He felt deflated; he was deflating. But he was genuinely relieved too, felt like he could breathe properly for the first time that whole evening. He took in a lungful of air and let it out slowly.
Kate leaned over to reach down to the foot of the bed to grab the duvet, which she then spread out, hiding them both. For Freddie, this had the unexpected impact of making him suddenly very aware of their nakedness. A boyish thought in that moment, one he knew was stupid and immature and yet gave him an electric thrill all the way through his body, even whilst he was reaching under the blanket to remove the condom: ‘I’ve seen her boobs.’
He sighed when it was done, and then looked around awkwardly as he wondered what to do with it before Kate handed him a tissue to wrap it up in.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said again. ‘I thought I could go through with it.’
‘I thought I could too.’
‘I thought you were fine. It was right there.’ Her face reddened as she said it. Freddie realised that people don’t just blush on their faces, but right down their chest too.
‘I really wasn’t. I was worked up, but not comfortable. Arousal is . . . weird.’
‘But even so. Men can’t fake that, can they?’ Kate awkwardly gestured to his crotch.
‘No, but that doesn’t mean I was going to actually do it. I don’t think,’ he paused, fighting for the right words. He had been excited, he had been ready. But he had been frightened too. ‘I was relieved when you said no.’
‘It wasn’t right, was it?’
‘No.’
‘I really thought we could hook up and get it over with. Don’t people do that all the time? People just have sex everywhere, don’t they? Why couldn’t we?’
Freddie let out another long, deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. ‘If we had done it, if you had let me do it, do you think it would have been too much?’
‘Too much?’
‘It’s just a lot to happen all at once, maybe.’
‘Maybe.’
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, facing away from her, and wondered if she would think it was weird, or rude, if he went to brush his teeth again.
‘Stay.’
Freddie turned and looked over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow crooked and confused. He didn’t know if he’d heard her right.
‘Stay the night,’ Kate clarified. ‘You don’t have to go. It’s late, and—’
‘And what?’
‘And I want you to stay. I don’t know, maybe this can be a first step? We may not have slept together, but we can still sleep together?’
Freddie wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what was appropriate, couldn’t work out how comfortable he felt. His brain was still a muddle of conflicting instincts, plus he had no script for this scenario, no template to work through. But more than anything, he didn’t want to do anything that he or Kate might regret at some point. He desperately didn’t want to hurt her.
Carefully, he nodded. He would stay. They would sleep. He would have liked to go home and fold himself into a ball of despair and shame, but it was late, and he was tired. There was also the vague idea in his head that he didn’t want to leave Kate, that he wanted to stay with her for reasons that he had no idea how to properly articulate, but he brushed those aside. It was late, he was tired, therefore he’d stay. That was all there was to it. He was sure.
Freddie could feel that she had fallen asleep next to him. He didn’t really understand how anyone could sleep after what they had just been though. He wondered if he would ever be able to relax ever again, if every time he closed his eyes he would see her face, contorted with tension, making him feel like a torturer. He didn’t want anyone ever to feel the way she had looked.
I like Kate.
There it was. The thought suddenly fused with clarity. Not the same kind of like he had for Baz, for his niece Lacey, for that one shift at work that seemed to go more quickly than the others. This was a different kind of like. A like that was meaningful, charged with energy. A like that made him exhilarated and sad all at once. Because she didn’t like him back. Couldn’t like him back. Hadn’t her actions in the moment made it even more clear? When they were as close as two people could be, she’d pushed him away. She hadn’t said it, but she seemed repulsed.
Freddie shuffled, testing out how the duvet lay, how much the bed creaked, to see if he could feasibly get up and escape without disturbing her. She’d wake up in the morning and he’d not be there. Then they could both go back to their lives and relegate this whole thing to some deluded frenzy, a failed experiment.
He’d be a virgin for ever. Perhaps that was something he could be OK with. Perhaps he’d been foolish for wanting anything more.
‘Are you all right?’
Kate was awake. She’d been so still and so quiet that Freddie didn’t think it was possible.
‘Can’t sleep,’ Freddie admitted. He should never have agreed to stay. He should have escaped as soon as he’d been able.
‘Neither can I,’ Kate sighed.
The silence between them was excruciating.
‘This was all so stupid, wasn’t it?’ she said eventually.
‘Maybe? I don’t know,’ Freddie replied. It hadn’t seemed stupid before.
‘I just thought it would be such an easy thing. We get on, we’re both in the same situation . . .’ Her voice trailed off, and Freddie wondered again if she was going to cry.
Instead she just sighed again and turned over to face him. He couldn’t see her properly, just the outlines of her face, contours within the shadows, and the tiny, jewel-like gleam in her eyes from what little streetlight was peeking through the curtains. Freddie had a tremendous, inexplicable urge to trace the shape of her jaw with his fingers, to check that she was real. He forced the instinct away and clutched his fingertips into his pillow.
‘I feel like I led you on,’ Kate admitted, her voice barely a whisper.
‘You didn’t,’ Freddie reassured her. He felt sad that he hadn’t done more to make her feel more comfortable. Sad that she didn’t like him enough. He didn’t tell her this.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she tested.
‘Sure . . .?’
‘Do you have blue balls?’
He snorted in surprise. ‘What?’
‘Isn’t that a thing? Blue balls?’
‘No, I um . . . I mean I guess it was a bit awkward. But, no. I’m not sure.’
‘I have no idea how men’s bodies work. I had it in my head that once the process started, that you couldn’t stop or something.’
‘No, I guess I’m fine. I don’t know.’
More silence. And then, questions started sprouting in his head. Things he had never thought to ask before, because he had never had a real human girl in front of him to ask.
‘Do women get blue balls?’
‘Well, we don’t have balls, so . . .’
‘No, not literally. But, like, if you were ready to go, and then I had stopped things, would it have been . . .’ He struggled for the right words. ‘Difficult? Would it have been difficult for you?’
‘I don’t think so. I guess it can be frustrating. I might have been annoyed, I guess.’