. That smell of hotel eggs and cheap coffee. People from last night in slightly softer clothes, doing that morning after voice. I saw Tom first, which was awkward enough. He lifted his eyebrows like we were in on a joke. I gave him the smallest smile and went for the coffee machine because I needed something to do with my hands.

    Then I saw Helen.

    She was at a table by the window with a poached egg and the face of a woman who had not slept. Not tired exactly. Aware. She had her glasses on. She had a notebook open like she might start a performance review in the baked beans. Our eyes met and I knew. I knew the way you know when you have sent an email to the wrong person. There was no confusion on her face. No polite blankness. She had heard me. She had heard the headboard and the swearing and the bit where I told Tom exactly what to do with his mouth. She had heard me come. More than once, if we are being honest, which I am trying to be.

    I walked over because not walking over would have been worse. My voice came out normal for about four seconds.

    Morning. Sleep alright?

    Helen looked at me over the glasses.

    I slept, she said. Eventually.

    That eventually did more damage than if she had just sworn at me.

    I sat because my legs asked me to. Tom had the good sense to stay at the buffet poking sausages like they held classified information. Helen poured tea with the calm of someone who has raised teenagers. I asked about the last train. She asked if my room had been comfortable. I said yes. She said the walls in these places are a disgrace. Then she took a sip and added, almost kindly, that she hoped I had a glass of water.

    I wanted the floor to open. I wanted to be back in the flat with my housemates and the telly on and no career. I wanted my mum, which is a rotten thought to have over hotel tomatoes when you are twenty five and supposed to be chasing a promotion.

    We ate. Or she ate. I moved food. Someone from reception waved and I waved back like a hostage. Helen talked about the morning’s debrief as if my sex life had not been the late show on the other side of her headboard. She mentioned the promotion pack. She mentioned that she needed me sharp next week. She did not smile when she said sharp. I said of course. I sounded like I was presenting a passport.

    When the waitress came I asked for the bill in a whisper. I do not know why I whispered. The room was full of talking. It just happened. My voice went small and guilty, like I had been caught stealing biscuits. Helen heard it anyway. She signed for her room on the company card and I signed for mine on mine, because I was not putting last night on expenses even in my head. Tom appeared with a backpack and a look that said he would like to die in Manchester. He said nice to meet you properly to Helen. Helen said she believed they had already been introduced last night, in a manner of speaking.

    I could have left the country.

    Outside I vaped so hard my throat hurt. Tom tried to do a goodbye that involved a hug. I let him, because I am not actually cruel, and then I told him to have a good journey in the same voice I use for couriers. He got in a taxi. I stood on the pavement in last night’s blazer feeling like my skin was on inside out.

    The fallout did not arrive as one big explosion. It arrived in pieces. Helen put me on the note taking for the next three meetings even though that is not my job anymore. She did not mention the hotel. She did not need to. Every time she said Cat in that even tone I heard myself on the other side of the wall saying it much louder for a completely different reason. I started wearing quieter shoes. I started leaving work dos at ten. I started checking hotel wall thickness like a woman inspecting a crime scene.

    Tom texted once. Good night, sorry about breakfast. I sent back a thumbs up like a coward and muted the thread.

    My housemates got the edited version first. Then they got the real one, because I cannot keep anything in when I have had a drink and a vape on the balcony. They screamed. One of them fell off the sofa. The other one said I should put it in a risk assessment. I laughed until I felt sick, then I went quiet, then I laughed again because what else are you meant to do when you have moaned your way through a thin wall into your manager’s ear and then asked her for the bill like a child in a library.

    I still want the promotion. That is the stupidest part. I am good at the job. I can run a diary and a crisis and a room full of men who think they are being charming. I can also, it turns out, be loud enough to brief the woman who decides my pay rise.

    Would I say I regret the sex? Not really. It was good. I came. He was decent. I liked being wanted after a night of nodding at speeches. I regret the venue. I regret the wall. I regret every filthy sentence that left my mouth as if the Travelodge had been soundproofed by God himself.

