Nudge 24 The Head Pat
The Head Pat
Ihad no feelings while I was getting ready; no anxious thoughts or pangs in my gut.
Nothing to steer me away from what I was about to do.
I was just as calm the whole ride here. But now, standing outside his door, I feel my fight or flight activate.
I pull up our few messages and cross-reference his address with the door in front of me. It’s correct.
Are you coming down?
I write, following up from the Outside text I sent eight minutes ago. If he doesn’t appear soon, I don’t know what will happen first: me getting metaphorical cold feet or me getting actual hypothermia.
Three more minutes pass. I wish I’d brought a proper coat.
The intercom crackles and fizzes as it comes to life, before beeping as the front door springs open.
‘Second floor up – first door on the left. Be quiet – my flatmate’s in.’
My stomach starts to quiver, but I put it down to lack of food and keep going up the metal staircase, to find him leaning against the open doorframe in anticipation.
‘Quick.’ He briskly ushers me through the door, past the living room and straight into his bedroom.
Everything is black or dark grey, from his walls to his bedsheets to his shelves and the various things scattered on them.
His carpet is prickly, even through the thin layer of protection afforded by my socks.
A lampshade-less lightbulb hangs from the ceiling, switched off to allow for his table lamp.
I would like to think he chose it to set the mood, but I fear that it may be to hide the fact he’s barely cleaned up.
‘One sec, just gotta finish this.’
He lies on his bed, shirtless, and far more focused on his console than my presence here. After a few minutes, he changes the screen from whatever video game he was playing to Netflix.
‘D’you like superheroes?’ he asks, flicking through title cards.
‘Erm, I’ve seen a couple with my brother but . . .’
‘Cool, there’s a new one on here,’ he says, before clicking a button and getting comfy for the opening credits.
It’s not until after the full five-minute sequence that he notices me still hovering awkwardly in the corner by his door. I would have moved sooner or followed him, but he left me no space and he didn’t bother with any sort of invitation.
‘You look nice,’ he says, finally taking a moment to look me over.
‘Thank you.’ I try to hide my creeping smile.
I have no idea what you wear when the sole purpose of an outing is to get laid, and it took a while to properly decide.
After a lot of panicked scrambling through my wardrobe, I settled for a subtle-but-effective push-up bra, a low-cut T-shirt, an unzipped hoodie and a pair of bum-scrunch leggings.
The aim was to look unbothered and yet still effortlessly hot in a barely trying, everyday way.
He shuffles over to his left, patting the small-but-something-I-guess free space that he’s created next to him.
I take it as the only sign I’m going to get and scurry over, squeezing in the best that I can.
He throws his arm round my shoulder, proud smile on his face as he pulls me in tighter and leans in.
I feel his tongue down my throat before I have time to breathe.
It moves clunkily, flapping around like a fish out of water.
‘You’re so fucking sexy,’ he grunts into my mouth as he paws clumsily at my chest. ‘Take this off.’
He tugs impatiently at the lapel of my hoodie, making no effort to remove it but all the effort to whine about it. So, I quickly adjust from my position and shrug it off, before diving in for kiss number two.
Kissing him is a task – it starts rough and unrefined, but with time he gets bored and lets me take the reins.
Usually by attempt two or three, we get somewhere passable and I actually end up having a good time.
As I start leading with my tongue, I make a silent prayer that the same practice doesn’t extend to everything else.
I don’t have time for that tonight. I still haven’t eaten and I was planning to be home before 10 p.m.
‘And this . . .’ He makes a half-hearted attempt to lift up my shirt, but my hand comes swinging down to stop him.
I chose the most oversized T-shirt I own so that it wouldn’t have to come off.
I don’t need him seeing the crease of my stomach, or the way my boobs seem to shrivel to nothing in the cold.
And I don’t want him to look at my naked body with those horny, hungry eyes.
But as we pause, I realise that stopping his hand was one step away from killing the mood entirely.
I recover the moment, slipping his palm into mine and squeezing it tight before guiding it under my shirt.
‘Wow, you’re ready to go,’ he says smugly, watching me shimmy my leggings off with haste.
I’m more than ready. He takes the hint, legs scrambling as he rushes to pull off his sweatpants.
It takes him far too long to unhook my bra under my top, ignoring all my offers to do it myself, but, eventually, we get there, clawing at each other’s skin as we kiss, the movie an irrelevant whir in the background.
