Sophie clocked it before I had even put the kettle on. She stood in the kitchen doorway in that grey dressing gown she pretends is ironic and said, are you keeping souvenirs now. I said I am. Obviously. Then I went back to looking for paracetamol.
How it got here
We met properly around one. Not cute. Not cinematic. I was outside a place in Soho that always smells like the bins have opinions, and he was waiting for a lighter he never got back. I had one. He had a look that suggested he knew what he was doing and also that he might not. That combination does it for me more than it should.
He was taller than I clocked at first. Dark hair that had given up around midnight. Voice a bit low. London, but not trying to prove it. We did the usual dance. Where are you coming from. Who are you with. Are you actually leaving or just pretending. I was pretending. He clocked that too.
Mia had already vanished into some afters in Dalston with a boy whose name she spelled three different ways in the group chat. Sophie had gone home at a respectable hour like a person with a job that starts before noon. I was the remaining problem. I usually am.
We went back to his. Not far. One of those new builds that look expensive until you get inside and realise the walls are made of paper and someone else’s bassline. His room was tidier than mine. That should have been a warning. I ignored it, which is my favourite hobby after mascara.
I will spare you the play by play. You can imagine it. Or you cannot. Either way I came twice and he looked faintly surprised the second time, which I filed away as both flattering and a little tragic. He fell asleep on his front. I lay there doing that thing I do where I already know I am going to write this down and I am already choosing which bits to leave out.
The morning bit nobody photographs
Morning in someone else’s flat is always worse than the night. The light is rude. Your mouth tastes like a club carpet. You have to do maths about trains and last night’s eyeliner and whether you can face the Overground looking like a cautionary tale.
He was in the shower. I sat on the edge of the bed in yesterday’s underwear and his shirt because it was there and because I was cold and because I wanted to know what I looked like in it. I used my phone camera as a mirror. I always do. The girl in the screen looked wrecked and quite pleased with herself. That felt accurate.
It smelled like him. Not in a candle advert way. In a specific way. Some cheapish cologne he probably thinks is subtle. Smoke from outside the venue. A bit of sweat. That sweet stale note you only get after a room has been too warm for too many hours. Underneath it, detergent. Someone in his life still buys proper washing powder. I noticed that and then I noticed that I had noticed it, which is how you know you are in danger of being a person about a shirt.
He came back in with a towel and the faint panic of a man who has just remembered he owns a calendar. He said, have you seen my shirt. I said, this one. He laughed like I was joking. I was not joking.
I told him I was cold. He offered me a hoodie. I said I liked this better. He stood there for a second doing the calculation men do when they cannot tell if you are being cute or being a problem. Then he shrugged and pulled on a t-shirt that did nothing for him. I folded the navy one into my bag while he was looking for keys. Not even hidden. Just done.
He asked for my number on the doorstep. I gave him the real one. I do that sometimes, when I am feeling generous or when I want the option of a sequel. He texted a waving emoji before I had even reached the corner. I put him on mute until I had caffeine.
Sophie, the kettle, and the evidence
Our flat in Parsons Green is not big enough for secrets. You can hear a hangover through the walls. You can definitely hear a strange man leaving, which is why I try to do my exits at theirs.
Sophie was already up. Of course she was. She has a whole personality built around being the one who makes coffee and judgements in that order. She looked at the shirt on my chair, then at my face, then at the shirt again.
Keeping souvenirs now, she said.
I said I am. Obviously.
Mia emerged later, still in last night, and went, oh he was fit though. Which is Mia’s entire moral framework. If they are fit, the rest is admin. She pinched the sleeve, sniffed it like a lunatic, and said it smelled like a good decision. I told her it smelled like a club and bad decisions. She said that is what I said. Same thing.
I made toast I did not want. I sat at the counter in the shirt. It came to mid-thigh on me, which is a pathetic detail and also the detail I keep thinking about. Sophie asked if I was going to give it back. I said if he asks nicely. She said he will not ask. She is usually right about men and almost never gracious about it.
What I am actually keeping
I have a drawer. I am not proud of the drawer. I am also not emptying the drawer.