    Mostly I regret thinking I am smoother than I am.

    If you need me I will be at my desk, speaking at a normal volume, drinking tea like a person who has learned a lesson. I have not fully learned it. I know myself. But I have learned this much. Next time I do something that stupid I am checking who is booked either side of me, and I am keeping my mouth busy in ways that do not carry.

    And if Helen ever brings it up properly, I am going to look her in the eye and ask if the headboard kept her up, because there is no point pretending now. She already knows I am not as polished as the calendar makes me look. She has heard the evidence. I just have to survive the next appraisal without whispering.

  • His Dog Joined Uninvited

    I should have clocked the dog bowl.

    That is the sentence I keep coming back to, usually at 1am with the vape in my hand and something mindless on the telly, because of course I should have clocked the dog bowl. Big ceramic thing by the kitchen bin. Name painted on in wonky letters. Bertie. You do not get a Bertie by accident. Bertie is a decision. Bertie is a lifestyle. Bertie is a wet nose and a wagging arse and, as it turns out, the single most effective mood killer I have met since that bloke who asked if I had a five year plan during oral.

    We had been in the pub after work. Nothing glamorous. The one near the office that smells of gravy and floor polish and has those sticky menus nobody ever wipes. He was the friend of a friend of someone in accounts, which is how half my nights start if I am being honest. Tall enough. Nice mouth. Talked like he knew he was fit but had not quite worked out how to be clever with it. I liked that. I like a bit of confidence I can outrun.

    Three drinks in I already knew I was going home with him. Not because he said anything special. Because I wanted to, and I am not in the habit of pretending I do not. He bought the fourth round and I let him, which I do not always, and then we were outside sharing my vape like we had known each other longer than an evening. Mango. Always mango. I told him if he coughed I would take the piss and he coughed anyway, which I respected.

    His place was a ten minute walk, which is dangerous information to give a woman who has already decided. New-buildish. Cleaner than my flat, which is not hard when you live with two other girls and a mountain of laundry that has developed its own personality. The second I stepped in I should have seen it. The lead on the hook. The muddy towel. The faint smell of biscuit and damp fur that no candle ever quite covers. I saw the bowl. I clocked the name. And I still took my coat off.

    Bertie was in the garden when we got in. Spaniel. Liver and white. The sort of face that looks permanently delighted and slightly stupid, which I usually find charming. He barked once at the back door like he had opinions about my existence. Callum, that was his name, Callum let him in and did the whole voice people do with dogs. Who is a good boy. Who missed daddy. I stood there in my work trousers thinking I should probably go home and not shag a man whose first guest of the evening had four legs and no sense of timing.

    I did not go home.

    We ended up in the bedroom with the door not quite shut, which I will also be adding to the list of things I should have clocked. Coat on the chair. Shoes kicked under the bed. That lovely stretch of time where you are still a bit smug about how easy it was. He was a good kisser, I will give him that. Hands in the right places. Not in a rush, which I like, because I am in a rush enough at work. I had been thinking about this since the second pint. That itchy, greedy feeling I get when the day has been long and I want someone else’s skin more than I want another episode of whatever I have been half watching.

    Clothes came off in that messy way they do when nobody is trying to put on a show and both of you are a bit pissed. I was on him first. Mouth. Hands. The stuff I know I am good at, and I am not going to pretend I am modest about it. He made that low sound men make when they have overestimated how average the night was going to be. I liked that too. I like being right about myself.

    Then I turned over.

    All fours on his duvet, work hair still up from the office, feeling properly pleased with myself. That is the honest version. Not some soft focus nonsense. I knew how I looked. I knew what I was doing. He was behind me with a hand on my hip and I was already in that greedy little headspace where the rest of the week can do one. The door was still not shut. I heard the collar tag before I understood it.

    Clink.

    Then weight.

    Then a very wet, very cold tongue on the back of my thigh.

    I shrieked.

