“Not for want of trying,” Ted said.
“If you’re on lates, you should get back to work. I have to go! My bus!” I said, then sprinted to the bus stop, holding my breasts down under my arm and panting aggressively after about fifteen yards. I should not, under any circumstances, get involved with this. I should not, under any circumstances, try to run again.
* * *
I spent Saturday morning in bed, my stomach growling. At lunchtime Rupert knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to have lunch with everyone. “No thanks!” I said. “I’d sooner die,” I added in a whisper.
“What was that last bit?” he asked.
“I said I’m going for pie.” I pulled the covers over my head, burrowing into my pillows and looking through mine and Tom’s message thread. I noted how many arguments we’d had. Most of them started by me. Top three were:
1.
Tom
What do you want for your birthday?
Queenie
Oh.
Tom
What?
Queenie
So you’re not going to put any effort into it? You’re literally going to just ask me like that
Tom
Well for your last two birthdays and Christmas just gone, you’ve been disappointed by what I’ve got you, it’s perfectly logical to ask, surely?
Queenie
Tom, do you want ME? Or do you want someone you can MOLD into the girl you want for yourself?
Tom
Oh God
Queenie
Oh God, indeed. Just get me GIFT CARDS, Tom, if disappointing ME is killing you
2.
Queenie
I’ve been thinking
Tom
Oh dear. Go on
Queenie
I don’t understand why you don’t want to introduce me to your colleagues
Tom
What? I didn’t know that you wanted to meet them. They’re not particularly interesting
Queenie
Well, I DO, because I’m your GIRLFRIEND, I’m meant to be a huge part of your life, and I feel totally hidden away from what you do every day, and the people you do it with
Queenie
Are you ashamed of me?
Queenie
Do your colleagues know I’m black?
Tom
What? Why should they?
Queenie
I see
Queenie
It’s fine
Queenie
I’ve decided I don’t want to meet them. Don’t want to give them a shock
3.
Queenie
I feel like you need to think more about my orgasms
Tom
Oh, trust me, I do
Queenie
DO you?
Tom
You’re always satisfied, aren’t you?
Queenie
Well, yeah, but how much are you THINKING about them? But not just thinking, I mean feeling. Like SOMETIMES it feels like it’s a chore for you
Tom
Well, it’s not
Queenie
I don’t know, I feel like you’re concentrating so much on ME that I can’t just let go. Sometimes I feel like I’m having an orgasm FOR you
Tom
I don’t understand what your argument is here
Queenie
Forget it
Tom
Okay
Queenie
What do you mean, “okay”? Don’t you want to communicate about this?
Tom
I’m in a meeting
Queenie
So am I, Tom, but it’s important that we talk about these things
When I woke up, it was dusk and my phone was still in my hand. I checked the screen and saw two texts from Darcy.
Darcy
See you later, Simon’s party starts at nine. It’s at that bar in Dalston, the one where he smashed his tooth xxx
Darcy
Should have said, you’ll be late and will definitely miss the surprise element at nine, but can you at least get here before eleven? The venue is kicking us out by one
I couldn’t bear to eat anything, so watched Insecure and then Atlanta in bed, then pulled some clothes on and threw a bit of glitter on my face. I got to the party at ten to eleven, thank you very much, and found Darcy. She was sitting with Simon, and although it kills me to spend any time with couples, these two weren’t happy so it didn’t really count. Simon’s age was showing more and more these days; it looked like Darcy was sitting with an uncle. Not a very old uncle, more like her dad’s youngest brother or something.
After again drinking more than I’m used to, and on an empty stomach, then forcing all of Darcy’s friends to form a circle around me while I danced very sloppily to “LMK” by Kelela, I stumbled off to the bar to get some water. On the way there I tripped over my own foot and reached out to steady myself, but instead of grabbing onto something solid like a table or the back of a chair, I grabbed onto a thigh. I looked up at its owner, mouth wide open, and locked eyes with the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
He pulled me back up, mainly so that I would take my weight off his leg. “Come on, let’s get me some water?” I said, grabbing his arm. I wasn’t sure I could make it to the bar alone.
“Er, sure? Yeah, okay,” he said, in the strongest Welsh accent I’d ever heard and definitely wasn’t expecting. Unlike the Irish, who have a long-standing bond with us since “No Irish No Blacks No Dogs,” I’m not sure how the Welsh feel about black people, but I decided to go with it. I led him over to the bar, not entirely sure where this surge of confidence was coming from. (Probably the alcohol.)
“I like your, uh, hair. All this,” he said, awkwardly patting the bun on my head.
“Don’t touch it!” I ducked out of his grasp, losing my footing and falling again, this time against the bar. He picked me up.
“Sorry, you aren’t meant to touch a black girl’s hair, are you?” He put his hands in his pockets as if to restrain himself.
“If you could try not to.” I smiled, captivated by his nice face.
Approximately three minutes later, we were kissing against the bar, with the Welshman pausing to tell me that he’d worked in Cameroon for a year so had a thing for black girls. I wasn’t sure if his background meant that I was being fetishized or actually I was just his type, but pushed it to the back of my mind because he was a good kisser.
Suddenly remembering that I wasn’t in the privacy of my own home, I pulled away from him and looked across the bar. Many, many people were looking. The Welshman looked around too.
“Maybe I should come back to yours?” he asked, pressing his hand into my lower back.
* * *
“So. What do you do?” The Welshman slid down next to me in the Uber.
“Does it matter?” I replied, looking out the window as the driver moved off. Why was I doing this? Was I so attention-deficit that I needed this? I knew that I should probably push him very gently out of the car when it stopped at a traffic light, but that meant going home alone. It meant going home alone, getting into a cold, empty bed, and falling asleep wrapped in Tom’s T-shirt. And I really didn’t want to do that, not again. Maybe tonight would be good for me, as long as there were boundaries. No personal details necessary, this was nothing but a fling, I told myself. He put a hand on my thigh and moved it higher, digging his nails into my skin. That’d be a pair of tights gone.
He turned my head to face him, and instead of kissing me on the mouth, bit me hard on the cheek. At least it sobered me up a bit. He moved his lips to my mouth and grabbed the back of my head, forcing our faces together. I couldn’t breathe.
I punched him on the leg in an attempt to make him stop. “Ow! Jesus, you’re strong. What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it, more that I can’t breathe,” I told him. “Just ease off about thirty percent.”
When we got back to my house, the door was double-locked. Rupert and Nell were out, so after I’d showed Welshman around the house, he suggested that we have sex in the living room. This was met with a firm “no” and a nod to the horrible sofas.