Her voice sounded sleepy. He had more questions, more things that he wanted to know, but maybe now wasn’t the time.
‘We’re going to stay friends, right?’ Freddie asked.
‘Of course,’ Kate said through a yawn, but Freddie didn’t believe her.
The tension broken, at least on her side, she fell asleep. He could tell, even under all this darkness, because he could sense her soften, her breathing deepen in a way it hadn’t done before.
Freddie suddenly felt very alone and very scared. It had been a long time since this had happened, since he’d liked someone this much, and it hadn’t exactly worked out well then. He didn’t want another Camellia situation, flinging all his feelings at someone when he had no guarantee that she was going to feel the same things back.
He listened as her breathing became deeper still, and felt his own eyelids become heavy as a result. As Freddie finally drifted asleep, the thought occurred to him: if this was all they were going to be, then it was better than nothing at all.
When he woke up again, the sliver of light that fell through the windows was pale lilac, and made Kate’s room glow. Freddie hung there, in that woozy place between sleeping and waking, wondering if the girl next to him was a dream.
He concluded that he must still be dreaming when she shuffled herself closer into something almost like a snuggle. It felt good, the warmth of her, the feeling that he was grounded by her presence, made more solid just from being there. Freddie stretched out an arm and wrapped it around her in a way that could be construed as accidental if she woke up and questioned it. But instead of surprising her, Kate just rolled into it, tucked herself in closer, made a quiet noise almost like a purr.
That was when Freddie realised he was hard.
He felt intensely embarrassed and ashamed, and started analysing whether it was safer to stay and risk her noticing or whether it was riskier to untangle himself from her and escape, which could wake her up.
She must have been awake to notice, because Kate moved suddenly, slipping out of the bed and out of the room so quickly he was instantly scared. Where had she gone? When she came back five minutes later and ducked under the covers, he could feel the cold air lingering on her skin.
‘Hey,’ he heard Kate whisper, her mouth so close to his face that she was practically kissing it. Her breath was minty and he felt a rush of gratitude, of affection. She’d gone to brush her teeth.
‘Hey,’ he whispered in reply.
She kissed him. Not directly on the mouth, but just to the side, and feather-light. He moved again, just a bit, allowing Kate to get closer still. Now her face was right up against the sharp angle of his jaw, and she kissed him there too, as gentle as the sunrise.
Maybe it was the dreamlike haze of the early morning, or the woozy drunkenness of his just-woken brain coupled with the warmth of the cosy duvet, but Freddie found kissing much easier now. There were things he knew he would normally have worried about, but instead of wild sirens his anxiety felt more like far-off bells, distant background noise. He wanted to brush his own teeth, but he also felt like he didn’t really need to. With Kate right there next to him, the freshness of her mouth felt clean enough.
They were kissing in slow rhythms, lazy and sensual. He let his hands move, tying the pleasing memory of her breasts from the night before with the real-life feel of them now, getting as much of a thrill from sensing them under his fingertips as he was from the sound of her responding to him. A feedback loop of pleasure; the more he touched and explored, always carefully, at least at first, the more she explored right back. At some point, Kate reached for him under the duvet, tender like a tiptoe. When she got there, finally, he couldn’t help the response.
‘I think I want to . . .’ she suggested, her eyes closed, her face nuzzled against him.
‘Yeah?’ Freddie asked, wondering, hoping he had understood her properly.
‘Yeah. Do you want to?’
‘Yes, I do,’ he said.
Kate shifted away and went to her bedside table, and he stayed perfectly still, scared of breaking whatever spell this was. There were no words as Freddie shifted up in the bed and turned to get ready for her. No awkward chitchat, and no anxious fumbling. Just the silence of the morning and the surprising peacefulness of it all.
When it happened, it was soft and slow. He felt her tense beneath him, a tiny moment of something that might have been discomfort, but when she didn’t say anything, he continued, tentative and aware. She made noises; not the wild moans of porn stars, but something more like the sound of someone who had found the most delicious ice cream in the world. It felt good for him too, like roaring and punching but also like collapsing into a comfy chair at the end of a long day. Power and relief all at once. He was scared by how good it felt.
They were silent for a while afterwards. There didn’t seem to be any need for words. Freddie thought that they might even be able to fall back asleep; but not long after, the mattress tilted as Kate got up and dashed across the hall to the bathroom. The coldness of the air as the duvet lifted and revealed him was enough to snap Freddie out of the reverie and back into real life. Through the single-glazed windows he heard birds chirping, the rush of car engines and planes flying overhead.
His ease collapsed around him once he was alone, allowing the worry and panic to come crowding in.
‘So . . .’ Kate said hopefully when she got back from the bathroom, climbing back into the bed with him.
‘Yeah,’ he replied. He was thinking. Thinking about what he should be saying, what he should be doing.
‘We did it!’
‘We did.’
Silence again. He could tell that Kate wanted to talk, but just didn’t know what he could say back to her. There were so many wrong things, and the right things felt impossible to conjure.
‘Was it OK?’ she asked. All he could do was nod in return, as he bit at his lips. ‘Do you want some tea? I can make breakfast?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.’
She wrapped herself up in her dressing gown and crept away, but even as he thought that he should be getting up to help, he found that he couldn’t move.
Freddie blinked hard as he replayed what had happened. How did he know how to do that? Nobody had taught him, as such. But when he was there, in the moment and on top of her, that pressing need for friction, and the desire to just keep going and push through, had been intense and automatic. He had tried to be slow and gentle, but now he was scared that he had been too wild, that he might have hurt her, that she was too polite to say anything about it. He supposed that he could just ask, that they could talk about it, but he didn’t think he could possibly handle that right now.
His plan now was to eat a little something and then get himself out of Kate’s flat as quickly as possible. His stomach rumbled.
Kate was glowing. Freddie took her in as he stood in the kitchen doorway. In that tiny moment before she noticed him and he felt forced to retreat into his mental hole of worry, he watched her and marvelled at how happy she seemed. He had never seen a woman glow before, but there she was, stirring eggs in a pan over the hob, and she was shining.
Had he done that? Had he made her feel that way?
‘I guessed you couldn’t really go wrong with scrambled eggs,’ Kate offered when she saw him. The shine dialled itself down, she was retreating.