    Not a cute shriek. Not a film shriek. The sort of sound you make when something warm and alive and completely uninvited puts its mouth on you in the one place you were not advertising. I shot forward so hard I nearly went off the end of the bed. Bertie, delighted with his contribution, hopped fully up like this was a family activity. Tail going. Ears flapping. That spaniel grin. He licked the air where my leg had been and then tried again, because spaniels are not known for reading a room.

    Callum laughed.

    That is the part that still makes my skin crawl in a different way. He laughed. He said something like oh my god that is so bad and then, I swear this is true, he said it was kind of hot. Kind of hot. A dog had just tasted my thigh mid-shag and this man, this fully grown employed adult with a named pet and a decent sofa, thought the erotic temperature of the room had gone up.

    I grabbed the duvet. Bertie took this as an invitation to sit on it. His tail slapped my calf. I could feel dog on my skin. Not in a sexy way. In a I need bleach and a priest way.

    Get him off, I said.

    Callum was still behind me, still half in the moment, still holding my hip like we were going to resume after a brief spaniel interlude. I twisted round and looked at him properly. He had the face of a man who thought this might become a funny story they told together in six months. I had the face of a woman calculating the fastest route back to my flat and whether I still had baby wipes in my bag.

    Bertie, I said. Off. Now.

    He lifted the dog down. Bertie immediately put his front paws back on the mattress and looked at me like I had personally betrayed him. I do not hate dogs. I will not have that put on me. I like dogs. I would die for a dog. I would not, under any circumstances, like a dog to join in. There is a line. The line is fur. The line is a wet nose on the back of a thigh while you are trying to get fucked after a long day of emails and other people’s calendars.

    I sat back on my heels. The mood had not dipped. The mood had been shot in the street. Callum reached for me again, softer this time, like we could kiss our way past it. I let him for about three seconds because I am greedy and I am stubborn and part of me still wanted the night I had walked in for. Then Bertie sneezed on the duvet and I felt my soul leave through the window.

    I cannot, I said.

    You can, he said, which was bold.

    I cannot do this with him watching.

    He is not watching, Callum said. He is just being friendly.

    He licked me.

    He licked your leg.

    That is my thigh, I said. That is a different postcode.

    We both looked at Bertie. Bertie looked at us like we were the entertainment. His tail had not stopped. There was a tennis ball under the radiator I had not noticed until that exact second. Of course there was a tennis ball. This whole flat was a shrine to Bertie and I had taken my knickers off in it.

    I got up. Not dramatically. Just the quiet, doomed getting up of a woman who knows the night is over and is already rewriting it into a story she can bear. Bra. Shirt. Trousers that were still warm from the pub. I could feel where the lick had been. Cold. Specific. Branded.

    Callum sat on the edge of the bed with his dick out and his dog at his feet and the expression of a man who had not planned for this particular ending. I almost felt bad. Almost. Then I remembered kind of hot and the feeling passed.

    I am not mad at the dog, I told him, because I needed that on record. Bertie did not know. Bertie thought we were playing. Bertie is a spaniel. Spaniels think everything is a picnic. You, though. You thought it was a bit.

    It was funny, he said.

    It was not funny in the moment, I said. It is going to be funny tomorrow. Tonight I want to go home and wash my leg until the skin comes off.

    He offered to put Bertie in the garden. He offered tea. He offered to start again like you can just peel a spaniel off a sexual encounter and carry on. I put my shoes on and found my vape in my coat pocket like it was the only adult in the room.

    At the front door Bertie tried to come with me. Of course he did. I crouched down despite myself and scratched his ears because I am not a monster and he had done nothing except be a dog with poor boundaries and an owner who needs his head seeing to. Good boy, I told him. Stay. Please, for the love of god, stay.

    Callum asked if he could text me. I said he could, which was generous of me, and then I walked back toward the main road with my thigh still tingling in a way that had nothing to do with him.

    The fallout was exactly as undignified as you would hope.

