What Happens Now

‘Hampstead?’ he replied, as if it was a question.

I nodded again.

‘Cool,’ I said, having another sip of my drink. Quite a big sip. ‘You been there long?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘a few years. I love it. Got the park. Can get out of London easily. It’s great.’ He had a sip of his drink. ‘You?’

I frowned at him. ‘Huh?’

‘Have you been in Brixton long?’

‘Oh right, sorry, er, no. Not really. Like, six months.’

‘Where were you before?’

‘Angel?’

He nodded.

We both had another mouthful of our drinks.

‘And you said you were a teacher?’

‘Mmm,’ I replied. ‘Five-year-olds. I love them most days, want to kill them on others.’ Why are you threatening child murder on a date, Lil?

He smiled. He had good teeth. White. And the vibe of a man who owned and, crucially, used dental floss. ‘You must be unbelievably patient,’ he went on. ‘I have a couple of godchildren who I love, but I get to hand them back again after a couple of hours.’

I laughed. People always said that about teachers, that we must be ‘patient’. But children were easier to handle and less complicated than most adults I knew.

‘What about you though?’ I asked him. ‘How come you’re always jet-setting? Are you a spy?’ Well done, a joke! That’s more like it, this sounds more like an actual conversation two human beings would have.

Max laughed. ‘No, I’d make a terrible spy. Very bad at keeping secrets. But I travel a lot because I’m a climber.’

I frowned. ‘A climber? Like… of mountains?’

‘Exactly. Mostly mountains. Walls when I’m in London. Not many mountains in the city.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Cool. I didn’t know it could be a job.’

He laughed. ‘I carry rich Americans up Swiss mountains to pay the bills, then go off and climb elsewhere for myself.’

‘Like where?’

He shrugged. ‘Wherever. Europe. America. Himalayas. I’m about to go to Pakistan to try and climb a mountain there.’

‘Pakistan? Wow, amazing,’ I said. I worried I sounded vacuous. But I didn’t know much about climbing. And if you handed me a map and asked me to stick a pin in Pakistan I wasn’t absolutely sure I could. I taught my 5-year-olds basic reading and writing skills. Not geography.

My phone lit up on the table. A message from Jess.

‘Sorry,’ I said, sliding it into my bag, feeling quite grateful that the screen hadn’t flashed up again with ‘Mum calling’.

Max shook his head. ‘No problem.’

‘Just a mate checking up on me,’ I said, rolling my eyes at him.

‘That you’re not on a date with a crazy?’ he teased. His tanned forehead had lines running across it and smaller lines at the corners of his eyes which crinkled when he smiled. A modern-day Robinson Crusoe who’d clearly spent more time outside than cooped up in an office.

‘Something like that.’

He nodded and ran a hand through his hair. Then he grimaced at me. ‘I’m sorry. First dates are awkward, aren’t they?’

I grinned sheepishly. ‘I thought it was just me. But… yeah, they are. You do many of them?’ Then I cursed myself for letting that slip out. I didn’t want to sound like I was trying to suss his intentions so early.

He shrugged, unfazed. ‘Not millions. I’m away a lot. Don’t do much dating in the mountains. You?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope. Not a huge… dater.’ I could feel the vodka loosening my hang-ups. ‘This is my first date since a break-up, actually, so I may… er… I may be a bit rusty.’

I looked down, fingers encircling my sweating glass on the table during the awkward silence that followed. It was dumb to mention Jake, so I wondered how long it would take me to get to Jess’s from the pub. If I jumped on the Tube to Hammersmith I could probably be there in forty minutes. Buy a bottle of wine from Nisa on the walk to the house, order a Deliveroo. Perfect. It wouldn’t be a wasted night. And I could take this bra off and let my breasts settle back down at their usual altitude.

I looked up again at Max across the table, his mouth in a lopsided smile.

‘What?’ I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

‘Then we’re in the same boat, you and me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I broke up with someone not very long ago.’ His smile fell and he looked suddenly serious. ‘Although, to be fair, it was more a mutual decision in the end.’

‘Ohhhhh,’ I said slowly. ‘Brutal, huh?’

