“Hi,” I say automatically, closing my eyes.
Kissing is so weird: we’re literally testing each other out to see if there’s a fit, trying on genes as if they’re jeans. Exchanging the chemicals in our saliva, swapping bacteria, stimulating oxytocin and dopamine to make us bond, and all so that we can eventually mate with the ultimate productivity and produce the offspring most likely to survive and it’s supposed to be sexy and romantic and sometimes it is, but right now, watching from a distance with my brain locked at the back of my head, it just feels like one of the weirdest things humans have chosen to do.
Somebody else’s saliva is in my mouth, I’m swallowing spit that doesn’t belong to me, and how is this ever something I voluntarily allow to happen?
“Umm.” I pull away. “Please can we watch a film?”
“Oh!” Will blinks. “Yes! Of course!”
We both instinctively turn to look at the sofa—coated with a thin yet clearly visible layer of fluff, like a duckling—and Will finally sees what I’m seeing.
“Shit.” He winces. “It’s really quite grotty in here, isn’t it. I’m so sorry, Cassandra. What must you be thinking? I didn’t expect you to come back tonight and I only returned from a shoot last week, so I’ve been buried at the studio. It’s not normally like this, I swear.”
That is very clearly a lie, but I feel myself soften anyway.
I’m being completely unreasonable. He’s tired and busy, and the flat isn’t that bad. My horror of dirt and mess and dogs and lateness is a me problem. I see no reason why other people should have to live according to my personal eccentricities, and I’m certainly not going to judge Will because he doesn’t. Frankly, I’m way too busy judging myself. Not everyone spends their spare time arranging their ornaments into nice straight lines and wiping down the woodwork.
“Don’t apologize,” I say, leaning up to kiss Will again.
As our lips press together—as his hand slips around my back and tugs me against him and the other hand touches my cheek and electricity flows straight into my brain—something in me abruptly fires up with a growl like a gas oven and suddenly all the grossness is gone: kissing makes sense again.
“Do you have another television?” I ask when we finally break away to breathe. “Like, in the bedroom?”
He does: it’s a big flat-screen he edits on, right next to his bed.
“Great minds.” Will laughs and kisses me again. “I was just thinking of asking if you’d like to see it. Wink wink, come see my massive TV, it’s huge and lights up, and so on.”
Taking my hand, he leads me with a cute little happy bop to the tiny room tucked behind his kitchen and—as he leans into the door—I feel all the wing muscles in my shoulders abruptly decompress and unravel. The bedroom is clean, tidy; it smells of lemon and fig. I’m suddenly feeling a lot more amorous.
Nothing says Sexy Time quite like freshly washed bedding.
“So.” Will lets go of my hand and grabs the remote control from his bedside table. “What do you fancy? Are you into old movies, by any chance? Rear Window? Casablanca? An American in Paris? Psycho? Shit, not Psycho. What an entirely inappropriate suggestion. Get it together, Will.”
My heart abruptly swells: Will’s monologuing because he’s nervous, which happens to me all the time, but almost never happens to him.
Now I finally feel “at home.”
“Rear Window,” I say firmly, because last time we watched this it inexplicably led to the best sex of my entire life. “Did you know Hitchcock constructed the entire apartment block on the Paramount Studios block? And the ballerina lived in her studio the entire time of shooting?”
Will gives me a funny look. “I did know that, yes.”
“I love the way it’s all set in one room.” I climb onto the bed and perch against the wall. “We’re watching them, watching others, who are watching telly, which could be us, so it’s like a hall of mirrors. Never-ending voyeurism. Even the sound is diegetic, which means—”
“It all comes from within the world of the movie,” Will finishes in delight. “Do you like old films too?”
“I didn’t used to,” I confess carefully. “But my ex got me into them.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy.” Will launches himself onto the bed next to me with an enthusiastic bounce and turns on the film. “Old movies are a bit of a passion of mine as well.”
I smile. “What a crazy coincidence.”
Technically the last time I had sex with Will was less than a week ago, but I feel strangely nervous. It doesn’t feel like it was in this lifetime, and—it suddenly occurs to me—that might be because it wasn’t. I’ve deleted our entire sexual history and now I have to type it all back in again from scratch. While I remember his body, his smells, his taste, the memories feel stored away, so they also feel unknown again, to be explored from the beginning.
Rear Window starts, but every cell is now focused on Will.
What’s his body language? Unclear. How close is he sitting to me? Half a meter. How regularly is he breathing? Normal rate. How far is his hand from touching mine? I look down: five centimeters. Is he trying to send me...invisible sex vibes? I strain to check for them. No idea. There are no discernible colors—extremely frustrating—but there must be other measurable ways to tell if someone would like sex or not. The human race wouldn’t have progressed much if everyone was just taken by complete surprise, every single time.
Will moves a fraction and my heart hops—sex now?
Nope, he was sitting on the remote control.
“Did you know that Hitchcock directed from inside Jimmy’s room?” I can’t bear the tension any longer, or the possibility that there isn’t any tension at all and I haven’t noticed. “The actors in the buildings opposite had earpieces so they could hear him.”
“I did not know that,” Will lies, and I know this for sure because he’s the one who told me. “Interesting.”
I glance at his face, but I can’t read his expression either.
This is ridiculous. Admittedly I’m the one who asked to watch a film, but how do I now convey that I no longer want to actually watch a film? How do people go from not-sex to sex? One minute you’re watching Grace Kelly hit on Jimmy Stewart with a bewildering lack of success and the next you would quite like to physically slot your organs together like a pair of dovetail joints in a wooden table: there’s no natural segue to this process that I can see.
Maybe I should just ask him politely for sex, like ordering a sandwich.
Get it out in the open: check whether we’re now planning to have sex this evening at all, specify my preferences and then confirm when and how this process will start so I can mentally prepare myself. Although I did this last time too, and from memory it was the last thing I said before he dumped me.
“So,” I say hesitantly. “Do you think—”
Will slips his hand into mine and nudges the side of my nose with his nose, and I don’t know if that was a Start of Sex nudge or a Please Stop Talking the Film Is Starting nudge, so I hold my breath and wait to see what’s going to happen next. He shifts almost imperceptibly toward me. He moves his hand. He looks at my face. I quickly try to cover my bases by looking interested in the film but at the same time also open to the possibility of not watching it.
Finally, Will reaches a hand up, tilts my face gently toward his and studies me, his face peach and wobbly in the Hitchcock light. Eye contact really does take on a whole new sensation when your eyeballs are nearly rubbing.
Embarrassed and dizzy, I suddenly remember to start breathing again.
Through my nose, in case my breath smells.
“You’re so incredibly striking, Cassie.” Will softly traces my lips and chin with his finger, as if he’s drawing them. “Beautiful, but unusual. There’s something feline about you, soft but distant at the same time. Up close, your eyes even have tiny flecks of yellow in them. It’s not a face that’s easy to forget.”
“You’d be surprised,” I admit. “I ran into an old flatmate a few months ago and they called me Cathy.”
Will laughs loudly and pinches my chin between his fingers.
“Not easy for me to forget, then. Not that I’ve tried. I’ve thought about you constantly since we met. You know, I was meant to be getting a takeaway coffee.”
“When?” I scrabble for the connection. “Now? Aren’t they shut?”