    I got home and both my housemates were in the living room with a film on and a bag of crisps between them. They took one look at my face and knew. Not the details. Just the shape of a night that had gone wrong in a specifically Cat way. I stood in the doorway, kicked my shoes off, and said his dog licked me.

    There was a pause.

    Where? one of them asked.

    I pointed.

    They screamed. Proper screamed. The good kind. The kind that makes it slightly better. I told the whole thing standing up because if I sat down I was going to feel Bertie again. I vaped out the window. I made a cup of tea I did not want. I had a shower so long the boiler started making that noise it makes when it is judging you.

    Callum texted twice. First one was sorry about Bertie, with a little dog emoji, which I will admit made me snort. Second one was you looked so good though, which I ignored because I have some standards left and they live in a very small box marked do not compliment me while your pet is sampling my leg.

    I told work nothing, obviously. I am a personal assistant. I organise other people’s lives. I do not need accounts asking why I look like I have seen god and not in a sexy way. I did the diary. I answered emails. I thought about Bertie’s face at the worst possible moments, like in the lift, like over a salad, like when my boss said fetch and I had to bite the inside of my cheek.

    The funny thing, and there is always a funny thing once the hot water has done its job, is that I was not even angry for long. Embarrassed, yes. Horrified, absolutely. A bit robbed, if I am honest, because I had been having a very good time and I am good at that part of my life. I had been right there, smug, on all fours, doing exactly what I wanted after a dull day, and then a spaniel rewrote the scene.

    I keep thinking about Callum saying it was kind of hot. That is the bit I will not forgive quickly. You can laugh. You should laugh. I laugh now. What you cannot do is decide a dog’s tongue is part of the foreplay and look at me like I am the one being uptight. I will do a lot of things. I have done a lot of things. I will not add Bertie to the list.

    Would I go back? No. Would I meet him for a drink if Bertie was at his mum’s? I have not decided, which means I probably would, because I am like that. I want what I want and I am not good at pretending a near miss puts me off forever. I just want it without an audience. A closed door. No collar tags. No tennis ball under the radiator watching me like a tiny yellow witness.

    I still want a refund on the evening. Not the drinks. The drinks were fine. I want the ten minutes back. The ones where I felt like myself, greedy and sure and a bit arrogant with it, before a liver and white face appeared at the exact height of my dignity and said, in dog, hello, I live here actually.

    Poor Bertie. He was only being friendly. I hope he got a treat. I hope Callum washed the duvet. I hope the next girl clocks the bowl on the way in and asks the only question that mattered.

    Does he come in the bedroom.

    If the answer is yes, she should put her coat back on. I did not. That is on me. I saw Bertie written on ceramic in wonky letters and I still got on my hands and knees like the night belonged to me.

    It did not. It belonged to the spaniel. And if I am being honest, which I usually am when it is too late to be useful, that might be the funniest and most insulting part of the whole thing.

  • Clown Mask Behind His Coats

    I went back to his after the pub feeling proper cocky. That is the sentence I keep repeating in my head like it might make me sound less mental. It does not. I am twenty five. I have a degree. I can do a spreadsheet in my sleep. I can talk a supplier down from a stupid quote before my second coffee. None of that matters when your brain clocks a clown face in a stranger’s wardrobe and decides the only reasonable response is to scream like you are being murdered and then flee in one shoe.

    This is that story. I am telling it because if I do not, I will keep replaying it at 1am with a vape in my hand like a woman who has made better choices.

    It started ordinary. That is always how the worst nights start. After work drinks on a Thursday because someone in the office had a birthday and the birthday person is the sort who books a table and then looks wounded if you do not stay for “just one more.” I had the smart casual on. Blazer. Nice top. Boots I can walk in but still look like I tried. Hair doing that thing where it looks expensive if you do not inspect it too close. I was in a good mood. Baseline happy, which for me means I already knew I was going out and I already knew I was not going home early.

