The bell outside Carl’s flat doesn’t work, so I stand outside and text him. I’m here. X. Seconds later, I hear the sound of a door opening inside, then footsteps coming quickly down the hall. He pulls me into the dimly lit hallway and kisses me hello, kicking the front door shut with his foot.
‘Evening.’ Already I’m relaxing, unable to stop smiling as the trauma of the day fades away into nothing. He never says he’s pleased to see me, but he doesn’t need to, and it’s infectious. He’s wearing a faded red shirt and a pair of black jeans. I think about telling him he looks sexy, but perhaps I don’t need to, either. These days, it seems we can read each other’s minds, probably because we’re usually thinking the same thing.
‘Come in,’ he says, taking my hand and leading me back into the flat. ‘Do you want the guided tour? Not really.’ He answers himself, grinning. I have time to take in polished wood floors, sparse, pale furnishings, bare walls. Then I’m in his bedroom and the door has shut tight behind us. In here, there’s not much to see. If I walked in as a stranger, I wouldn’t be able to pick up too much about the person who lived here, and perhaps that’s the way he wants it. He’s private, watchful. I’ve often seen the way he looks at people, as if he’s coolly sizing them up and drawing his own secret conclusions. He doesn’t look at anyone else the way he looks at me.
‘I can’t believe it’s only one more week until you go,’ I say. We’re standing very close together in the centre of the room, his hands on my waist. ‘I’m going to miss having you in the office.’
‘I’ll miss you, too.’ He narrows his dark eyes, passing a hand over the side of his face, considering. ‘But it’s not like we won’t see each other.’
‘Of course.’ The truth is, we haven’t spoken at all about what will happen when he leaves, beyond the vaguest of references to us having to wind things down eventually. I say it, but I’m not sure I mean it yet. It’s easy to believe that these encounters exist in a little pocket of space and time outside judgement and reality. I can’t imagine them ending. I can’t imagine any other option. The future is blank space, closed off. The thought gives me a brief trickle of dread and I put my arms around his neck to ground myself.
‘We should speak about it,’ he says, understanding my silence, ‘but maybe not yet, hey.’
‘Right.’
I don’t want to talk any more just now, not about anything, and he picks up on it straight away. Instead he kisses me again, pressing himself up against me, sliding his hands up my body, taking the material of my dress with them and unpeeling it over my head in one swift movement. His hands are warm on my skin and I hear myself gasp as his lips trail over the path they have taken, making me shiver. My fingers are working at the buttons of his shirt, fumbling impatiently with them one by one. He puts his hand over mine, stilling me. Say please. His mouth moves almost silently and I whisper the echo back.
Slowly, he moves his hand away, and I’m finishing what I started, running my hands over the muscles of his chest and pushing the shirt off his shoulders as he unclips my bra and then takes me up in his arms without warning, throwing me hard down on to the bed. He stands over me for a moment, looking down.
‘Come here,’ I say. ‘Please,’ and he lies down on his side beside me, propping his head up on his hand.
‘Dangerous times,’ he says, his breath hot against my neck. His hand is sliding down my body again, hooking into the side of my knickers and pulling them gradually over my thighs, pushing them away. He doesn’t take his eyes off me and, in this moment, I want him so much the rules I have made about us not crossing this boundary yet crumble up into dust. I reach for the buckle of his jeans, tugging at the belt. He stops me again, shaking his head. ‘Oh, no,’ he says quietly. ‘I don’t think so. You wanted to wait, didn’t you? So we’re going to wait.’
I bite my lip hard, saying nothing. We’re kissing again, and I’m pushing myself into the heat and hardness of his body, wrapping my legs around his waist and scratching my nails across his back. I know he likes it, but he pushes my hands away, shaking his head again. He reaches down to the side of the bed, scoops up a scarf that is lying there, and then, before I know it, he’s forcing my arms up above my head and tying my wrists together quickly and efficiently, smiling as I gasp. ‘There,’ he says when he has finished. ‘Got you where I want you now.’
We stare at each other and it feels like it’s too much to bear, too intimate, like a crushing weight on the heart that knocks the breath from my body. His hand is between my legs and he’s stroking me softly at first, then harder, slipping his fingers inside me, and I don’t care if the neighbours hear the noise I’m making because there’s no control here, not any more, and I’m raising my hips off the bed and he forces them down with the flat of his free hand. It hurts, and I can’t tell if I like it or not, but it barely even matters, and for a few burning hot seconds there’s nothing in my head and I’m looking into his eyes and I’ve completely forgotten who I am.
Later, we get dressed and go out into the dark and sit drinking for a while in a crowded, red-lit bar. We speak about work, about our plans for the rest of the weekend. There’s no effort and no restraint and, despite everything, I can’t resist the delight that is sweeping its way through me. It’s too easy, too seductive. It wants me, and every cell in my body wants it back.
At the station, we stand at the back entrance against the low brick wall and hold each other tightly, my face pressed against the side of his neck. God, he says quietly, I want to fuck you, and the word sends surprise jolting electrically through me – as if my body is remembering that it can be used for something other than an insult, a means of telling me to get lost and leave someone alone. Excitement pulses through me. I lace my fingers through his, gripping on to his hand. I can’t speak, but I know he understands.
‘It isn’t just that, though.’ He pulls back slightly. ‘You know that, right? I really—’ He stops, half frowns in confusion, takes a short breath. ‘I really care about you,’ he says, and for all the dampened-down restraint of the word he has used, there’s something behind it that makes my heart constrict.
We stand there a little longer, watching each other. His eyes are kind and liquid, drinking me in. We kiss goodbye, and as we do there’s a sudden weird lift of vertigo … the brief, queasy realization that I’m in way over my head. I’m no longer sure what is happening here, or if I can contain it, and if there was a moment when I could have reined it in, then I guess I didn’t know it when I saw it. And now it’s too late.
Sometimes, these days, I find myself in the mood for destruction, and there’s nothing I can do about it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past couple of years, it’s that most possessions mean nothing. It doesn’t matter if you break them or tear them or burn them. They’re replaceable. Most of the time, I don’t bother replacing them, which shows how much I cared about them in the first place.
There’s a real power in that moment when you hold something in your hands and you know you can do what you want with it. There’s so much in life that comes on you hard and without warning. If you can carve out a little space of your own agency, and if that stops you from going insane, surely that’s a good thing. So I don’t beat myself up about it. Worse things happen at sea.