Look I was not even meant to still be out. That is the first thing. Mia had said “one more” in that voice she uses when one more means three more and a possible afters, and I had already done my lipstick in the back of a wine glass, which is how you know the night has slipped its leash. I was happy. I was confident. I was also, if I am being honest with you, a bit bored of the same three boys we always see in the same three rooms.
Then this man appeared at the bar like he had been waiting for a gap in the conversation. Tall enough. Good coat. The sort of face that photographs well in bad lighting. He bought a drink I did not ask for and I let him, because I am not in the habit of turning down a free vodka soda just to make a point about feminism at half twelve.
He was funny for about twenty minutes. Proper funny. The kind where you lean in without meaning to. I thought, fine. This can be a night. This can be a story. Those two things are often the same thing for me, which Sophie would call a personality disorder and I would call a job.
It started normal. Then it started a pitch.
We moved from the bar to a booth that still had someone else’s jackets on it. He asked what I did. I said I write about my life and people pay attention, which is the polite version. He laughed like he got it. Then I asked what he did, because that is the polite version of me as well, and I do have manners when I feel like using them.
Startups. Of course. Fine. London is full of them. I have sat through worse. I have sat through men who talk about their ex for forty minutes and still expect to come home with me. A startup is at least current.
He said the product was going to change how people think about ownership. I nodded. I am very good at nodding. It is a skill. You can look interested and plan your next lipstick top-up at the same time.
Then the words started arriving in a convoy.
Utility. Liquidity. Community. On-chain something. I am not thick. I did a maths degree and I can follow a sentence if the sentence wants to be followed. This one did not. This one wanted an audience. There is a difference.
I asked one question, a normal one, like what does it actually do, and he looked delighted. Not because I was clever. Because I had pressed play.
Tokenomics at 1am is a cry for help
I do not remember the exact minute it tipped. I remember the feeling. That slow slump behind the ribs when you realise you are no longer on a night out. You are in a meeting that has been disguised as flirtation.
He said tokenomics.
He said it the way some men say destiny. Soft. Proud. Like the word itself might undress me.
I had my glass halfway to my mouth. I put it down. I smiled the smile I use for waiters and for people I will not be seeing again. He did not notice. He was mid flow. Vesting schedules. Governance. The bit about the white paper, which I think is a document and not a lifestyle, although by then I was no longer sure.
Around us the room was doing what rooms do at that hour. Someone dropped a glass. A girl in silver was crying and laughing at the same time. Mia was two tables over, already clocking that my face had changed. She raised her eyebrows. I raised mine back. That is a whole conversation if you have lived with someone long enough.
He kept going. I watched his mouth. I thought about sex, because I often do, and I thought about whether I could still fancy him if I just let the words wash over me. Sometimes that works. You take the body and leave the TED Talk on the floor with the coats. Not this time. The talk had eaten the body. There was no man left, just a deck.
I said I needed the loo.
He said of course, and then, I swear this is true, he started the next sentence before I had even stood up. Something about supply. I did not stay for the rest of it. I have standards. They are messy standards. They still exist.
The oldest exit in London
The loo queue was short for once. I went in, locked the door, and looked at myself the way I always do. Not because I am in love with my own face. Because I need to check I am still in the room. Gloss. Hair. The little smugness I take out with me and try not to lose under other people’s lighting.
I texted Mia.
Leaving. Do not look for me. If he asks, I died.
She sent back a skull and then, a minute later, He is still talking to the space where you were.
That nearly made me go back, just to see it. I did not. Self-control is rare for me. I wanted to enjoy the feeling.
I walked out the side and into the street like I had somewhere better to be. I did not. I had an Uber and a flat in Parsons Green and two flatmates who would have opinions. That was enough.
The air was cold in that specific London way where you remember you have a body again. I had left a drink on the table. I had left a man mid sentence. I had also left the version of the night where I go home with him because he is fit enough and I am curious enough and the story needs an ending with a bed in it.
Sometimes the story is better if you cut it early. Editors know this. I am an editor of my own evenings, apparently.