    He was at the end of the bar with a pint and a face that suggested he knew he was good looking and had decided not to work too hard about it. Tall enough. Dark hair. Clean. The sort of man who smells like a decent shower and a spray he actually paid for. We got talking because I am not shy and he is not shy and the music was just loud enough that you have to lean in. I like that. I like the lean. I like watching someone realise I am fun and a bit much and then decide they are into it.

    I vaped outside twice. He came with me the second time. That should have been the first little warning, not because there was anything wrong with him, because I was already clocking exits and bedrooms in my head like a woman with a diary and no patience. We talked rubbish. Work. Trains. How Essex gets judged by people who have only ever driven through it on the way to somewhere they think is better. I told him I was a PA and he did that nod men do when they are trying to work out if you are clever or just pretty. I let him wonder. I am both. I am also smug about it.

    By the third drink I was touching his arm when I laughed. By the fourth I had already decided. That is the bit people pretend is romantic. It is not. It is practical. I like sex. I like the heat of it. I like being wanted in a room that is not my flat and is not my office. I like leaving with my make up a bit ruined and my mouth a bit used and my head quieter than it was at 6pm. He asked if I wanted to come back. I said yeah. No big speech. No pretending I needed convincing. I finished my drink. I checked my phone. I told the group chat I was getting a lift so they would not start a search party. One of my flatmates sent back a row of eggplants and a clown emoji. I ignored the clown emoji. That is how the universe works. It teases you first.

    His place was a newish block, the kind with a lobby that smells of paint and other people’s dinners. In the lift he kissed me. Proper kiss. Not shy. Hand on my waist, thumb under the blazer like he had been thinking about that exact move for an hour. I kissed him back harder because I do not do half measures when I have already said yes. He tasted like lager and mint. I had the vape in my bag and the thought crossed my mind that I should have one before we got inside. I did not. I was too busy being the version of myself I like best. Confident. A bit arrogant. Already imagining how I was going to look on my knees in his hallway if the timing worked.

    His flat was fine. Tidy enough that I did not immediately want to leave. Shoes by the door. TV too big. Kitchen that had been used but not destroyed. I put my bag on the side and he got two glasses of water like a man who has done this before and does not want a headache later. Good. I respect a man who plans for the hangover and the hookup at the same time.

    We did not make it to a polite sit down. I did not want a polite sit down. He pushed the blazer off my shoulders and I let it drop. His mouth was on my neck and my back hit the fridge and I laughed into it because I get happy when it is good. Hands under my top. My thigh hooked around his hip. He was hard against me through his jeans and I rubbed against it like I had all the time in the world. I did not. I never do. That is half the point.

    We moved to the bedroom in that clumsy shuffle people do when they refuse to stop kissing. Lights on low. Bed made, which I noticed and filed under “he expected this.” Fine by me. I undid his belt. He got my top off. Bra stayed for a minute because I like the look of it and I like watching a man work for the next bit. He got there. Mouth on my tits, a bit greedy, the right side of greedy. I had my hand in his hair and my other hand down the front of his boxers and I was already thinking about how I was going to take him in my mouth and make a whole performance of it. I am good at that. I know I am good at that. It is one of the few things I am allowed to be openly smug about without someone calling it unprofessional.

    He got his jeans off. Socks stayed. They always stay at that stage, do they not? There is a moment in every hookup where a grown man is standing there in socks and an erection and you have to decide whether it ruins it. It did not ruin it. It made me want to laugh and suck him off anyway. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him toward me by the hips. Kissed his stomach. Looked up at him with that face I know works. He swore under his breath. I liked that.

    Then I decided I wanted a towel.

    That is the detail that makes me sound unhinged. It is not unhinged. I had a drink on my chest. His mouth had been wet. I was about to get more wet. I like to have something to wipe my mouth on after. I like not leaving a slick patch on a stranger’s duvet if I can help it. I am messy in the ways I choose. I am not messy in the ways that make me feel cheap in the morning. So I said, “Have you got a towel?” like a normal person. He pointed at the wardrobe without looking, because he was busy watching my mouth and thinking about where it was going next.

