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.