He shrugged. ‘All part of life’s rich tapestry.’

‘Why d’you break up?’

He shrugged again. ‘I wasn’t around much. She wanted to settle down. Get married, children, that sort of thing.’

‘And you… didn’t?’ I said it carefully. Again, I didn’t want him to think I was trying to work out his potential as a baby-daddy. For him to think I was on some sort of husband-hunt myself.

‘No. Well, not no. Just… not yet. Things to do. Places to see.’

‘Mountains to climb?’

‘Something like that,’ he said, smiling and leaning towards me. ‘What about you?’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if we’re having a joint Jeremy Kyle session, how come you broke up?’

‘Oh.’ I grimaced at him. ‘We’d been going out for eight years. Living together. I thought it was going one way, he… didn’t. So that was that.’

I picked up my glass and was raising it to my mouth when Max laughed.

‘What?’ I said, defensively. I still found it hard to articulate my feelings about the break-up. I went over it in my head all the time. Over and over again. Over things I could have done differently. Over moments that I realized should have given me a clue. Over Jake’s increasing reluctance to hang out with my friends. Over his late nights in the office. But I felt like even Jess had heard enough now so I kept quiet about it unless prompted.

Max shook his head and waved a hand at my expression. ‘I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at us. Sitting here, nursing our drinks like we’re at a wake. Come on, let’s have another drink and cheer up.’

I laughed back. ‘OK, but my round.’

Max shook his head again as he stood up. ‘No. Absolutely not. Same again?’

‘Yep, please.’

‘Grand. And when I get back, no more talk about break-ups. This is supposed to be a date, not a counselling session. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

I watched him push his way back to the bar and touched my right cheek with the back of my fingers. It was warm. We were one drink in, the point at which I’d envisaged one of us making excuses – ‘Good to meet you,’ awkward kiss goodbye, never message one another again – but I didn’t want to escape to Jess’s house. I wanted to stay here talking to Max. Initial awkwardness over, I could sense that I liked him. Sitting here, chatting, I could feel a spark of excitement at exploring someone new, at finding out all those first things about someone. I hadn’t felt that for a long time. Years, if I was honest. The excitement of finding out about one another dissipated early with Jake and lapsed into something more comfortable. This Saturday night already felt more exciting than most of our relationship. Or maybe that was the vodka.

‘I took the liberty of buying some crisps,’ Max said, returning to the table a few minutes later with a drink in each hand and two packets in the crook of his arm. ‘And also, here’s a menu.’ He put the drinks down, dropped the crisps (one ready salted, one salt and vinegar – promising taste in crisps), pulled two menus out from underneath his elbow and handed me one. ‘You hungry?’

I’d been too nervous to eat much all day. Too adrenalin-y at the thought of the date. Plus there was my dodgy stomach issue. All of which probably accounted for why I felt a bit pissed already.

‘Yep,’ I replied.

‘Great,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Me too. Although I warn you, I’m greedy. It’s all freeze-dried food on expeditions. So if I’m out, I go a bit mad.’

With hindsight, the second bottle of wine was probably what did it. We’d ordered food – actual steak for him, tuna steak for me, then shared cheese – and stayed at the pub until closing. One bottle of red wine, then another. Conversation had meandered more easily from travels to where we grew up. When I told him about being raised by two eccentric academics in Norfolk, he laughed.

‘No way!’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Mine live just over the border in Suffolk. I’ll drive up and we can go for a walk along the beach.’

‘Which beach?’ I asked, trying to stay outwardly cool while all my internal organs were cheering. A walk on the beach meant there had to be at least one more date. I envisaged us strolling along Brancaster, my hair blowing in the wind in a manner which left me looking tousled and sexy rather than a woman who’d recently escaped the local asylum. Perhaps we’d hold hands. Perhaps we’d have sex in the sand dunes! Calm down, Lil, I told myself, this is a hypothetical situation.

‘I don’t know the beaches of Norfolk,’ went on Max, doing his lopsided smile again. ‘You’ll have to show me.’