    I stood up in my underwear and boots because I had not taken the boots off yet. That is another image I cannot get rid of. Me, tits out, knickers on, work boots, crossing a man’s bedroom like I owned it. I opened the wardrobe door with that little smugness still in my shoulders. I was thinking about his cock. I was thinking about how I was going to make him make that sound again. I was thinking about whether I would stay the night or get an Uber at two and eat cereal in my own kitchen like a queen.

    The clown was on the rail.

    Not a little novelty thing. Not a joke shop bag in the corner. A full face. White. Red mouth stretched too wide. Blue around the eyes. The hair bit frizzed out like it had been loved. It was hanging there between a coat and a hoodie like it paid rent.

    I made a noise I did not know I had. Not a cute shriek. A proper scream, the sort that comes from the bit of you that is still six years old and convinced something in the dark wants you. I stumbled back so hard I hit the bed with the back of my legs and sat down on it without meaning to. He said “what” and then he saw my face and then he saw the wardrobe.

    I was already moving. Shoes. I needed shoes. One boot was half off from when he had been kissing down my stomach. I jammed my foot in and could not get the zip. My hands were useless. The mask was still looking at me. That is the worst part of a clown. It keeps looking when nothing living should look like that. I grabbed my top off the floor and pulled it on backwards. I did not care. I snatched the blazer. I could not see my bag for a second and that made it worse, because leaving without my bag meant leaving my keys and my vape and my whole adult life in a room with that thing.

    “It is just a costume,” he said.

    Just. Just a costume. Men love that word. Just. As if the word shrinks the object. As if I had not just had his hand in my knickers and then opened a door onto my actual nightmare.

    “Why,” I said, and my voice came out husky and wrecked and not sexy anymore. “Why have you got that.”

    He started explaining. Work do. Fancy dress. His niece. A mate’s birthday last Halloween. The words piled up and none of them mattered because the mask was still there, hanging, smiling with that painted on joy that is not joy. I could feel my pulse in my teeth. I could feel the room getting smaller. I do not do well with clowns. I have never done well with clowns. People think it is a cute little fear, like spiders or lifts. It is not cute. It sits in me wrong. It makes my skin feel like it belongs to someone else.

    He reached toward the wardrobe like he was going to take it down and show me it was plastic and harmless. That was when I properly lost it. “Do not touch it. Do not bring it closer. I am leaving.”

    I found the bag. I found the other boot. I did not put the boot on properly. I hopped to the door with my top on backwards and my blazer over my arm and my knickers still the only thing covering the fact that five minutes earlier I had been about to have a very good night. He followed me in his socks. Just the socks. Cock still half interested because bodies are stupid and do not understand fear the way brains do. I would have found that funny on a different night. On this night I wanted him to put a wall between me and the rail.

    In the hallway I tried to breathe like a person. He stood in the doorway looking baffled and a bit rejected, which I understand, I do, because from his side of it a girl went from licking his stomach to screaming at a piece of polyester in under ten seconds. He asked if I wanted water. He asked if I wanted him to put it in another room. He asked if I was serious.

    I was serious.

    I got in the lift and the doors took a year to close. My reflection in the metal looked like a woman who had been interrupted mid crime. Hair wrecked. Mouth smeared. Top backwards, tag sticking out under my chin. I fixed the top in the lobby with my hands shaking. The night air hit me and I vaped so hard I made myself cough. Mango. Same flavour as always. It did not help as much as I needed it to.

    Then the walk of shame that is not even a walk of shame because I did not get the sex. That is the insult. I did all the work. I did the chatting and the leaning and the after work pint and the lift kiss and the fridge and the belt and the look up through my lashes. I was ready. I was wet. I was in the mood in that specific way where my head goes quiet and my body takes over and I feel like myself. And instead I was on the pavement at half eleven with one boot zipped and one boot sulking and a man upstairs who now thinks I am unhinged.

