Please
Be
Over.
But it’s not. It seems to go on and on, time as slow as the pain is burning, hurting more and more. My whole body is on fire. Hands on my waist. Pulling me back and forth roughly while I’m as limp as I can go, whimpering. Why can’t I open my mouth? Why can’t I scream? Why can’t I push him out and away and run run run? Why am I frozen?
Just staring.
At the white wall, the white wall, the white wall.
No no no no. Come back, come back, come back. It’s over, it’s over, it’s in the past, the past, it can’t hurt you. My lungs are small, so small. There are tears pricking. Breathing is hard. But come back. Come back. I can’t, I can’t … I’m back there. So scared. So hurt. So helpless. Staring at the wall. No no no. April! Come back! Come. Back.
I take the fingernail of my second finger and bury it into the side of my thumb as hard as I can. Pressing, pressing until I almost draw blood …
Here. In Joshua’s room. The art print of Paris. Joshua is squeezing my hand, slowing it down. ‘Hey?’ he’s saying. ‘Is everything OK?’
His face is concerned. Shit. I lost Gretel. I lost Gretel and I lost me, I’m fucking it up. ‘I’m fine. Why have you stopped?’
‘I just thought. You seemed to zone out there. Is everything all right?’
No no no. He can’t see this bit. The plan won’t work and he won’t fall for me if he sees this bit. Cover it up, make it good for him, power through. Power. Through.
Gretel pulls it together. Gretel reaches out and drags him closer. Gretel makes it clear he’s misread this entirely. ‘Don’t stop,’ she says. ‘Please don’t stop.’
And, it’s not like he needs further convincing. He smiles, relieved, that I am not one of those damaged ones he has heard so much about. No no no, don’t want one of them, do you? They’re not sexy, those damaged ones. Can’t spunk in their faces without feeling mildly guilty about it, and who wants to ruin an orgasm with guilt? Luckily, he doesn’t try anything too risqué but I’m still fighting the trigger and losing. I need to hold it together. I’m not holding it together. I need to distract him to his finish. Gretel ramps it up. She cannot believe how amazing his thrusting his. She asks for him to go deeper, she says how big he is, how big and hard. Predictably, this sends him over the edge very quickly. He lets out a guttural squawk and judders into me. I just need to hold it together, hold it together. Wait wait wait. You can unravel soon, I promise. Just not yet, not yet.
Joshua stays still inside me, his head buried into my neck for some time. I twist my head to one side to let gravity roll the tear off my cheek. I can physically feel his penis deflating inside me, like a helium balloon days after the party. My trauma’s surfacing; it’s boiling in my skin.
Joshua finally lifts his head and looks down and Gretel’s face is tear free and smiling as their eyes meet in a post-coital lock. His face bursts into a grin, and he has the good grace and manners to lean down and plant a kiss on my lips before holding the end of his penis to ensure the condom stays on while he tugs himself out of my body.
‘Hi,’ he whispers, collapsing to my side, giving me another kiss.
‘Hi,’ I reply.
I want to scream so loudly that it would scatter every pigeon living in London.
I watch him attempt to fight sleep for, oh, twenty whole seconds. He reaches out and heavily pats my naked back, all like ‘there there son’. I reach out and rub his back, comforting him into unconsciousness so I can be alone. Quickly, his arm collapses as his body finds sleep, pinning me to the bed.
I focus on my breath, the rise and fall of my ribcage. I have to wait; I have to make sure he’s fully gone before I get up. I do not want him to wake. I need to be alone so much right now that I’d kill him if I could, just for the peace, just to ensure he stays sleeping.
In and out, in and out.
Breathing really is quite painful sometimes, isn’t it?
Gretel isn’t here.
It’s just me. April.
In this strange flat, with this strange man who doesn’t know who I am. I check his sleeping face one more time. He is out. The slimy dead slug of the used condom dangling from his other hand. I delicately remove myself from under him, rolling until I’m standing, naked, looking down at him.
Still sleeping.
It’s just me in this flat. My throat throbbing with screams that want to be screamed till my voice runs dry, but that would wake him up. I find my dress discarded on his wooden floor and hold it to my cheek with shaking hands. Then I pad out barefoot, gently closing the door behind me.
The living room is still how we left it. The scene of the wooing. The ice in our margaritas hasn’t fully melted yet. Our meals lie half-eaten – the bowls of handmade dips still full and waiting to be scooped. A clock ticks on the wall. It’s not even eight thirty. I clutch my dress to me tighter and I enter the tiling of Joshua’s bathroom. The tang of Mr Muscle punctuates the air. I picture him scrubbing it moments before I arrived. The heat seeps through the small, open window above the sink. I can hear the laughs of Friday night bouncing through. I close it. I pull the string of the extractor fan, the hum giving me the white noise needed to cover the gasps escaping my mouth.
I lock the door.
I fall, naked, onto the bathmat.
Reasons why I’ve cried in bathrooms
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
- Occasionally, work stress
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
- Occasionally, PMS
- Because I don’t want a man to know I’m crying
When I’m finished, you would never know how hard I fell apart. My breathing is back to normal. My face is blotch-free. My shoulders unhunched. I’ve managed to get the nine-yard stare out of my eyes.
The white wall, the white wall, the white wall.
No.
Joshua’s still dozing as I climb back into bed, fully naked, because that’s what Gretel would do. I dream up the scenario of what she’s been doing for the last forty-five minutes. She would’ve slept too, dozing happily in her post-orgasmic bliss that was real instead of faked. Then she would’ve done something fun! Oh, I know, she’ll want more cocktails. I climb back out and retrieve the melted margaritas, placing them carefully on Joshua’s side table before getting under the covers again.
My movements stir him. He half opens one eye.
‘Oh hello.’ He reaches out and pulls my head into his chest.
‘I’ve brought in the margaritas.’
‘You’re a legend.’ He kisses the top of my head. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to doze off.’ He kisses my head again. ‘You tired me out.’
I twist in his arms to look up at him. He has quite a lot of nostril hair for a man not yet 35. ‘You tired me out too.’ I lean over to get the drinks. He sighs exhaustedly and props himself up, saying ‘thank you’. We sit, sipping, conversation temporarily not flowing. I know I should be bright and sparky, like Gretel would be, but I used up a lot of energy climbing my way out of hell on Joshua’s bathmat.