Not shame exactly. More the Tube ride home in last night’s dress, thighs still humming, wondering if I was brave or just lonely and lucky. That is the whole weather of it. I have been sitting with that sentence since the doors closed at the first stop and a man in a puffer jacket looked at my shoes for a second too long. He did not know. He only saw a blonde girl in last night’s black, hair that had been tied back and then given up, makeup that had surrendered around two. I knew. That is the difference. The carriage is full of people going to ordinary places. I am going home with a secret still ticking between my legs.
I used to call it the walk of shame because that is what the telly taught us, and because Essex girls are meant to be game about it, a laugh, a story, nothing precious. I am game. I am also thirty one and tired of borrowing other people’s words for a feeling that is more complicated than a joke. Shame would mean I regretted him. I do not. Shame would mean I thought I had been cheap. I did not feel cheap when his mouth was on my throat in the hallway. I felt awake. What I feel on the Central line, holding the pole with the hand that still smells faintly of his soap, is the hangover of daring. Brave or lonely. Lucky or loose with my own standards. The mind loves a binary when the body is still telling the truth.
The dress is wrong for morning. That is part of the ritual. Last night it was a decision. A bit of leg, a neckline that said I might stay out, underwear I put on just in case the night went somewhere, the small private optimism of a woman who lives alone and still hopes. This morning it is evidence. The fabric remembers the cab. It remembers being pushed up. It remembers the floor of a flat that was not mine. I could have asked him for a T shirt. I did not. I wanted to leave as the girl who arrived, as if that would keep the night in a clean box. Nothing about this is clean. My mouth is dry. My feet hurt. Every time the train lurches I am reminded that I was on my back a few hours ago with my knees either side of a stranger who kissed like he had been waiting for a good excuse.
I keep saying stranger because it is accurate and because it protects me. We had drinks. We had the kind of talk that feels like more than it is. He worked in something that sounded expensive and boring, which in this city is often the same job. He had that quiet confidence I am a fool for, the kind that does not need to announce a salary. I liked his hands. I liked that he looked at my face when I spoke. I liked that he did not scan the room for a better offer. At some point the liking turned into the decision, and the decision turned into his key in a door, and then I was against the wall with my bag still on my shoulder because neither of us could be bothered to pretend we had come upstairs for coffee.
That bit I do not regret. I can still feel the first kiss if I close my eyes between stations. He was a good kisser. I have written that before because it keeps being the fork in the road. Bad kissing and I can still go home and save myself the Tube theatre. Good kissing and my sensible list dissolves. Last night the list never stood a chance. I made a sound into his mouth that would have embarrassed the supervisor I have to be in three hours. He smiled against my lips. I thought, right. We are doing this. Then we did.
I will not give you every minute. Some of it is mine. Some of it is the ordinary miracle of two people who wanted the same thing at the same time. Clothes. The surprise of skin. The way a flat at night makes everything louder. He was rougher than the conversation had advertised, which I liked more than I will say at Sunday roast. I like being handled when I have chosen it. I like a man who does not treat me as if I might break and then break me anyway without asking. He asked enough. Not in a legal pamphlet way. In the way that counts. A look. A pause. My yes, ugly and eager. After that I stopped being the cute girl in the onesie who wants foot rubs and became the other one, the one I hide under the work face, greedy and loud and grateful.
There was a point when I came so sharply I laughed, which made him laugh, which made it better. There was a point when I had my face in his pillow and I thought, I needed this more than I admitted. There was a point after, lying on my side, when he tucked the sheet over my hip with a gentleness that did not match the hour before, and I felt that dangerous little drop in my stomach. Do not do that, I told myself. Do not turn a good night into a future. He is not the tall dark fairy tale. He is a Friday. Take the Friday. Leave the story.
I left before the story could get ideas.
