Look. I keep telling myself I went home with him because the night was dying and I hate getting the night bus back to Parsons Green with nothing to show for it. That is only half true. The other half is he had that City face. The one that looks bored until it isn’t.
Navy suit. White shirt gone a bit soft at the collar. Watch that cost more than my rent and he still checked it like he might be late for something more important than me. I liked that. I know how that sounds.
We met after work drinks I was never invited to. Mia knows a girl who knows a girl in comms. I showed up in black trousers and a top that photographs better than it behaves. He clocked me over someone’s shoulder and that was that. No long chat. No astrology. No “so what do you do.” He asked if I wanted another and I said yes because I did.
His flat was exactly what I expected
New build near Monument. The kind with a concierge who does not look up and a lift that smells of other people’s cologne. One bedroom. Grey sofa. A kitchen island nobody cooks at. Wine already open. He poured it like he was doing me a favour.
I put my bag down and redid my lipstick in the oven door because there was no decent mirror in the hall. He watched. Of course he watched. Men like that always do. They think they are being subtle.
We kissed standing up first. He was a good kisser in the annoying way. Not sloppy. Not trying to eat my face. Just sure. Hands on my waist then higher. I let him. I had already decided I was staying before we left the bar. I just hadn’t said it out loud yet.
Clothes came off in that half-tidy way people do when they still want to look like they have standards. Suit jacket on the chair. My top on the floor. He left the watch on. I noticed. I always notice things like that. It made him look like he might have to leave in twenty minutes, which is stupidly hot when you are already in it.
Then his hand was on my throat
Not straight away. I should say that. We were on the bed and it was already rough in the ordinary sense. Hair pulled. My knee over his shoulder. That sort of thing. I was into it. I said so. I am not one of those girls who goes quiet and hopes you guess.
His hand came up while he was still inside me. Thumb along my jaw first. Then the rest of his fingers. Light at the start. Testing. I made a sound that was not a no. He took that as permission, which it was.
Here is the bit I keep turning over. I liked it. Properly liked it. The pressure. The way everything else in the room dropped away. The way my brain went stupid and simple. I could still breathe. I could still talk if I wanted. I just didn’t want to.
Then he squeezed harder.
Not a little harder. A lot. My eyes watered. My fingers dug into his arm and I do not even remember deciding to do that. For a second I thought about tapping out. I didn’t. I came instead, which feels like a betrayal of my own common sense but there we are.
He didn’t ask if I was alright after. He just slowed down, finished, and rolled onto his back like he had completed a task. Nice suit. Worse manners. That line keeps coming back.
The morning was less glamorous
I woke up before him. City light through those huge windows. My mouth dry. Makeup everywhere it shouldn’t be. I went to the bathroom and the mirror did what mirrors always do to me. I looked.
There they were. Four faint marks on the left side of my neck. Not cartoon bruises. Not horror film. Just enough that anyone standing close would clock them. Pink going purple. The exact shape of a hand that got carried away.
I pressed one with my finger. It hurt in a dull way. I felt two things at once and I am not going to tidy that up for you. One was oh for fuck’s sake. The other was a small, unhelpful pulse of the same feeling from the night before.
I borrowed his toothpaste. I did not borrow a hoodie. I put last night’s top back on and used my scarf like it had always been part of the outfit. He offered coffee. I said I had to get back. He did not argue. Men like that never do once they have got what they came for. Or what I came for. Both. Whatever.
In the Uber I sat with my scarf up and my phone open and wrote three captions I will never post. Then I deleted them. Then I took a photo of the bruise in the lift mirror at home and deleted that too. I am not that girl. Except when I am.
What I told Sophie
Sophie was in the kitchen in her work cardigan, eating yoghurt like a person with a functioning life. She looked at my neck for half a second too long.
“What’s that?”
“Necklace,” I said. “New one. Cheap chain. Rubbed.”
She did that face. The one that means she does not believe me and she is choosing not to start it before 9am. Mia would have asked for details. Sophie just pushed the coffee towards me and said I looked wrecked.
I am wrecked. Not in a tragic way. In the I stayed out too late and let a man I do not like very much put his hand on my throat and I still keep replaying it way.
That is the confession, really. Not that it happened. That I keep going back to the part where I liked it more than I should admit.
I keep trying to make it neater than it is
I could dress this up as empowerment. I could say I was in control the whole time. Some of that is true. I went there willingly. I could have left. I came. I got in a car and came home and wrote this instead of sleeping.
The other part is simpler and less flattering. I wanted to feel chosen for ten minutes by someone who looks like he belongs on a terrace in a glass building. I wanted the story. I wanted the heat. I did not want the marks. I got all three.
Would I see him again? Probably not. He texted a thumbs up when I said I was downstairs, which is a form of violence in its own right. Would I do the choking again with someone who asked first and watched my face properly? Yes. I can hold both of those thoughts without writing a thesis about it.
Anyway. If you see me this week in a high neck or a silk scarf I did not own on Thursday, mind your business. Or don’t. You are already reading this.
I am going to put more concealer on and pretend I have a deadline. I do. It is this.