There is a lighter from a boy in July who talked too much about Lisbon. There is a hair tie that is not mine. There is a museum ticket from a date that was so boring I later described it as a hostage situation with better lighting. And now there is this shirt, stuffed in like I am sixteen and unwell, except I am twenty-seven and I have a journalism degree and I know exactly what I am doing.
People love to pretend souvenirs are about the person. Sometimes they are. Mostly they are about the version of you that existed for four hours. The one who left the house. The one who said yes. The one who did not go home on the sensible bus with Sophie. If I wash the shirt, that version gets folded into ordinary laundry and I become somebody who just has a navy shirt she did not buy. That is a downgrade.
I can hear how that sounds. I said it anyway.
He texted again in the afternoon. Hope you got home okay. Which is the male equivalent of a receipt. I sent a photo of my coffee and no context. He liked it. He did not ask about the shirt. Men never ask about the shirt. They assume it vanished into the same black hole as their dignity and last night’s last tube.
The smell is already changing
That is the annoying part. You think you have captured something. Then two days later it just smells like your bedroom and your perfume and the ghost of a night you are already polishing for the internet.
I hung it on the chair on purpose so I would walk past it. I caught myself doing that thing where you lift the collar without thinking. Sophie saw. She did not say anything the second time, which is worse. Silence from Sophie is a whole essay.
I am not in love with him. Let me be very clear, because someone in the comments will decide I am unhinged in a romantic way rather than unhinged in a collecting way. I do not know his surname. I think his first name is Callum. It might be Calum. I am not looking it up because looking it up turns this into homework.
What I liked was the temperature of it. Easy. No speech about what it meant. No founder journey. He kissed like he had done it before and wanted to do it again, which is a low bar and still rarer than it should be in this city.
London nights have a texture. Anyone who has done the walk in yesterday’s clothes knows it. The air a bit dirty. The shops opening. People in gym kit looking morally superior. You in a shirt that is not yours, trying to do your mouth in a darkened phone screen because the idea of a full face at 8am feels like performance art.
I bought a croissant I did not finish. I sat on the District line with my bag in my lap like it contained contraband. In a way it did.
Why I will not give it back
If he messages and asks, I might lie. I might say I left it in an Uber. I might say Sophie donated it in a fit of cleanliness. I might say come and get it, which is an invitation dressed as logistics, and I have used that trick before.
The truth is simpler and slightly sadder. I keep things because nights disappear. Faces blur. Even the good sex goes vague after a fortnight unless you pin it to an object. A shirt is evidence. It says I was there. I did that. I did not dream the whole sticky, expensive, faintly glamorous mess.
I have this fear, and I will say it because I said I would be honest, that if I do not hold onto proof I will slide back into being nobody. Not broke. Not lost. Just unmarked. A girl in a nice flat with two friends and a lot of lipstick and nothing stuck to her. The shirt is a cheap way of leaving a fingerprint on my own week.
Is that healthy. Almost certainly not. Do I care this morning. Also no.
Mia asked if I was going to wear it out. I said only in the flat. She said that is how it starts. She is one to talk. She still has a scarf from a wedding guest she snogged in February and she uses it as a belt.
I put the shirt back on after my shower, just to see. It felt different once I was clean. Less like him. More like a costume. I took it off again and hung it up. Then I sat down to write this before the details went polite.
What happens now
Nothing dramatic. That is the part people skip when they want a lesson.
He will fade into the long list of boys who were good for a night and mid for a future. I might see him again if the timing is lazy and the weather is right. I might not. The shirt will sit there until the smell is gone and then I will have to decide whether I am a person who keeps empty fabric or a person who can finally put it in the wash.
Right now I am the first one. I am sitting here with last night still under my nails, coffee gone cold, Sophie humming in the other room like a Greek chorus with better skincare. The navy shirt is on the chair. The collar is a bit wrecked. There is a mark on the cuff I am choosing not to investigate.
If you came here for a moral, I do not have one tidy enough. I went out. I went home with him. I took the shirt. I liked how I looked in it. I liked how I felt leaving with something that was not mine. That is the whole plot.
Sophie can call them souvenirs. Fine. She is not wrong. I am just not embarrassed about the collection. Not today. Ask me again when the detergent wins.