That is why I am on the Tube in last night’s dress. Staying for breakfast is how the almost becomes a thread you have to pull. I am bad at threads I cannot control. I am worse at wanting them. So I did the classic. Quiet gathering of things. Phone. Earrings. The knickers I found on the wrong side of the room. I peed, looked at my face in his bathroom mirror, thought I looked like a woman who had been properly attended to, and then I thought I looked like a woman about to do the walk. He was half asleep. I said I had to go. He said text me. I said yeah. I meant I might. I also meant I needed the air.
Outside, London was doing that thin morning light it does when you have not been to bed. The street looked too honest. Foxes, bins, a runner with righteous headphones. My heels sounded filthy on the pavement. I wanted a shower in my own bathroom with my own products and the lock I trust. I wanted tea. I wanted not to be perceived. The station was already filling with people who had slept. I bought water I did not really want because I needed my hands to do something. On the platform I caught myself smiling at nothing, then stopping the smile, then feeling the ache when I sat down. Thighs humming. That phrase is not poetry. It is anatomy. You can still be full of a night while you are deciding what the night was.
Brave or lonely.
I turn that over like a coin. Brave says I wanted someone and I went and got it, no committee, no waiting for a man to invent a relationship so I would be allowed a body. Lonely says I have been single on purpose and purpose gets cold at half eleven on a Friday when the flat is tidy and the group chat is quiet and you have watched other people be chosen. Both can be true. I hate that both can be true. I would like to be only the first girl, the one with agency and a high drive and no apology. I am also the second girl, the one who still hopes someone will want the morning as well as the dress on the floor.
Lucky is the third coin. Lucky I liked him enough. Lucky he was not careless. Lucky I got home without a story I would have to hide from myself. There are nights that leave you smaller. This one did not. It left me used in the way I like, which is not a word I throw around at work. Used as in taken to the end of what I asked for. Not discarded. There is a difference and women know it in their bones even when they cannot explain it to a man who thinks any complaint is ingratitude.
A girl gets on at the next stop in gym kit, glowing with the virtue of an early class. I look at her and look at me and want to laugh. Two costumes. I own both. Tonight I will be in the hoodie, nails still pink, hair tied back, eating something stupid in front of rubbish telly. Right now I am the evidence of the other life. If anyone from the bank got on this carriage I would have to invent a hen do or a cousin or a lie with better shoes. That split is the real walk. Not moral shame. Operational shame. The fear of being seen as the whole of yourself in the wrong context.
I do not think sex makes me less professional. I think this city pretends women are either competent or carnal, and I refuse the split even while I perform it. Yesterday I was harsh with a boy on my team because his numbers were lazy. Last night I said please in a voice I would deny in a meeting. Both were honest. Only one is allowed on a payslip.
The train goes under the city and I replay the bit I will tell my friends after a drink, which is not the tender bit. Friends get the comedy. The way I had to hunt for an earring. The way I nearly got in the wrong Uber. The way he called me babe and I let him because I was past correcting anyone. They will howl. I will howl. Then I will go home and sit with the quieter footage. His hand in my hair. The look when I came. The sheet. The text me. The fact that I already know I might not, not because it was bad, because it was good enough to tempt the hopeful idiot in me and I am trying to be stricter than her.
I have cheated in old relationships when I had no control. I have written that before and I will not dress it up. Staying single has been a fence I built around that version of me. Nights like this test the fence. They say, see, you can have the heat without promising anyone a future. They also whisper, but would it not be nicer if the future came anyway. I told him nothing about that. I told him I liked his mouth and I wanted him to keep doing exactly that. He did. Credit where it is due. A lot of men hear keep going and treat it like a race. He treated it like instructions. I came twice before I let myself think about the time. That is luck. That is also standards I should have had at twenty five.
The almost shame arrives in public. Private, I was proud. Public, I am a woman on public transport in last night’s decisions. A school bag sits near my knee. A couple whisper over a phone. Someone eats a banana like it is a normal morning. I feel the ghost of his mouth when the train brakes. I press my thighs together without meaning to and then I stop because this is not the place. Desire does not respect Transport for London. Neither does memory. I could write the whole night again from the feeling in my body alone. The stretch. The heat. The moment I stopped being shy. The moment I asked for harder and got it. The moment after when I could have stayed and instead put my dress on inside a quiet that felt like both dignity and escape.