My stomach flipped so hard this time I was nearly sick on the table, but I managed to claw it back. ‘Sure,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Do you go home much then?’

Max puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. ‘Not as much as I’d like, but then I’m away a lot. You?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, quite a bit. It’s home. And I went back for a while after, er, the break-up and everything.’

Max took one of my hands from my lap in his and shook his head, looking at me with a mock-serious expression. ‘Nope, I told you, no exes. We’re having a good time. Let’s not ruin it.’

‘OK, deal,’ I said, feeling his fingers curled over mine, hoping that my palms didn’t start sweating again.

And it was nice. More than nice. It was wonderful, actually, sitting, gently flirting with one another. It was the kind of date you never wanted to end, and I tried to bottle every minute in my head (after the first half hour was over), so I could go over it again and again the next day. To luxuriate in the pleasure at having met someone who made me feel this giddy. I’d always inwardly cursed any of my girlfriends when they talked excitedly about meeting someone new and having ‘a spark’. I often wanted to suggest they save it for a soppy card and not subject the rest of us to their Hallmark ideas of romance. But there was… something here. I felt it.

‘Can I kiss you?’ Max said, shortly afterwards, having shifted closer to me when the waitress took our plates away. I nodded, even though I was worried that I had red wine teeth and a tongue that tasted of cheese. He gently reached out and put his hand behind my head, pulling me to him. His beard tickled my chin. It was softer than I’d expected. And you know that kiss in The Notebook? On that boat jetty in the rain? In my head, the kiss with Max looked a bit like The Notebook kiss. A proper, steamy, full-on-the-mouth snog. In reality, it probably looked a good deal less romantic, given all the vodka and wine. But I didn’t care. Look at me! I was out on a Saturday night kissing a man like a normal person instead of crying on my sofa! I pulled back after few moments, though, aware that we were in a public space and people might be trying to enjoy their dinner around us.

‘You want to get out of here?’ he said, his hand still on the back of my head.

‘Sure. To where?’

‘My place?’

I didn’t hesitate, even though this was a man I’d known for less than five hours. I just had a sense that it would be all right. Murderers have eyes that are too close together and matted hair. Or no hair. Max had thick hair that I wanted to run my hands through, and a collared shirt. Murderers didn’t wear collared shirts.

‘Cool,’ I replied.

As we stood on the pavement outside the pub minutes later, I felt less confident, as if I was about to lose my virginity again. I could just about remember which bit went where. But what if Max was into something weird? What if he wanted me to talk dirty? I couldn’t do that first time. I didn’t even know his surname. Or, what if he wanted me to put my finger in his bottom? I wasn’t into that.

‘Lil?’ Max was standing by a black cab, holding the door open for me.

‘Oh great, sorry, was just… thinking,’ I said, jumping in the taxi.

‘Hampstead, please,’ Max said to the driver. ‘East Heath Road.’

The cabbie pulled out and I fell back against the seat as Max put a hand on my leg. It made my stomach flip again. I don’t want to say ‘I felt something inside me stir,’ because that would be embarrassing. But I did feel something I hadn’t for several months, or longer, if I was honest with myself, as happiness unfurled itself underneath my ribcage. I put my hand over Max’s and gently ran my fingers over it. Then he drew me in for another kiss, more urgent than the last, his mouth pressing hard against mine as he ran his hand up my thigh.

‘I’m glad I messaged you,’ he said, pulling back, but remaining inches from my face.

‘Me too,’ I said back. I nearly added ‘Just please don’t murder me,’ but I decided it would kill the vibe.

We got out on of the cab in front of a huge white house. Enormous. It was a mansion. I counted the windows. It was four storeys high, set back from the road slightly with a path leading to the front door.

‘Jeeeeeeesus. How big is your house?’ I said, looking up at it.

He laughed as he pulled his keys out of his pocket. ‘It’s not mine.’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean it’s not all mine. It’s flats.’ He opened the front door and walked me through a carpeted hall to another door. ‘This is my bit,’ he said, unlocking that door and standing aside for me to walk in first.