    I ordered the Uber. I sat on the little wall outside the block. I texted the group chat “do not ask.” They asked immediately. I sent a photo of the empty street and the words “clown in the wardrobe.” One flatmate thought I was joking. The other one sent the same clown emoji from earlier. I told her I would kill her in the morning, affectionately.

    In the car I caught the driver glancing at my face. I did not explain. What would I even say. Excuse me mate, I was about to suck a man off after Thursday drinks and then I found a full clown face hanging with his coats and now I need to go home and watch telly until my nervous system remembers I am an adult. You cannot say that to an Uber driver. You sit there and stare at the map and pretend you are normal.

    Fallout lasted longer than the scream.

    He texted. Of course he texted. First message was “you ok?” Second was a photo of the mask in a bin bag on his kitchen floor, like evidence. Third was “I chucked it, swear down.” I left him on read for an hour because I was on the sofa in the flat with a blanket and last night’s pasta and a programme I was not watching. My flatmates came in one after the other and I had to tell the story twice. I did the scream again for effect. I did the socks. I did the top on backwards. They howled. I howled. Then I went quiet because under the joke there is still that jolt, that old stupid jolt, the one that makes me feel six and unprotected and ridiculous for being twenty five and scared of a face that cannot even blink.

    I almost went back. That is the part I do not love admitting. Not that night. The next afternoon, after work, after I had done my emails and booked three meetings and acted like a competent human. He had been decent. He had not laughed at me in the doorway. He had offered to bin it. My body still remembered his mouth on my chest and my hand down his boxers and the sound he made when I looked up. I like finishing what I start. I like getting what I came for. I nearly typed “put it in the building bin and I will come over.”

    I did not.

    Because I could still see it on the rail. Between the coat and the hoodie. Smiling.

    Work the next day was a special kind of comedy. I had a mark on my neck I had to hide with the blazer collar. I had no sleep. I had a manager asking if I was “a bit peaky” and I had to say late train. I sat at my desk doing actual maths on an actual budget and every time someone opened a cupboard in the kitchen I flinched like a cartoon. One of the girls asked what I got up to. I said drinks. I did not say I abandoned a half naked man because his fancy dress from October had been stored badly.

    He tried again at the weekend. Different tone. Softer. Said he felt bad. Said he would like to take me for food in a public place with no wardrobes. I nearly said yes because food is food and he was still fit and I am still me. Then I pictured standing in his bedroom again, even empty, even cleaned, and my stomach did that drop. I told him I was snowed under at work. Which was true enough. Promotion season. I need my head. I need to look like the girl who can handle a diary and a crisis, not the girl who screamed at a mask and ran.

    People love to tell me I am dramatic. I am. I know I am. I also know what my body does when it sees that face. It does not negotiate. It does not care that I was wet and willing and good at what I was about to do. It slams the door. It grabs the shoes. It leaves the man in his socks.

    So that is the night. After work pint. Kiss in the lift. Hands, mouth, belt, the start of something that would have been filthy and fun and exactly what I wanted. Then a wardrobe door and a painted smile and me on the street with my top on backwards, vaping like it could rewind ten minutes.

    Never again. Not his flat. Not a surprise costume. Not a man who stores his nightmares next to his coats and thinks “it is just” is a sentence that helps.

    If you take nothing else from this, take the practical bit. If you are going to bring someone home, check the wardrobe. Check the top shelf. Check whatever you think is harmless because you have lived with it so long it went invisible. Some of us are fine with mess and noise and being a bit slutty on a Thursday. Some of us can handle a lot.

    A full clown face at dick height is not a lot. It is the end of the night.

    I got home. I showered. I put the telly on. I did not sleep well. In the morning I did my make up and my job and my little smirk for the office and nobody knew. That is the other side of me. The part that can fall apart at half eleven and still send a calendar invite at nine.

    And if I ever go back to his, which I will not, that rail had better be empty. I am fun. I am cocky. I am not doing that scream twice.

  • Flatmate Walked In Mid-Footjob

    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.