People talk about ghosting as cruelty. Sometimes leaving before breakfast is self defence. I did not want to sit across from him in last night’s mascara and watch the charm become daylight. Daylight is where I start attaching meaning to the way a man makes tea. I start wondering if he is the one who will come to Essex and survive my aunt. I start measuring his voice against the list I pretend I do not have. Tall. Dark. Handsome enough. Kind after. Filthy during. Present. I have not found the full set. Last night was two or three items and a very good kiss. That can be enough for a Friday. It is not enough to miss my stop over.
I miss my stop anyway, because I am busy arguing with myself. I get off at the next one and walk back through a corridor that smells of metal and yesterday’s perfume, mine or someone else’s. The air on the street is better. Hackney in the morning after a night like that has a particular kindness. Shops not fully open. A bus sighing. My building ahead like a promise of a lock and a shower and the official end of the costume.
In the lift I catch my reflection properly. I look like I had sex. There is no other description. Mouth softer. Eyes darker. A mark starting on my collarbone that I will have to think about on Monday. I touch it and feel that stupid fondness. Not for him as a future. For the proof. I went out. I chose. I was not careful in the dull way. I was careful in the ways that matter and reckless in the ways I needed. If that is shame, it is a very noisy kind.
The flat is as I left it, which always feels like a trick. The mug from late afternoon. The hoodie on the chair. The ordinary girl waiting for me. I shut the door and lean against it and laugh once, quietly, because the two versions have to merge now and merging is awkward. Shoes off. Dress off. Shower on. The water hits the places that are still sensitive and I have to put a hand on the tiles. That is the last of him, rinsed into my own drain. I should feel cleaner. I feel the opposite of dirty. I feel marked and then unmarked, which is its own little funeral.
Tea. Toast I do not taste at first. Phone face down because I know there may be a message and I do not want the lurch yet. When I do look it is simple. Get home ok. I stare at it longer than it deserves. Kind. Not poetry. I type yes, thanks, last night was lovely, and then I delete lovely because it sounds like a card from an aunt. I write yes. I needed to get back. You were good to me. I send that before I can make it colder. Then I put the phone in another room so I will not sit there inventing a second night.
This is the part nobody films. Not the wall. Not the bed. The quiet after the Tube, when you decide whether the story was a treat or a leak in the fence. I decide treat. I decide I was lonely enough to go out alone and brave enough to leave with him and lucky enough that the luck did not cost me myself. I decide I can want the fairy tale on Sunday and still have a body on Friday. I decide the hum in my thighs is information, not a verdict.
I will go to my mother’s this weekend if I can, and I will eat roast, and I will not tell the table. I will tell one friend, the one who already knows I am two people. She will ask if I am seeing him again. I will say I do not know, which will mean I know I should not build a castle on a text that says get home ok. She will say good for you. I will say I know. Then I will think about his mouth and the sheet and the pole on the train and the girl in gym kit and I will feel that almost again.
Almost shame. Almost a relationship. Almost the one. Almost slept through and stayed. Almost asked him to come back to mine next time so the walk would be shorter and the kettle would be mine. Almost is my least favourite neighbourhood and I live there rent free.
If you have done this walk you know the dress feels louder in daylight. You know the body keeps the score while the mind tries to file the night under fun. You know the minute you see your own front door you are both relieved and a little sad, because the spell is over and you were good at being under it. You know you will do it again if the kiss is right. You know you will tell yourself a cleaner story than the one you lived.
I am not ashamed. I am humming. I am tired. I am already putting the supervisor back together in my head, item by item, like jewellery. I am also, if I am honest, a little proud. I went into the city as myself. I came home as myself, only more so. The Tube can think what it likes. The dress can go on the chair. The mark can fade by Wednesday. The question can stay, because it is a good question and I am not above it.
Was I brave, or just lonely and lucky.
Yes. All of it. That is the walk. That is the almost. That is why I wrote it down before the shower steam left the mirror and I could pretend I only popped out for milk.
