The door shuts and it is like someone has pulled a plug out of me
Not dramatic. Just off. The street is still doing its thing, lights smeared on the window, some lad shouting at a chicken shop like it personally wronged him. Inside the car it is warm and a bit chemical. My feet have started to throb in that delayed way, like they waited until it was safe to complain.
I always think I will keep the night going in here. Keep talking. Keep being the version of me that made the plan and bought the first round and leaned in when someone said my name like it was a dare. Then I sit down and my mouth just… clocks out.
The driver does not need a story. Good. I have used them all up.
The bit where the act comes off
People think the performance is for men. Sometimes. Not always. Half the time it is for the group chat. For the photos. For the girl doing her lips in the loos who needed someone to say she looked fit so she could go back out. I can do that. I am good at that. Smug, a bit much, fun if you can keep up. That is the review I get and I do not argue with it.
In the cab there is nobody to keep up with. Just the back of a stranger’s head and my own face in the glass, which is never as finished as I think it is. Mascara has done that little creep it does after midnight. I still check. Course I do. Habit. If I look sorted maybe I am sorted. That logic has got me through worse than a Tuesday night in east London.
I take my shoes off if I can get away with it. Hold them in my lap like evidence. The dress that felt like a decision at eight o’clock feels like a costume at one. Not in a tragic way. I liked it. I like nights out. I like a look across a room and the stupid lift it gives you. I am not about to pretend I have gone off all that.
I just go quiet. That is all.
The look I should have left on
This is the part I do not put in the group chat. I replay one moment on a loop like I am marking my own shift.
Sometimes it is harmless. I should have stayed with the girls when they moved downstairs. I should have danced through that song I actually like instead of talking to a man whose name I will not remember and whose aftershave I will. I should have gone to the bar with whoever asked, not because I wanted a drink, because I did not want to be the one holding the coats and the plan.
Sometimes it is the other kind. A hand on my waist that I let stay a second longer than I meant to. A laugh I gave away too cheap. Me doing that thing where I make it easy so nobody has to sit in an awkward pause. I can turn a maybe into a yes with my face. I know I can. In the cab I get honest about whether I wanted to.
Last week it was a bloke by the door. Fine. Funny enough. He said something I would have roasted him for at work and I let it land like a compliment because the lighting was low and I was three drinks past sensible. He looked at me like he had already decided how the night ended. I looked back like I had not noticed. That is the look. The one I should have left on. Bored. Done. Already halfway to my coat.
Instead I did the little smirk. Course I did. It is cheaper than explaining yourself in a doorway with people pushing past.
In the taxi I run it again and feel that specific irritation that is mostly at myself. Not shame exactly. More like spotting a dent in a car you still like. I can live with it. I just wish I had not put it there.
Call it a good night
I will, tomorrow. That is the rule. If nobody cried in a toilet and I got home with my keys and my card and most of my dignity, it was a good night. The bar for disaster in this city is high. You lower it and you would never leave the flat.
It was a good night. The playlist in the kitchen before we went out. My flatmate doing that face in the mirror she always does, the one that means she is about to ask if her top is too much, knowing I will say no. The first drink that actually tasted like the start of something. A song I did not expect. A stranger calling me babe in a way that was annoying and still did the job.
I can hold that and the quiet at the same time. People want nights to be one temperature. Mine are not. They start hot and end with me counting streetlights like I am trying to fall asleep on a coach.
Mean it halfway. That is the honest version. I meant the fun. I meant the dress. I meant staying out later than the version of me who has a rota in the morning. I did not mean the extra half hour I gave to a conversation that was going nowhere. I did not mean checking if he viewed the story in the queue for the cab, which I did, because I am thirty and still not above it.
The fare is part of the story
I know the night bus exists. I have done the night bus. Fluorescent lighting, someone eating crisps like it is a profession, me trying not to catch my own eye. It is cheaper. It is also a full extra chapter I do not always have in me.
So I pay. Sometimes the surge is rude enough to make me laugh under my breath. I add it up in my head in seconds. Drinks, plus this, plus the top I did not need last month. My maths degree shows up at the worst times. Never when I am being responsible. Always when the card has already gone through.
I tell myself it is safety. That is not a lie. It is also comfort. It is buying a sealed little box of quiet between the noise and the flat. I am not proud of how quickly I will spend money to not think. I am also not going to stand on a kerb at one in the morning doing a TED talk about it to myself.
The driver asks if I am having a good night. I say yeah, thanks, you? That is the most I have got. He puts the radio on low. Something I would skip if it came on at work. In here it is fine. It fills the bit where I might start talking and ruin the peace I just paid for.
What I do in the back seat
I check my face. I check the time. I check the group chat and do not reply, because if I start I will have to be on again and I have already clocked off.
I think about work in a stupidly practical way. What time the alarm is. Whether I can get four hours and still look like I meant to. Whether I left my good concealer in the bathroom or if one of them has nicked it, which they will deny, which I will allow because I nicked the oat milk last week and we are not starting a war on a school night.
I think about the promotion more than I want to admit on a night out. It sits in the back of my head like a second playlist. Title. Money. A version of me who does not do mental maths every time someone says shall we get a cab. Then I tell myself to shut up, because nothing kills a good dress faster than career planning at 1:17.
Sometimes I think about staying. Not with whoever was at the door. Just staying out. One more. Afters. Someone’s kitchen with the big light on, which is where nights go to be judged. I almost never want the big light. I want my bed and a cotton pad and the kind of silence I chose.
That is the difference, I think. Silence I chose is fine. Silence that happens to me is a different animal. I do not sit in that one if I can help it. I put music on. I put a face on. I put a body in a room. In the cab I can manage a short stretch of the quiet kind because I know it ends at my front door.
Home, and the edit
Keys. Hallway that always smells faintly of someone else’s dinner. Shoes in my hand so I do not do the whole flat a favour of waking them. Makeup off like a decision, not a collapse. I look worse and better at the same time. That is normal.
If anyone is up I will give them the highlights. The song. The drink. The man who said something thick. I will not give them the replay. I will not say I went quiet in the taxi and spent twelve minutes prosecuting a look I gave a stranger. That is diary stuff. That is for me and the ceiling.
In the morning I will call it a good night and I will mostly mean it. My feet will argue. My bank app will argue. Some bloke might text a fire emoji and nothing else, which is not a personality, and I will leave it on read for an hour out of principle and then reply anyway because I am not as disciplined as I tell people I am.
None of that cancels the fact I had fun. It just means the night had an after. Most things do. People skip that bit in the stories because it is not cute. Sitting in the back of a car with your shoes in your lap and your mouth shut is not cute. It is just what happens when you have been on for five hours and your body finally believes you are allowed to stop.
I used to think going quiet meant the night had failed. Like if I was still sparkling in the taxi I had done it properly. That is a young way to look at it. These days I take the drop as proof I actually went out. You cannot come down if you never went up. I went up. I danced. I spent money I will moan about. I let myself be looked at. I looked back when I meant to and once or twice when I did not.
Then I got in the car and shut up.
That is the whole plot. Not a tragedy. Not a lesson. Just the ride home, the window, the fare, the little film of the night playing behind my eyes, and me calling it good because it mostly was.
Halfway. Barely. Close enough that I will do it again on Friday, put the face back on, and pretend I have never sat in this seat in my life.
