I used to love that bit
Shoes in one hand, underwear in my bag, mouth still sore in the good way. The street empty enough that I could check my reflection in a dark window and think, yeah. I look like I got exactly what I came for.
The walk of no shame. That was the brand. Power. Clean exit. Nobody getting a look at me with no makeup and morning breath, wanting tea like some girl who had caught feelings in the dark.
Lately it just feels like I am frightened of breakfast. And that is a different story.
The sex is not the problem
Let me be clear, because I know how this reads. I like sex. I like it a lot. I like a man who does not treat my body like a puzzle he is too polite to solve. Hands on my hips. Mouth that actually stays where I put it. That filthy little pause when he looks at me like he cannot believe he is allowed.
I come easier when I am not performing pretty. When I stop fixing my face and just get greedy. When it is a bit funny and a bit rough and then soft enough that my thighs do that stupid shake I pretend I do not notice.
None of that is the issue. The issue is the hour after, when the room goes quiet and my brain starts offering me two options. Stay and risk being seen. Leave and keep the version of me that still looks expensive.
Guess which one I pick.
Every time, nearly. Coat. Phone. The little lie about an early shift even when I am not on until two. I can feel him watching me hook my bra and I make it look easy, like I have done this so often it does not touch me. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes I am leaving because if I stay he might put a mug in my hand and I will want another hour of his mouth and I will not know how to ask for it without sounding like I want a boyfriend.
Which, for the record, I do. I just will not say it with last night’s mascara under my eyes.
Sunrise is when the performance slips
Night me is good at this. Night me has a playlist and a smirk and a dress that does half the talking. Night me can be filthy and funny and gone before anyone asks what Saturday looks like.
Morning me is 5’3″ in yesterday’s clothes, blonde going wherever it wants, trying to do her face in a phone screen on the night bus. Morning me wants toast. Morning me wants his t-shirt and no conversation about what this is. Morning me wants to be chosen in daylight, which is so much more exposing than being wanted with the lamp off.
That is the bit people miss when they talk about the walk of shame like it is still 2012 and we are all supposed to feel dirty. I do not feel dirty. I feel clocked. Like if I sit at his table I will have to be a person, not just a good time with decent legs.
Sex I can do. Breakfast is intimate. Breakfast is, do you take sugar, do you have to work, can I kiss you when you have sleep in your eye. Breakfast is the first time he sees me without the armour. I spend a lot of my life putting that armour on. Mirror. Lip. Another coat. I am not handing it over to a man I met after two drinks just because he made me come.
Even when I want to. Especially when I want to.
Leaving used to feel like I was the one in charge
There is a specific high to getting out first. You do not wait to see if he goes cold. You do not lie there listening to him breathe and wondering if you are about to be a story he tells badly. You take your body home while it still feels like yours.
I liked being the girl who could have him and still catch the last bit of night. Trainers under the dress. Cab I should not have paid for. Flatmates who do not ask because they already know. Kettle. Shower. The smug little afterglow while I wipe my face off and think about his hands again.
That part is still hot. I am not going to pretend I have become wholesome. I will replay it on the rota. The way he said my name. The way I did not have to fake it. The wet, stupid, lovely fact of being wanted that hard for an hour.
What has changed is the aftertaste. It used to taste like freedom. Now it tastes like I ran.
Because sometimes he does the nice thing. Water. A laugh. A hand on my back that is not trying to start another round, just keeping me there. And my whole body goes, oh. Stay. Then my mouth says I should go, and I watch his face do that small drop, and I hate myself for about four stops on the bus.
Then I put lipstick on in the window and call it standards.
What I am actually scared of
Not looking messy. I look messy on purpose half the time. The smudged liner, the hair, the I-was-busy face. That can be sexy if you are honest about it.
I am scared of wanting more in a kitchen I do not know. Of tea going lukewarm while I try to be breezy. Of liking him in a grey morning when there is no music and no excuse. Of the quiet. Quiet in a man still does something ugly in my chest. Quiet in a flat after sex feels like I have to fill it or leave.
So I leave. It is cleaner. It is also a bit cowardly. I can hold both.
Women talk about this constantly if you listen. Not in the podcast voice. In the group chat. I wanted to stay but I did not want to look keen. He asked me to sleep over and I made up a dog. I got home and wished I had let him go down on me again instead of being the mysterious one. That last one is me. More than once.
Because here is the horny truth I keep dressing up as independence. Sometimes the hottest thing is not the first round. It is the slow second one when you are both a bit wrecked and less impressive. When he pulls you back by the waist and you do not have to be the girl who leaves. You can just be a mouth and a body that wants more.
I deny myself that and then act surprised when the night feels unfinished.
The practical stuff nobody puts in the fantasy
I have a shift. I have two flatmates and one bathroom. I have a face that looks better with product on it. I do not want to do the walk through his shared hallway in a dress that made sense at 11 and looks like evidence at 7.
London is not cute at that hour. It is bins, and a man eating a meal deal on the pavement, and you praying you do not see anyone from work. Your feet hurt. Your phone is on 8 percent. You smell like him and you kind of love that and kind of want it off you before you have to be a person who counts pallets.
So yes, some of the leaving is logistics. Sleep. Money. Not doing the walk of shame in the same trainers you wear on the floor. I will not romanticise being stranded in Zone 4 because I wanted to look effortless.
But I know when I am using the rota as cover. I know when I could have stayed for one coffee and chose the story instead. The story where I am unbothered. Uncaught. Still the one who got what she wanted and left him wanting.
That story used to get me home feeling tall. Now it gets me home feeling hollow in a way I do not fancy admitting on a weeknight.
What I want, if I am not performing
I want the sex. Obviously. I want it filthy and then a bit daft. I want to be looked at like I am not a lot of work. I want his mouth again in the morning without it being a negotiation.
I want toast. I want to sit on his counter with my knees up and steal his hoodie and not have to decide what we are. I want the kind of breakfast that is just hungry people who had a good night, not a job interview for girlfriend.
I want to stop treating sunrise like a test I can only pass by disappearing.
That does not mean I will stay for every man who can make me come. Most of them still get the coat. If the sex was mid, I am gone before the kettle. If he went quiet after, I am not hanging around hoping the morning will fix his personality. I like myself too much for that, even on the nights I do not.
It means the ones who are kind with it, who keep their hands on me after, who do not make the bed feel like a trap, those ones are starting to make the early exit look cheap. Like I am protecting a version of me that is tired.
The walk of no shame still photographs well. Messy hair. Last night’s dress. That little smirk in the bus window. Fashion can call it a trend all it wants. I know the difference between looking like I had sex and leaving because I could not bear to want breakfast.
One of those is hot.
The other is just me, thirty, still good at the leaving, slightly worse at staying when staying would actually feel good.
Next time I might sit down. Steal the toast. Let him see my face. Ask for the second round like a woman who knows what she likes and is done pretending the sunrise is the enemy.
Or I will put my shoes on again. I am not a new person. I am just less convinced that running is the sexy part.