It opened into a bright white corridor with a dark wooden floor. A neat row of shoes and boots was lined up underneath a full-length mirror at the end of it. It was huge. Who knew climbing was such a lucrative career option?

‘This way,’ said Max, closing his front door behind me.

‘Um… can I quickly go to the bathroom?’ I said. I was desperate to pee and still worrying about my breath. I’d been desperate to pee all taxi journey but didn’t want to say anything. I figured ‘I need a wee,’ fell into the ‘List of bodily functions you cannot talk about on a first date.’

‘Course,’ said Max, turning round and pointing. ‘That door there.’

‘Great, two seconds,’ I said.

I sat down in the bathroom and frowned as I tried to gauge how my digestive system was feeling. Fine, I decided. A big relief. I ripped off a square of loo paper and ran it across my teeth to de-fuzz them. It was a lacklustre attempt at freshening up but I didn’t have any gum. I pulled my jeans up and inspected myself in the mirror. Weird how you can start off the night feeling like Brigitte Bardot and check yourself a few hours later to see a creature from a Stephen King novel staring back. I washed my hands and ran a damp index finger under both eyes to remove the smudged mascara, then reached into my bag for my bronzer to try and make my skin look less like I was attending my own funeral.

When I opened the loo door I heard classical music, so I walked in the music’s direction, pausing to look at a photograph of Max, framed in his hall. It was a close-up of his face, clearly somewhere cold because his beard was frozen, and he had a hood pulled tightly around his head. His eyes looked almost turquoise against the ice.

I followed the music and pushed another door open to find him standing in the kitchen, opening a bottle of red wine. I say kitchen, it was an enormous kitchen and living room in one: metallic kitchen cupboards and counters up one end, sofas in front of a floor-to-ceiling window at the other end.

‘Drink?’ he asked, raising the bottle at me.

‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘What’s one more?’ He laughed as I walked towards the big window and put my hands to the dark to try and see out. My breath frosted the glass.

‘It’s the heath,’ Max said, suddenly behind me. ‘The most sensational views. It’s why I moved here. Wilderness in the middle of the city.’

‘Poetic,’ I said, taking the glass and grinning at him.

‘Cheeky,’ he said, looking at me. ‘I like it.’ Then he leant forward and kissed me again, so I stumbled back against the window shutter behind me and red wine sloshed over the rim of my glass.

‘Oh shit, sorry,’ I said, rubbing the wood with my foot. ‘I don’t want to stain your floorboards.’

‘Fuck the floorboards,’ said Max, taking my wine glass and putting it down on a glass coffee table. Fuck the floorboards! It was the sexiest thing anyone had said to me for years. In my recent adventures on Kindling, a few men had tried heroically bad pick-up lines. ‘Hey, sexy,’ was one. Seriously? Another tried ‘You look a lot like my next girlfriend.’ Bless. But Max hadn’t said anything moronic, clearly saving his best lines for now. He took my hand and led me to the sofa, pulling me down with him as he sat.

He kissed softly, his beard prickling my lower lip, his tongue gently pushing at mine. And then it became more urgent, his lips pushing against mine while one of his hands ran up my neck and into my hair. Jake and I hardly ever kissed like this towards the end of our relationship. I’d assumed it was because we were both mindful of morning breath, politely avoiding one another’s mouths. But I’d also worried that it showed how much passion had leaked from our relationship.

I sighed like a hormonally deranged teenager and ran my right hand up the back of his shirt. Here we go, it was all coming back to me. Moaning softly again into his mouth, I pushed my hand through his hair, although I froze when one of my fingers caught a knot and he inhaled sharply.

‘Sorry,’ I squeaked.

But he pulled back his head and grinned at me, one of his hands still in my hair, his eyes centimetres from mine. ‘I’ll live.’

Then he stood up and held his hand out for mine. So I got up and Max led me from the sofa to his bedroom next door. It had another huge window facing the same direction, into the inky darkness of the park.

He kicked off his shoes beside an antique chest of drawers, and went to the window to fold its shutters. I slipped my shoes off and sat on his bed. Then he walked towards me and pushed me back against the mattress.

