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.