Sophie was awake, which is rude
Sophie was on the sofa with tea like a Victorian ghost who pays half the council tax. She looked at my dress, then at the time on her phone, then at me.
“You’re early,” she said, which from her is an accusation.
I told her. Not all of it. The shape of it. Fit. Funny. Then tokenomics. Then the loo. Then the street.
She did that little mouth thing. The one that means she wants to disapprove and also wants the rest.
“You could have just said you were tired.”
I could have. I have done that. I have done the kind version, the “this was lovely, I am going to head off” version, the text the next day that says no spark. I did not want kind. I wanted out. There is a difference between manners and sitting there while a man uses your face as a whiteboard.
Mia came in twenty minutes later, heels in her hand, already laughing.
“He asked if you were coming back. I said you had a work emergency. At 1am. He believed me. That is how much he loves his own voice.”
We ate toast standing up, which is how most of our important conversations happen. I took my makeup off in the toaster reflection because the bathroom light felt too honest. I slept in last night’s mascara anyway. Some habits are bigger than principles.
He texted. Of course he texted.
Late morning. Two messages.
You disappeared?
Then: I was just getting to the good bit.
I showed the kitchen. Sophie said I should reply. Mia said I should send a link to a dictionary. I did neither for a while. I made coffee. I looked at the messages again and felt almost nothing, which I think is the point people miss when they talk about ghosting like it is a war crime.
We had not built anything. We had a booth and a round and a monologue. I do not owe a stranger a soft landing because he found me pretty enough to present to.
I did write a reply. I deleted it. Then I wrote another one that said, I went to the loo and kept walking, which is the truth, and then I deleted that too. The truth is good on here. It is not always useful in someone’s inbox at brunch time.
I left him on read. Peak self-care. Also, yes, peak content. I am not going to pretend those two things did not hold hands on the way home.
Before you come for me
I know what this sounds like. I know there is a version of this story where I am the villain in a cheap coat. Poor man, mid explanation, girl vanishes, another casualty of modern dating, women are so rude now.
Here is the other version.
I have sat through the pitch before. I have smiled through the founder journey and the bit where they say they are “building something real” while looking at your mouth. I have gone home with men who talked too much and still been generous in the dark, because I wanted to, because I was horny, because I am not a nun and I will not start now.
This was not that. This was a hostage situation with good shoes.
If you cannot tell the difference between a conversation and a captive audience, you should not be allowed out after midnight. That is not policy. That is just my personal code, next to the one about not hurting animals and the one about always having gloss on me in case the lighting changes.
Would I have stayed if he had asked me a single proper question after the first twenty minutes? Perhaps. I like being asked things. I like a man who notices I have a life that is not a pause button on his. I like sex. I like nights that run on. I do not like being a chair with eyeliner.
He was not a bad person, as far as I could tell from an hour and a bit. He was just in love with the sound of a future that did not include me except as proof someone pretty had listened.
I refused the job.
What I did with the rest of the night
I did not have a grand epiphany. I had toast. I had Sophie being quietly judgemental in a way I find comforting. I had Mia repeating “tokenomics” in a stupid voice until it stopped being a word and became a flat joke, which is the highest honour we give anything in this house.
I wrote the first line of this in my notes app before I slept. Phone on 12 percent. One earring still in. The other one somewhere between the club and the kitchen, which is where most of my jewellery lives now.
In the morning I checked if he had posted anything. He had. A photo of a laptop and a coffee and a caption about the grind. No mention of the girl who evaporated mid sentence. Good. Keep grinding, darling. I will be over here, grinding something else.
If you are reading this and you are him, first of all, you should not be, and second of all, I did hear the start of the good bit. It was not good. It was more of the same bit. That is the thing about men who cannot stop talking. There is no good bit. There is only volume.
And if you are reading this because you have also stood up for the loo and felt the relief of not going back, hi. Welcome. There is no medal. There is just the street, and the cold, and the knowledge that your time is not a white paper.
I still think about the coat, if I am honest. It was a very good coat. Some losses you feel. Most of them you write down and call a night.