Weirdly, as I leant back, I realized my anxieties had vanished. I was in the flat of an improbably handsome man who I could sense I liked already. I was about to have sex with him but, as Max leant over me, his groin against mine, my fears about it were quelled.

He carried on kissing me while expertly undoing the buttons of my shirt with one hand. Then, when he reached the last shirt button, he carried on southwards, flicking open the button of my jeans and pulling the zip down.

‘Take them off for me,’ he said, nodding at my jeans before he stood up at the end of his bed and reached for the bottom of his shirt. He removed it over his head in one go to reveal the kind of body I’d only ever seen in pictures. Not grotesquely muscled and smooth. We’re not talking Love Island. But perfectly defined, with a light covering of dark hair across his chest, which tapered down towards his stomach.

He started undoing his flies, while keeping his eyes on me.

‘Off,’ he instructed again, inclining his head towards me. I was less cool here, trying to get my shirt off but flailing my arms around as if competing in an Olympic butterfly heat. Then I peeled my jeans down my legs, arching my back and making a sort of bridge like you do in yoga. Incredibly, Max didn’t seem turned off by this. His eyes stayed on me the whole time until my legs were finally free, when he leant down to pull his jeans off in one easy motion. No underwear, I noticed, which I was kind of into. Macho, no? Although you have to hope the jeans are washed regularly.

I didn’t want to drop my gaze and immediately look at his penis. I’m too coy. So as Max knelt back on the bed and lowered his body above mine, I stared at his face. He started kissing me again, running the side of his hand across my nipples and down my body. I could feel his erection against my thigh and then, suddenly, he rolled himself on top of me and started kissing the hollow between my breasts and down my stomach. Thank GOD I’d had a whip round and tidied myself up earlier instead of doing that thing where I deliberately left it looking like an overgrown allotment so I couldn’t go home with him.

He worked his way south until his head was between my legs and he was very lightly flicking my clit with his tongue. I looked down a couple of times to check his head was there and this was actually happening. A tiny thought bubble had formed in my mind: Is there any way I can take a photo to preserve this moment where a stupendously handsome climber with a body like a classical statue is going down on me? Jess had once knowledgeably told me that handsome guys were bad in bed because they didn’t have to try so hard. But I wasn’t at all sure I believed her, right at this moment. Max knew exactly the right pressure and where I wanted to be touched, so I wasn’t lying there thinking, ‘Down a bit, up a bit.’

I arched my back again and exhaled loudly as he carried on flicking his tongue over me, and then gently pushed a finger into me at the same time. I could feel an intense heat growing, spreading across my belly, and I rolled my hips in time with his tongue but just before I came, he stopped and pulled himself up. ‘Uh-uh, not yet.’

WHAT?

Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he was a sadist.

‘I’m going to grab a condom,’ he said, kneeling up on the bed.

I shook my head. ‘It’s OK, I’m on the pill,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t bear to delay this moment, a moment which felt like it should be in a film it was so perfect, with a basic discussion about contraception.

It’s often this way when you’re having sex with someone new, right? You’re hardly going to raise the matter in advance at the pub because you don’t necessarily know you’re going to have sex with them.

‘Excuse me, I know we’re only on our second round, but do you mind if we have a quick chat about contraception so it’s not awkward later?’

I don’t think so.

So the subject is left until you’re rolling around together, often pissed. But this never feels like the right moment to have a big discussion either. Unromantic. It breaks the rhythm. So you mumble at one another about it being ‘all right’ or needing to ‘be careful’. Irresponsible, I know, but in that second, I was so seduced by the surprisingly erotic turn of my evening that I didn’t want anything to ruin it. I wanted to experience the kind of sex I’d read about and watched onscreen, but never quite managed myself. No pauses. No awkward fumbling with a fiddly plastic packet. No carpet oyster afterwards. Nobody ever steps on a squishy, cold, carpet oyster in the movies.

So the condom was ignored and Max carried on, putting his hands under each of my bum cheeks and pulling me to the edge of his bed, before lifting my legs up so each was resting on his shoulders. Then, slowly, so slowly, he pushed himself into me.

‘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—