I still taste mango when I think about it, which is tragic, because I used to like that flavour. Now it just reminds me of a grown man coughing in my face while I had my tongue halfway in his mouth and one hand on his belt. I am twenty five. I have a degree. I can do a spreadsheet with my eyes half shut. None of that saved me.
It started like most of my bad ideas start. Thursday. Work had been long in that boring, email heavy way that makes you want a drink more than food. I am a personal assistant, which sounds organised and calm on paper and feels like being glued to someone else’s calendar in real life. By half five I was done being polite. Smart casual, dark hair shoved into something decent, vape in the bag because of course it was. I told the girls in the flat I would be late. They already knew what that meant.
We went to the pub round the corner from the office, the one with sticky tables and a landlord who pretends he cannot hear people being filthy in the corner. After work crowd. Cheap wine. Pints. That warm noise you get when everyone has taken their lanyards off and started acting like they have a personality again. I was in a good mood. Proper good. The kind where you know you look alright and you are not pretending otherwise.
Callum works two floors up. Not my boss, thank God, because I do actually want that promotion and I am not stupid enough to shit where I eat on purpose. Tall enough. Nice hands. Talks a bit too much about football and not enough about anything else, but I was not there for a TED talk. He bought the second round. I let him. I am not above being bought a drink when I already know how the night is going to go.
We stood too close at the bar. That was the first tell. Then his knee found mine under the table and stayed there like it had paid rent. I vaped between sips because I cannot sit still and because the mango one makes me feel like I am on holiday even when I am in a pub in zone whatever with a bloke from accounts. He watched my mouth when I did it. I noticed. I always notice.
By the third drink I was already deciding the logistics. His place was closer. Mine had two flatmates and a hallway that squeaks like it is judging you. I like an audience in theory. I do not like an audience when I am trying to get someone’s trousers off and one of my housemates is heating up leftover pasta. So his. Fine. I said it first, because I am not one of those girls who waits to be invited like it is 1952.
“You living far?”
He said ten minutes in an Uber. I said go on then. Just like that. No speech. No pretending I needed another drink to think about it. I wanted him. I wanted to get out of that pub. I wanted to feel like the day had been for something other than calendar invites and smiling at people I do not care about.
Outside was colder than it looked. I pulled my coat around me and he put his hand on my lower back in that way men do when they think they are being subtle. I did not move it. We waited for the car under some awful office lighting that makes everyone look a bit ill. I had the vape in my right hand the whole time. I always do. It is like a dummy for adults. I hit it twice on the pavement, sweet mango, bit of ice on the back of the throat, and I caught him looking again.
“You going to share that or what?”
I laughed. “You can have a go in the car if you are good.”
I thought I was being cute. I was being an idiot. There is a difference and I only clock it after the fact.
The Uber pulled up. Clean enough. Driver with the radio on low, some chart thing I half knew. Back seat. That weird polite silence you get for the first thirty seconds while everyone decides whether they are going to behave. We did not behave.
His place was twelve minutes according to the map. Plenty of time to be a nuisance. Coat still on. My thigh over his. He kissed my neck first, which I like, and I tipped my head back against the seat and let him, vape still loose in my fingers like a cigarette in an old film. The city slid past the window. Wet road. Brake lights. That feeling in your stomach when you know you are about to get exactly what you came out for.
I turned his face and kissed him properly. He was a decent kisser, I will give him that. Not sloppy. A bit eager, which I do not mind when I am in that mood. My free hand went to his shirt. His went under mine, warm palm on my waist, then higher, thumb brushing the underside of my bra like he was checking I was real. I made a small noise into his mouth. Not even performing. Just that first spark when your body catches up with your mouth.
The vape was still in my right hand. I want that on the record. I did not forget it. I just treated it like it was part of my body, which, if you vape as much as I do, it sort of is.
We broke apart for air. I grinned at him, smug as anything, and I went back in.
That is when I did it.
I must have lifted the thing as I moved. Muscle memory. Same way you check your phone without thinking. I drew on it as I kissed him. A proper pull. Then I breathed out, because that is what you do after you inhale, and I breathed out into his open mouth.
Mango. Cold. Thick. Straight down his throat.
It was not a cute little puff. It was a cloud. I felt it leave me. I saw it for a split second in the gap between our faces, this pale sweet fog, and then it was in him.
He made a sound I have never heard a grown man make. Not sexy. Not even shocked in a hot way. It was the noise of someone who has just swallowed a scented candle. He jerked back so hard his head nearly hit the window. Then he coughed. Proper coughed. Bent forward, fist to his mouth, eyes watering, the full performance.
I laughed.
I did not mean to. It burst out of me before my brain could catch it. That awful bright laugh I do when something is so bad it loops round and becomes funny. I still had the vape in my hand. The little light was on. Mango hanging in the air between us like I had just vaped a dessert into his lungs.
“Oh my God,” I said, which was useless.
He coughed again. The driver glanced in the mirror. Of course he did. I wanted the seat to eat me. I wanted the road to open. I wanted to be anyone else, anywhere else, preferably a woman who does not bring a flavoured stick into a snog like it is an accessory.
“You alright?” I asked, still laughing, which made it worse.
He nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again, wheezing out, “What the fuck was that?”
“Mango,” I said, as if that helped. “Ice. I think.”
“You vaped in my mouth.”
“I know.”
“Into my actual mouth.”
“I know.”
He coughed a third time and then, to his credit, he started laughing too. Not straight away. There was a horrible five seconds where I thought he was going to tell the driver to pull over and let the mental girl out. Then he wiped his eyes and looked at me like I was a problem he had not budgeted for.
“You are unbelievable.”
“I get that a lot.”
