Look. I am not naming him. You would know the face anyway. The kind that turns up on Sky Sports with a towel round his neck and that slightly bored expression like the camera is an inconvenience.
Friday. Afterparty. Hotel next door. Barely a conversation. Sex like he had training at nine. Then a shirt left on the chair like it meant nothing.
I kept it.
That is the short version. The long version is messier, which is usually how I prefer it.
How I even ended up there
I was not meant to stay out. That is what I told Sophie when I was doing my makeup in the hallway mirror at half seven. Mia was already in a taxi. I had a blog draft open on my laptop and a half eaten Pret salad on the side. Very responsible. Very not going to shag a footballer.
Then Mia sent the location and a photo of the guest list on someone’s phone and I thought, well. I have a journalism degree I barely use and a high sex drive I use constantly. What is the point of being in London if you go to bed at eleven on a Friday.
The party was one of those fashion adjacent things that pretends it is not about footballers and then half the room is footballers. Private dining upstairs, then the downstairs bar after midnight, then people peeling off in twos and threes like it was organised. Free champagne that tasted expensive until the fourth glass when it just tasted like a decision.
I was in the black dress. The one that photographs well and comes off easily. I redid my lipstick in the back of a spoon at the bar because the lighting in those places is always unkind and I refuse to look mid.
He was already there when I clocked him. Standing like he was waiting to be collected. Not trying. That is the thing with some of them. They do not have to try. The room does it for them.
The bit where I pretend I was chill
I was not chill. I was performing chill.
Mia elbowed me and went, that is him, right, and I said I know who it is, I do have the internet. She laughed in that way that means she is already writing the group chat message.
He did not come over. I did not go over immediately either. I am cocky, not desperate. There is a difference, even if it is a thin one after two drinks.
Someone introduced us later in that vague afterparty way where nobody uses full names and everyone already knows. He said hi. I said hi. That was most of the conversation for a while. He had a quiet voice. Not shy exactly. Just unused to having to sell himself. I found that more attractive than I want to admit.
He asked what I did. I said I write. He nodded like that settled it. I asked if he was allowed to be out this close to a match week and he almost smiled. Almost. Then he looked at his phone, put it away, and looked at my mouth.
I know that look. I live for that look. It is the one that says we can skip the biography.
Mia had already vanished with some boy from a media agency. Sophie was at home being the sensible one and sending me a voice note I did not listen to. I finished my drink. He finished his. The hotel was literally next door. You could see the sign from the pavement.
I said, are you staying there.
He said, yeah.
I said, right then.
Romantic, I know. I contain multitudes and also I was horny and the night was already sliding in one direction.
The walk that was not really a walk
It took four minutes. Maybe five if you count the doorman pretending not to recognise him. Cool air, my heels too loud on the pavement, his hand on the small of my back like we had done this before. We had not.
In the lift he still barely spoke. I filled the silence because that is what I do. Asked if he always leaves parties this early. He said only when there is a reason. I rolled my eyes and he actually laughed then, short and surprised, like he had not planned to.
Room key. Corridor that smelled of hotel carpet and other people’s perfume. I caught myself in the mirrored wall and fixed my hair because of course I did. He watched me do it. Did not comment. I liked that more than compliments. Compliments are cheap. Attention is not.
Inside, he dropped his jacket on a chair and pulled his shirt over his head without making a performance of it. Good body. Obviously. That is the job. Still. Seeing it in a room with the city behind the glass is different from seeing it in a warmup video.
I told him to lock the door. He did. Then he came back and kissed me like he had somewhere to be in the morning, which he did.
The sex, since that is why you are here
It was not tender. I did not want tender.
He turned me round against the desk first. Dress up, pants to the side, his mouth on the back of my neck. I was already wet from the walk and the champagne and the fact of him. He felt that and made this low sound that I will think about at inconvenient times for weeks.
He fucked me like it was a session. Focused. Not cruel. Just efficient in a way that should not have been as hot as it was. Hands on my hips hard enough to leave marks. When I tried to turn my head to kiss him he held my jaw and kept me facing the window. I could see a slice of London and my own smudged reflection and it made me feel filthy in the best way.
I came first, which annoyed me slightly because I like to think I am in charge of the pacing. I was not. My legs went and I heard myself in a voice I only use in rooms like that.
