style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Fuccccccck,’ I said, as he carried on thrusting in and out of me, unhurriedly, as if he was teasing me. I wasn’t sure it was the most flattering position in the world. I glanced down at my stomach and the rolls had all bunched together so they looked like packet ham. Plus my legs were over my head; my feet were, in fact, dangerously close to his head and I worried they might smell. But it felt so good, and Max was staring at me so intensely, that I forgot about my feet.
After a few minutes, he then pulled out and turned me lengthways across his bed. I tried to shift position as gracefully as possible. Never sexy to be thrashing around on top of a duvet like a dolphin, but Max had a knack of sweeping me around effortlessly so I was suddenly underneath him and we were doing it missionary, his head buried in my shoulder as he kissed my neck.
I rocked with him, running my nails down his back as we kissed properly again, mouths wide, tongues pushing against one another. Ha! All those worries about forgetting how to do it, I thought. Not a problem. Look at us go. Look at me having sex with this beautiful man. I moved my nails down over his bottom and then up across his back again. I am a modern, single woman, enjoying myself, being all liberated, enjoying being back on the dating scene again. It’s a Saturday night and instead of getting drunk with Jess, I’m having sex with Max. No more stalking Jake on social media. No more moping over old selfies of us. No more tears on a Sunday evening. I am free! I can do whatever I want! I am—
Suddenly, Max pulled out and, reaching underneath my back with one of his muscly arms, flipped me on to my stomach. I tried to look over my shoulder at him in what I hoped was a smouldering way, although I knew my eye make-up had probably smudged again so I looked like Noel Fielding. Max was on his knees behind me, but lowered his head to kiss my left shoulder, then my right shoulder, then, slowly, he kissed his way down my spine. His beard gently tickled my back and I sighed into my pillow. Then the kissing stopped and I was pulled backwards by my legs, Max’s hands underneath my thighs. My bottom was now on the end of the bed, my knees on the carpet.
‘Give me your hands,’ he said, so I lifted my arms from under my head and moved them behind me.
‘Here, put them here,’ he said, putting one hand on each of my butt cheeks and spreading them apart slightly. There I was, lying on my chest, with my hands on my bottom as if I was about to do a naked version of the Macarena.
Max then buried his head in my crease, starting to flick up and down with his tongue again, harder this time. It felt so good that I didn’t even worry about what my bottom looked like at that angle. I just wanted him to carry on, harder, faster, harder, faster, harder, faster, until that hot feeling of being on the cusp of exploding again and I came, moaning into the pillow.
‘That was amazing,’ I whispered, looking over my shoulder.
‘Good,’ he replied, and then, within seconds, he was lying on top of me, having pushed his cock into me again. His forearms were on the bed and he moved back and forth, breathing loudly and more urgently until he too made a sort of roar and flopped down on my back.
I silently congratulated myself for the performance then wondered how long I had to lie there underneath him before trying to move. I needed a wee.
He kissed my neck and rolled off a few moments later.
‘I’m just going to nip to the bathroom,’ I said, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
‘That one,’ said Max, inclining his head towards a doorway besides his wardrobe.
‘Thanks,’ I said. Strange how you could suddenly go into polite mode when moments ago someone was licking your bottom.
I sat down on the loo in his bathroom – grey marble and black and white photos of mountains on the walls – and tried to wee. It took ages. Come on, Lil, he’ll think you’re doing something revolting in here if you don’t hurry up. Finally, I weed. Then I wiped, stood up and looked at my face in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my lips pink. I reached for the Colgate, lying beside the basin, and dabbed it on my forefinger. Then I ran the finger over my teeth and gums, turned on the tap, palmed a pool of water into my mouth and swilled it around.
I tiptoed back towards his bed and got into it, glancing across at him as I lay down. He was lying on his back, one arm bent above his head on his pillow, but rolled on to his side as soon as I was lying down.
‘Head up,’ he instructed, so I lifted it and he put one arm underneath it and wrapped the other over me. Spooning someone you’d met only hours earlier seemed weirdly intimate. Even more intimate than them licking your bottom. But it was the perfect end to this most perfect night, and I fell asleep without even a second of neurosis that I shouldn’t have gone home with him on the first date.
The only thing was, when I woke up in the morning, Max wasn’t there. I lifted my head to survey his room, listening for clues. Ouuuuuuuuchhhhhh, my head. It felt as if my brain had grown too big for my skull overnight. Throb, throb, throb. I tried to ignore the pain and listen for any noise in the flat. But the place was silent. What time was it? I looked on the floor for my bag. No bag. I must have left it in the sitting room. Then I spotted a clock on his bedside table: 8.23 a.m. Early for a Sunday. I sat up in bed.
The floor of Max’s room looked like a battlefield, various items of discarded clothing lying on the carpet like wounded soldiers. My knickers, my bra, my shirt, my jeans, all at different spots. I swung my legs out and reached for my knickers, pulled them on and then tiptoed to listen at his bathroom door. Nope. Nothing. I retrieved my clothes from their various locations, put everything on and opened his bedroom door a fraction to the hall to see if I could hear a kettle or a radio out there. Still nothing. I found my way back to the living room but he wasn’t there either. Then I saw a note on the kitchen counter.
L, SORRY TO ABANDON YOU, JUST GOT A FEW WORK THINGS TO DO. BUT MAKE YOURSELF A CUP OF TEA AND GREAT TO MEET. M.
I stood at the kitchen counter analysing it. Analysing every word. Analysing every letter. No kiss after the M, was my first thought. And did ‘great to meet!’ feel a bit corporate? I don’t want to harp on about the bottom thing, but ‘great to meet!’ felt like something you said after meeting someone at a middle-management awayday, not what you said after putting your tongue in – I quickly counted in my head – three of their orifices. And who had work this early on a Sunday morning? But he’d also called me ‘L’, which seemed sweet. A bit intimate. L&M, we’d be, if we were a couple. As in ‘Shall we have L&M round for dinner?’ or ‘I wonder if L&M are free this weekend?’
I ordered myself to stop. What was I doing, standing barefoot in a stranger’s kitchen, wondering about what we’d be called if we were a couple? That was nuts. I needed a cup of tea and thirty-seven glasses of water, plus toast. And some Nurofen. And some more water. Lots more water. My mouth felt like something had died in it. But I didn’t want a cup of tea in Max’s flat. I wanted to get out of there and into my own space where I could go over the evening in my head, or at least the bits I could remember.
I folded the note up and slid it into my pocket, grabbed my bag off the sofa and went back to the bedroom. I resisted the urge to poke around his room too much – what if he was watching, somehow? – so made the bed and then took my bag into his bathroom to sort out my face. It was predictably terrible. Dry flaky skin. Faintly bloodshot eyes. Probably a good thing Max wasn’t there. I’d seen better-looking animals when I took my class to London Zoo.
A few minutes later I let myself out, praying silently that I didn’t bump
