Uber. Bar. A name I will not save
I sat on the work toilet with the lock slid across, warehouse radio leaking under the door, and I opened the banking app like it was porn. Thumb over the screen. Waiting for the little circle to stop spinning. Hoping nobody knocked and asked if I was all right in there, because I was not all right in there. I was doing maths on a Tuesday morning after a night I had already started editing.
That is the bit people do not put on the grid. Not the lipstick. Not the smirk. The notification that says your card has been used, and you already know where, and you still open it anyway like the number might have changed its mind.
Romance looks different when you are skint
I can look expensive. That is a skill. Blonde done, brown eyes lined, smart casual that still works on the floor if I swap the shoes. People clock the face and assume the account matches. It does not.
London does not care that you did a maths degree and you can add a night up in seconds. Drinks. Cab. The top you told yourself you needed. A name on the statement you will not save because saving it makes it real, and real means you have to decide if you liked him or if you just liked being taken out of the flat.
Being skint makes romance feel like a secret little purchase. That is the line. I wrote it in my notes after, then deleted it, then wrote it again because it was true and I was annoyed that it was true.
You do not tell a man you are doing mental maths while he is talking. You laugh. You let him think you are easy and unbothered. You are unbothered about the sex, maybe. You are very bothered about the standing order that leaves on Friday.
The name I will not save
He was fine. That is the boring truth. Fit enough. Funny in that half-trying way. Paid for one round and looked at me when I spoke, which is rarer than it should be. We left the bar and the Uber pin dropped on a street I only half knew, and I thought, this is either a good story or a mid one, and I will know in the morning.
It was mid. Not bad. Mid. The kind of night you would not fight to keep and would not bother lying about either.
In the morning I had mascara on a pillow that was not mine and a shift that was. I did the face in his bathroom because of course I did. Then I left before the tea conversation could start, because tea is how you accidentally ask for something, and I had already spent the money.
On the bus I opened the app. There it was. The bar. The car. His name in the reference like a receipt for a version of me I could not currently afford.
I did not save the contact. Saving it felt like putting a candle on a cake that was already going stale.
Work is where the shame catches up
Nobody at work needs to know. That is the rule. I want the promotion. I want the title and the number, not the well done babe. If they clock you as messy, they clock you as unready. So I clock in looking smug and I keep the night in the bathroom stall where it belongs.
The warehouse does not care that you were wanted for three hours. It cares that the rota is covered and you are not hungover on the radio. I can do both. I have been doing both since I learned jokes were safer than quiet.
Still. There is a particular heat in checking your balance at work. Like you have been caught nicking something, except the thing you nicked was your own Friday.
A supervisor asked if I was all right because I had been in there too long. I said period. Oldest trick. Works. Walked back onto the floor with my face set and my phone on silent, as if silence could make the number kinder.
The flat always knows anyway
I can hide a statement. I cannot hide the hour I got in.
One of them was in the kitchen with tea like a witness. No speech. Just the look. I said do not, and she said I was not going to, and then she asked if he was fit, which is how love works in a shared hall. Gossip first. Care underneath, if you are lucky.
I told her mid. She nodded like that was a medical result. Then she asked if I had spent, and I made a face, and that was the whole review.
We do this. Women I mean. We will tell each other the sex and skip the standing order. Or we will joke about the standing order and skip the bit where we wanted him to text. I wanted him to text. I also wanted the money back. Both things sat in my chest like they were arguing with each other.
What the app actually says about you
Open yours and be honest. It is a diary you never agreed to keep.
Uber. Boots. Deliveroo. The bar with the stupid name. The card payment at 01:14 that you will explain as a one off, except it is never a one off. It is the version of you that cannot stand the quiet in the flat, so she goes out and buys noise.
I am good with numbers at work. Spreadsheet girl by daylight. Then someone says pub and the plan folds. I am worse with missing out than I am with an overdraft. That is not cute. That is just the truth, and I am tired of dressing it as a personality.
People love telling you what you should save. They love it. Cut the cabs. Take the night bus. Do your makeup at home. As if I have not thought of the night bus. As if I have not stood at a stop at one in the morning in a dress and done the sum, and chosen the car because my feet were done and my mouth was loose and I wanted to get home in one piece.
Sometimes the fare is just paying not to think. I know how that sounds. I still did it.
The lie I tell myself
I say I want the promotion. I do. I say it is about the title. It is also about breathing room. Pride sounds better than cash until the card pings and you flinch.
I want enough that a taxi, a takeaway, and a quiet Sunday do not need a committee meeting in my head. Not yacht money. Just the kind where a date is a date, not a secret line item you hide from your own future self.
Until then I do this little performance. I look sorted. I flirt like I do not care. I leave early so nobody sees me do the maths. I sit on a toilet at work and hope the app loads slowly enough that I can pretend I opened it for something sensible, like rent, like the adult I am on paper.
On paper I am thirty, employed, degree on the shelf, warehouse manager who wants the next rung. In the stall I am a girl who spent money she had already counted twice, on a man whose name she will not save, because saving it would mean admitting she wanted more than the night and could not afford the more.
If you have done this, you already know
You know the pause before you open the app. You know the heat in your face when the bar name comes up in black text, no glamour on it at all. You know the way you minimise it if someone walks in, like they might see the night on you.
You know the joke you make later. Worth it. Not worth it. Mid. You grade it so it hurts less.
Here is what I am trying to stop doing. Calling it vibe when it was spend. Calling it easy when it was a calculation. Calling him a waste when the waste was me refusing to stay in, because staying in means the quiet, and the quiet still feels like a house I do not want to sit in.
I can want sex. I can want a boyfriend I will not say out loud. I can want money without making it a speech. Those are allowed to exist in the same person. They just look messy on a statement.
Next time I will ask myself the ugly question before the Uber arrives. Is this a night I can stand to see in writing on Tuesday? If the answer is no, I should go home. I probably will not. But at least I will have asked, which is more than I did when I hid the date like it was contraband.
It was not contraband. It was a mid night and a real fare and a woman who wanted to feel chosen for a few hours. The app does not care about chosen. It only cares that you paid.
I put my phone away, washed my hands like a person with nothing to hide, and went back on the floor. Radio up. Face on. Work to do.
The name is still unsaved. The number is still the number. I am still after the raise. And if anyone asks what I got up to, I will say not much, which is the most expensive sentence I know.