He pulled out, turned me, put me on the bed. Still not much talking. Just, you good, and I said yes, keep going, and he did. One of my shoes was still on. The other was somewhere by the minibar. My lipstick was on his collarbone. I remember thinking, distantly, that this was going to be a nightmare to get out of the sheets and then not caring.
Second time was slower only because he wanted to last. Mouth on me until I was shaking and being a bit embarrassing about it. Then he was back inside and I had my nails in his shoulder and he still had that match day focus, like finishing was a drill. When he came he swore once, quiet, and dropped his forehead against mine for about three seconds. That was the closest we got to intimacy.
Then he rolled off, checked his phone, and went to the bathroom.
I lay there staring at the ceiling thinking about how some men can make you feel chosen and disposable in the same hour. Both can be true. I have made my peace with that. Most days.
The shirt
He came back with a towel round his waist and started looking for clothes. The shirt he had been wearing was still on the chair, slightly creased, expensive in that quiet way. White. A bit of my lipstick on the inside collar from earlier when I had pulled him in by it.
He put on a different one from his bag. Fresh. Club issued looking. The first one stayed where it was.
I sat up and said, you leaving that.
He glanced at it. Said, keep it if you want.
That was it. No joke. No follow up. Just the kind of leftover you give someone when the night is already over in your head.
I should have left it. I did not. I folded it smaller than it needed to be and put it in my bag under my phone and my compact. It smelled like him and hotel soap and my perfume. I told myself it was for the story. That is what I always tell myself.
He ordered me an Uber. Did not get in it. Stood in the doorway in that second shirt and said take care, like we had been at a work dinner. I said you too. The lift took forever. In the back of the car I checked my face. Makeup wrecked. Hair wrecked. I looked like I had been properly fucked, which I had. I took a photo I will never post and then I took another one of the shirt in my bag like a lunatic.
Got home at twenty past four. Sophie’s light was off. Mia’s door was shut. I drank water in the kitchen in my dress and put the shirt on a hanger in my wardrobe behind the coats. Very normal behaviour. Very well adjusted.
The morning after, which is always the ugly bit
I woke up with that particular hangover that is half alcohol and half the comedown of being looked at and then not looked at. Checked my phone. Nothing from him. Of course nothing from him. I had not given him my number properly. He had not asked in a way that counted.
Mia was in the kitchen eating cereal and she took one look at me and said, well.
I said, well.
She said, was it him.
I said, I am not naming him.
She said, you do not have to, and then she made me tea like a good flatmate and I told her enough that she could be annoying about it for the rest of the weekend.
I did not tell her I kept the shirt. That felt private in a way the sex did not, which is a sentence I know sounds unwell. I am aware.
By Sunday I had already written half of this in my notes app on the bus. That is the job, or the excuse. I do anything for a story and sometimes the story is just me being a girl who went home with someone famous adjacent and then had to live in her own head afterwards.
People will want to know if he was good. He was good. Athletic, obvious, a bit selfish in a way I still came from. People will want a name. Not getting one. I am messy, not stupid, and I like being invited back to rooms like that.
People will also want to know if I feel used. Sometimes. Then I remember I used him too. I wanted the night, the heat, the little private knowledge of what his breath sounds like when he is close. I wanted something to write that was not another outfit post. I got all of that. He got a Friday he will probably not think about. Fair trade, if you squint.
What I did with the shirt
It is still in the wardrobe. I have worn it once around the flat, sleeves rolled, no bra, just to see. It is too big, which is the point. Sophie asked whose it was and I said a friend’s. She did not believe me. I did not need her to.
I keep meaning to wash it and then not washing it. That is embarrassing to type and also true. The lipstick on the collar has gone a bit brown. I should throw it away. I will not throw it away. I am 27 and I still collect evidence that I was in the room.
If you think that makes me sad, maybe. If you think it makes me a cliché, also maybe. I can be a cliché and still tell it better than most people. That is the whole personality, really.
Anyway. That was Friday. He played on Sunday. I watched twenty minutes of the match with the sound down while doing my makeup and then I switched it off because it felt a bit too on the nose, even for me.
He looked the same on the pitch. Bored, focused, already somewhere else. I made coffee and told myself I would write it properly later.
This is later.
I still have the shirt.
