I booked it on my phone in the back of an Uber like I was ordering a Deliveroo. Three hours. Check in at nine, out by midnight. No breakfast option. No late checkout. No little note about turndown service. Just a room, a desk, a bed I did not plan to sleep in, and a man I had already decided I would not be seeing again.
Look, I know how that sounds. Cold. Fine. It was cold. That was the point.
I have a flat. I have two flatmates who have seen enough of my laundry on the bathroom floor without adding a stranger’s trainers next to the kettle. Sophie does that tight little smile when she hears a male voice that is not one of ours. Mia pretends she does not care and then asks questions at breakfast that are basically a cross examination. I was not in the mood for either. So Paddington it was. Anonymous. Near the station. The sort of place people use when they have a train in the morning or a secret in the evening. I told myself it was practical. It was also a bit grim, which I quite liked. Romance would have ruined it.
How we even got here
His name is not important. You would not know him. Finance, mid thirties, the kind of haircut that costs more than it should and still looks the same as every other man in a navy coat on the Elizabeth line. We met through a friend of a friend at a birthday in Fitzrovia two weeks ago. He talked too much about a deal. I let him. I was bored and he had good hands. That is honestly the whole origin story. We texted. The texts were not poetry. They were logistics dressed up as banter. When are you free. What are you doing Thursday. I am not looking for anything. Neither am I.
I believe him. I also believe myself. That is the nice thing about being honest. You do not have to do the dance where you pretend you might fall in love if the lighting is right.
Thursday he suggested drinks near his office. I suggested the hotel. There was a pause. Then he sent a laughing emoji, which I hate, and then he said yes. I sent him the booking confirmation like it was a calendar invite. Subject line energy. Three hours. Do not be late.
I did my makeup in the Uber. Of course I did. Lip liner, blot, gloss, blot again. I caught my face in the window and thought, you look like you are going to a meeting. In a way I was.
The room was exactly what I paid for
Paddington hotels have a specific smell. Not dirty. Just used. Carpet that has seen better decades. A desk under a mirror that is never quite straight. Art that looks like it was bought in a job lot from a place that also sells laminate flooring. The key card took three swipes. I stood there for a second with my bag still on my shoulder and laughed under my breath because the whole thing was so unsexy it looped back round to being funny.
I put my phone face down. I did not take a photo of the room. That felt like a line, which is rich coming from me, but there you go. Some things I keep. Some things I sell. This one I wanted to keep ugly and private and then write about later, which is its own kind of private, I know.
He arrived nine minutes late. I had already taken my coat off and sat on the edge of the desk like I was waiting for an interview. He looked at the room, then at me, then at the room again.
Nice, he said.
It is not, I said. Take your coat off.
That is the other nice thing about a three hour booking. Nobody has to pretend this is a date. Nobody has to ask what I do, or whether I want a drink from the minibar that costs twelve pounds for a tiny gin. He kissed me against the door and it was better than the texts. Warm mouth. A bit rushed. His watch caught in my hair and I had to stop and unhook it, which should have killed the mood and somehow did not.
We did not make it to the bed first
I had said the desk in my head the whole way there. I do not know why. Maybe because beds feel like sleepovers and sleepovers feel like mornings and mornings feel like the bit where someone asks if you want a coffee and you have to decide whether you are a kind person today. The desk was honest. The desk was a surface.
He pushed my skirt up. I had worn one on purpose. Easy access is not glamorous but it is efficient, and efficiency was the theme of the evening. His mouth was on my neck and then lower and I tipped my head back and looked at that crooked mirror and thought, this is a terrible angle, and then I stopped thinking about angles because his fingers were inside me and I was already wet, which is embarrassing to admit and also true. I had been thinking about this since the booking confirmation pinged. My body does not care about my branding.
I told him to fuck me. I said it plainly. He liked that. Most of them do. The ones who get precious about language are usually worse in bed anyway.
He turned me round and bent me over the desk. My palms hit the fake wood. The lamp wobbled. There was a notepad with the hotel logo on it an inch from my face, which I will never not find funny. He pulled my knickers to the side first, then got impatient and dragged them down. I stepped out of them without looking back. One heel slipped. I left it off. The other one stayed on because I could not be bothered to balance on both and also because I am vain even when I am face down on laminate.
The first thrust made me catch my breath in a way I did not perform. That matters to me, weirdly. I can do the sounds. I know what they want to hear. This one landed before I had time to decide.
He was not gentle. I had not asked him to be. One hand on my hip, the other in my hair, not quite pulling, just holding, like he needed something to grip so he did not think too hard. The desk edged forward an inch every time. I could see us in the mirror if I lifted my head. I did, once. Dark hair, smudged mouth, his face concentrated in that slightly stupid way men get when they are close and trying not to look like they are close. I dropped my head again. Better.
Say it, he said.