I said it cocky, because that is my default setting even when I have just waterboarded a man with fruit vapour. Inside I was on fire. Not the good kind. The I will remember this in the shower for three years kind.
The car kept moving. That was the worst part. There was still eight minutes on the map. Eight minutes of sitting there with the taste of mango and toothpaste and shame. My lipstick was smudged. His shirt was creased. The moment that had been heading somewhere very obvious had been replaced by the ghost of a tropical vape.
I put the thing in my bag like that would undo it. Bit late.
He cleared his throat and looked out the window, still smiling in that stunned way. I put my hand on his knee because I am incapable of leaving a silence alone.
“We can pretend that did not happen.”
“Cat. I can taste mango in my chest.”
“That is actually quite romantic if you squint.”
“It is not.”
Fair.
I thought that was it. Night over. Embarrassing anecdote for the group chat. I was already writing the message to the girls in my head. You will not believe what I have done. Do not let me go out with the vape again. Burn it.
Then he looked back at me, eyes still a bit wet from coughing, and he said, “You still coming up or are you going to gas me again?”
I blinked.
“You what?”
“I have water,” he said. “And windows. I am not dying. I am just flavoured.”
That should not have been attractive. It was a bit attractive. I am not proud of my standards in that moment. I bit my lip to stop another laugh and nodded.
“Yeah. I am coming up. I will keep it in the bag. Scout’s honour.”
“Were you ever a scout?”
“Do I look like I was a scout?”
He looked at my smudged mouth and the coat slipping off one shoulder and said no. Correct.
The last few minutes of the ride were quieter. Not dead. Just careful. His hand found my thigh again, higher this time, and I let it, because the heat had not actually gone anywhere. It had just been interrupted by a fruit based war crime. When I kissed him again I did it slow, no props, no accessories, just mouth and a bit of teeth, and he made a better sound that time. The driver turned the radio up. Bless him.
His building was one of those new ones that all look the same. Lift with a mirror I should not have looked in. I did anyway. I looked like I had been in a fight with a dessert. He unlocked the door and I stepped in, bag still clutched like the vape might leap out and finish the job.
He got me a glass of water. I drank it. He drank two. Then he backed me into the counter and kissed me properly, and this time both my hands were empty, which felt like progress.
I will not pretend the rest of the night was ruined, because it was not. Once we got past the coughing and the laughing and me saying sorry for the fifth time, it was good. He was good. I was better, which I say because I know what I am doing and I am not going to be shy about it after I have already admitted to vaping into a man’s respiratory system. Clothes on the kitchen floor. My skirt round my waist because I could not be bothered to take it off properly. His mouth on my neck, my hand in his hair, that first slide of him against me that makes your brain go quiet in the nicest way.
At one point, when I was on my knees and he was trying very hard to be normal about it, he looked down and said, “No vape.”
I gave him a look that could have stripped paint.
“I am busy,” I said, and got back to it.
He did not last as long as he probably wanted to after that, which I took as a compliment and also as karma for the mango incident. We ended up in his bed after, lights off, my head on his chest, him still smelling faintly of tropical ice like a duty free shop.
“I am never hitting that thing near you again,” I said.
“You can hit it,” he said. “Just not in my mouth. I have limits.”
“Noted.”
I got an Uber back at half one because I like my own bed and I did not want the morning conversation. The flat was dark. One of the girls had left the bathroom light on. I stood on the balcony in my coat and, yes, I vaped. Mango. I hated that I still liked it. The city was quiet in that fake way London gets at night. I sent the group chat a message.
I vaped into his mouth. On purpose. Not on purpose. You know what I mean. He coughed like a Victorian child. Then I still went home with him. I am a disgrace. Do not reply, I am going to sleep.
They replied anyway. Obviously.
Fallout lasted longer than the cough. The driver must have said something because the rating on my account dipped and I had to sit there the next morning looking at three stars like I had committed a crime against transport. At work I saw Callum by the lifts. He had a coffee. I had a face that said do not speak to me in public. He smirked. I smirked back because I cannot help myself. Later he messaged.
Still taste it.
I sent back a mango emoji and nothing else. Let him sit with that.
The girls would not let it die. Every time I picked up the vape in the living room one of them started coughing on purpose. Very funny. Really mature. I told them they would miss me when I moved out on a promotion wage, which made me sound more sorted than I am, but the bit about the wage was true. I want the money. I want the title. I also want to go out on a Thursday and not assault a man with dessert air. We cannot always have everything.
I bought a different flavour that weekend. Blueberry. It felt like a fresh start. It lasted four days. I am back on mango. I am weak.
Here is the thing I keep coming back to, standing on that balcony with the little light glowing in my hand. I am good at a lot of the bits people get awkward about. I know how to use my mouth. I know how to read a room. I can talk someone into leaving a pub with me in under an hour and I do not even think that is a special talent, I think it is just being honest about what you want. And then I will do something so stupid, so completely preventable, that it knocks the whole performance over.
That is me, I think. Confident until I am not. Smooth until I vape into someone’s lungs. Happy, mostly. Horny, often. A bit arrogant because it is easier than being shy. Essex in the voice even when the emails come out clean.
Callum still talks to me. We have not repeated the Uber. I have rules now. Vape in the bag before the kiss. Hands free. No flavours in shared airspace. It is not sexy. It is public safety.
Would I tell the story again? I just did. Would I go back to that Thursday and take the vape out of my hand before I got in the car? In theory. In practice I know myself. I would still have it. I would still lean in. I would still think I was being cute.
And some poor bloke would still get a mouthful of mango ice at the exact moment he thought he was getting me.
He coughed. I laughed. Then I wanted the earth to open.
It did not. So I went upstairs with him anyway.