I close my eyes, trying to focus on the touch of his hands and turn this into something at least a little bit sensual, but it’s no use.
His actions are just far too robust to be anything other than what they are: the clumsy pawing of a selfishly horny man.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask, opening my eyes and straightening to see what’s happening.
He freezes, propped on top of me, penis in hand ready to slide it inside me.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he replies, confused.
‘Have you got protection?’ I ask, startled that I even need to.
‘Are you not on the pill?’
‘Have you been tested recently?’
‘I don’t have anything, I’d know if I did,’ he laughs, rolling his eyes.
‘Well, I’m not on the pill. Or anything else, for that matter,’ I lie, watching as his face remains unchanged.
Transferring disease is clearly not a worry to him, but I was hoping that something like pregnancy would be.
‘I’ll pull out,’ he says.
I can’t help but laugh. What kind of seventeen-year-old-boy-level response is that?
‘Yeah, we’re absolutely not doing that.’ I gently shoo him off me.
He doesn’t know me at all if he thought something like that would pass.
‘OK, calm down!’ he says, blatantly ignoring my deathly calm and frankly apathetic exterior. ‘There’s still other things we can do.’
He softly strokes my hair, licking his lips before he leans in for another kiss.
The upside is we’ve been at this long enough tonight that we’ve reached the point where his kissing has significantly improved. It’s a little less wet now and he seems to have got the message that your tongue shouldn’t just whirl around lawlessly like a sock in a washing machine.
I moan softly into his mouth. This is what I came here for – this feeling. This feeling will make me forget. I lose myself in the kiss, in the movement of his lips and the intense grip of his hand in my hair . . .
Then I feel it.
The head pat.
The push of his hand against the top of my head, trying to shove me under the covers.
I fight back, pretending I don’t understand and trying to bring us back to that brief moment where everything felt good.
I grip his head with both hands, doing my best to distract him with a tantalising lip bite and a heavy dose of tongue, but he has one goal in mind and he will not give up.
His hand pushes harder and harder until he realises it’s no use and resorts to words.
‘Give me head.’
It’s blunt and tactless, making it only more evident that he’s undeserving. But I decide to adequately test the waters before I decline. I am nothing if not reasonable.
‘You first,’ I say.
His eyebrows lift at the request, mouth opening in utter shock and horror.
‘Yeah, I don’t do that. Especially not the first time.’
‘Then neither do I,’ I say, pulling away as he leans in to kiss me again and shoots his hand straight to the top of my head to audaciously try his luck a third time.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks, genuinely wide-eyed and confused.
I roll my eyes and attempt to make it as clear as day. ‘If you won’t go down on me, then I won’t go down on you.’
He snorts in disgust, the space between our bodies growing cold as he pulls away. ‘You being serious?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because that’s not—’
‘That’s not what?’ I ask, ready to fight.
He catches the glare on my face, his dissipating within seconds. He knows he’s lost this and I’d go as far as to say he’s a little embarrassed.
He slides in close again, warmth returning as my chest touches his and his arms cradle me tight. His head dips down slightly, a trail of saliva forming on my neck, each new patch cold and uncomfortably wet.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says between soggy neck kisses. ‘Let’s not argue about this – it’s not worth losing what we have.’
He orders us pizza and we watch the rest of the movie, him frequently pausing it to fill me in on the context I’ve missed.
It’s cute and domestic – an inviting change of pace and a chance to see him in a different light.
His arm stays wrapped around my shoulders, squeezing me closer every time it gets ‘scary’ in the hopes that I’ll jump and let him protect me, but I hold my own.
After what Aiden and I went through last week on that water ride, nothing can make me jump for the foreseeable future.
We kiss goodbye at the door at 10.18 p.m.
‘Next time I’ll be more prepared,’ he says, swinging my hand in his.
‘You’d better be,’ I reply and turn to leave, hoping I can at least be in bed by eleven.
My taxi pulls up right on time, just as I let myself out of the apartment block’s door. I get into the back and sigh, more than ready for my own cleaner and better-smelling bedroom.
The shower I take is enough to wash off the general smell of his room, and the fresh pair of pyjamas are soft enough to comfort me ever so slightly after our frustrating end.
I reach for my phone to message Aiden the second I slide into bed, typing out the (massively condensed) story three times.
My finger hovers over the send button, nervous and timid.
I can’t do it. I hit delete and put my phone down to charge.
Spontaneous or not, this is one thing that doesn’t feel quite right to share.