I did not ask what. I just moaned his name and told him harder, which is cheap and works. He went harder. My legs started to shake in that annoying involuntary way that makes you feel like your body has left the chat. I came first, messy, too loud for a hotel with thin walls, forehead almost on the notepad. He did not stop. I did not want him to. The second one was smaller and meaner, the kind that makes your stomach jump. He finished a minute later with a sound into my shoulder that I will probably remember longer than his surname.
We stayed like that for a second. Breathing. The lamp still wonky. My one heel still on.
The middle hour
There is a lull after the first time that people fill with the wrong things. Cuddling. Questions. A documentary voice about their childhood. We did none of that. He went to the bathroom. I sat on the bed in my shirt and nothing else and checked my face in my phone camera. Lipstick gone, obviously. I fixed what I could with the gloss in my bag and then thought, why am I doing this, he has already seen the wreckage. Still did it. Habit.
He came back and we talked a bit, which I had promised myself we would not. Nothing deep. Work. A restaurant he liked in Marylebone that I have been to and did not love. I told him that. He looked faintly wounded, which was sweet in a pointless way. Then he kissed me again and it turned into the bed after all, slower, less of a performance. His mouth between my legs until I had to put a pillow over my own face because I am not actually trying to get a noise complaint in Paddington on a Thursday.
I went down on him after that. I am good at it. I know that about myself the same way I know my shoe size. It is not a personality. It is a skill I have put hours into, which is a sentence I would only write here. He held my hair back like he was being polite. I set the pace. When he got close I stopped and climbed on him because I wanted to come again and I am allowed to be greedy in a room I paid for.
That time faced him. Different. You see too much. The little frown. The way his mouth opens. I looked at the ugly art instead when it got too intimate, which is a sentence that would make a therapist lean forward in their chair. Anyway. It worked. He came with his hands on my waist hard enough to leave faint marks I checked later on the night bus home like a teenager.
We still had fifty minutes
That is the strange part of a timed room. You become aware of the clock in a way you do not at someone’s flat, where the ending is mushy and negotiated. Here the ending was already in the booking. Fifty minutes. Then the polite fiction of packing up.
We used some of it. Not all. There is a point where another round is diminishing returns and you start noticing the heating noise. We lay there. His arm under my neck, which always goes dead, so I moved it. He asked if I wanted water. I said yes. The glasses in those rooms are always slightly cloudy. I drank it anyway.
Do you do this a lot, he said.
Define this, I said.
He smiled at the ceiling. Fair.
I could have made it a joke. I could have said only on Thursdays. Instead I told the truth, or near enough. I do it when I want to and when I cannot be bothered to host. I like sex. I like leaving. I like the version of myself that books a room and does not stay for the part where someone looks at me over a coffee and tries to decide if I am kind.
He nodded like he understood. Maybe he did. Maybe he was just being polite because I still had my hand on his stomach.
At eleven forty I got up and went to the bathroom and put myself back together as much as a woman can with hotel soap and a travel mascara. I looked in the mirror for longer than I needed to. That is my tell. Sophie says I do it when I am about to do something I will write about. She is not wrong.
Leaving separately is a skill
I put my knickers back on. I put the second heel back on. He was already dressed, sitting on the desk of all places, scrolling his emails like the last two hours had been a gap in his calendar. I found that funny and a bit hot and a bit sad. All three can sit together. I have room.
You go first, I said. I will wait ten minutes.
He looked like he wanted to argue for the sake of manners. Then he kissed me on the mouth, properly, which I had not expected, and said thank you, which I also had not expected. Thank you is a weird thing to say after you have had someone bent over a desk. It is also quite English. I said you too, which is worse, and then I laughed at myself and he left.
I sat on the bed and listened to the corridor go quiet. I checked the room like a criminal. No earring. No hair clip. No evidence except the notepad, which I almost stole and then did not, because I am not actually twelve.
Outside, Paddington was doing that wet orange thing it does at night. Buses. People with suitcases. A man arguing on the phone about a platform. I walked toward the station because it felt like the correct direction for an ending. I did not text him. He did not text me, not then. Later he sent a single word. Fun. I sent back a full stop and a lipstick emoji and muted the thread.
Efficient. That was the word I used when I told Mia a cleaned up version the next morning. She rolled her eyes and stole my toast. Sophie asked if I was alright in that voice that means she thinks I am covering something. I was alright. My legs were still a bit shaky on the stairs. My mouth was still a bit sore. I had a good story and no one in my kitchen I did not already live with.
I keep thinking about the lamp. How it wobbled and never quite fell. How I stared at a hotel notepad while I came. How we both put our coats on like we had been at a meeting that ran long.
I would do it again. Not with him, necessarily. With the room. With the timer. With the version of me that knows exactly what she wants for three hours and does not hang around to find out if she wants anything else.
If that makes me cold, fine. Paddington in the rain is cold too. I still looked good in it.