I Keep Score Of Who Checks In
Not the cute ones. Not the fire emojis. Not the “that was wild” texts that are really just him telling on himself.
I mean the are-you-home-safe ones. The dull ones. The ones that land when the makeup is off and the kettle is doing more work than anybody’s mouth did an hour ago.
Most people pass the sex. That bit is easy if you have hands and a pulse and enough sense not to narrate it like a film. The morning kettle is where I start keeping score.
I am not talking about flowers
People hear aftercare and think rose petals or some soft voice asking if you want water like you have just come out of surgery. Fine, water is good. I will take the water.
What I actually clock is whether you remember I am a person once you have finished being impressed with yourself.
Did you clock that I had work in the morning? Did you notice I went quiet after, not because it was bad, because my head comes back online and starts doing maths? Rent. Rota. Whether my flatmate is still up. Whether I need to find my knickers before I do anything heroic like make tea.
Sex can shut my head up for a bit. That is half the point. Then the lights feel too bright and I am thirty again, in a London flat, trying to look like I have not just been thoroughly dealt with.
If you can handle that version of me, you get points. If you roll over like the job is done, you get filed under good in bed, useless in daylight.
Showy messages do not count
Anyone can send a filthy recap. It takes no character. It is just the night trying to keep itself going on the phone.
I have had the paragraph texts. The ones that sound like they were written with one hand. Very flattering. Very loud. Very “look how into it I still am.”
Then nothing at 8am. No you-get-in-alright. No hope-your-shift-is-not-hell. Just a blank screen and me standing in the kitchen with wet hair, pretending I am only checking the time.
I do not need a speech. I need proof you noticed I left your place, or you left mine, and that the city is still the city after. Buses. Stairs. A front door that sticks. A flatmate who will know, even if she does not say.
Are you home. That is it. Four words. If you cannot manage four words, I am not inventing a personality for you.
The kettle test
Here is how simple I am, when you strip the smirk off.
If we have slept together and there is a kettle in the room, what you do next tells me more than the sex did. Do you ask how I take it. Do you make two mugs without turning it into a performance. Do you sit there in last night’s T-shirt and talk like a person who can survive ten minutes of quiet.
Or do you go on your phone. Or start the “so anyway I have a thing later” dance. Or get suddenly fascinated by putting your socks on in the correct order.
I have a degree. I can add up a room. The sock dance is not mysterious.
I am not asking you to propose over instant coffee. I am asking whether I am still interesting now that I have smudged mascara and a shift later. If the answer is no, fine. Say it with your behaviour and I will match you. I am very good at leaving first. It is one of my more reliable skills.
Why I keep score
Because I have a high drive and a low tolerance for being treated like a good time that expires at dawn.
I like sex. I like a lot of it. I am not doing the ashamed version of this sentence. People can call it what they want. What they do not get to do is use that as cover for having no manners after.
Promiscuous is a word people throw when they want you smaller. It does not cancel the fact I still notice who checks in. Those two things live in the same body. Mine.
I can be filthy and still want the dull text. I can leave before sunrise and still hope the phone lights up on the night bus. I can tell a flatmate it was nothing and then write the opposite in my diary like a coward with decent handwriting.
Scorekeeping sounds petty. It is not a spreadsheet. It is pattern recognition. Who disappears. Who only talks when they want another round. Who can stand the version of me that is not performing.
Silence does something to me. Always has. I do not need to dress that up. If you go quiet after you have been in my bed, my head fills in the rest, and it is never a kind story. So yes. I notice the check-in. I notice the gap where it should be.
What a real check-in looks like
It is not an essay. Please God, do not send an essay.
It looks like: you get in alright.
It looks like: kettle’s on if you’re still here.
It looks like: hope the rota is not grim today.
It looks like remembering I said I had an early one, and not sending a photo of your chest at 7.12 like that is care.
It can be funny. I like funny. A “did your flatmate clock the walk of no shame or are we safe” will do more for me than a paragraph about destiny. I live with two people and the walls are thin. Reality is part of the aftercare. If you cannot joke about the kitchen, you were never in the same night I was.
And if I stayed, it looks like not making me feel like a guest who has outstayed a booking. Give me a towel. Give me two minutes in the bathroom without hovering. Let me put my face back on if I need it. I will. I always do. Looking finished is how I walk back into the city.
The ones who fail
They are not always bad in bed. That is the annoying part.
Some of them are excellent. Hands, pace, filthy mouth that actually sounds like them. I will give credit. Then morning comes and they go thin. Not cruel. Just absent. Like the person I was with got swapped for a man who has remembered he has a life, and my life is suddenly optional.
I have done the waiting. I have done the “maybe he is just busy” routine while I am on the warehouse floor with a radio in my ear, pretending I am only thinking about pallets. I have done the second text that I swore I would not send.
Then I stop. Not because I am above it. Because the score is in and I know the result.
If you can be inside me and then cannot ask if I got home, we are not in the same league of adult. Call it harsh. I call it the minimum.
The ones who pass
They do not make a fuss about passing. That is how I know.
They send the dull message. They mean it. They do not need a medal for basic decency. They can sit through the weird bit after, when I am half cocky and half somewhere else, putting lipstick on like it is armour, talking too much because quiet rooms still make me itchy.
They do not punish me for wanting sex and also wanting to be checked on. They do not do the “I thought you were chill” voice. I am chill. I am also a person. Those are allowed to exist together. If that confuses you, date someone who never comes down from the performance. I am sure she is exhausted.
The best ones make the kettle without turning it into a speech about what last night meant. We can decide what it meant later. Or not. I am not allergic to casual. I am allergic to being dropped mid-air because you got what you came for.
This is not me asking for a boyfriend
I can hear it already. The eye roll. The “she says she does not do labels and then wants a good morning text.”
Yes. Correct. I contain that mess. Welcome.
I will still say I do not do boyfriends, usually as a joke, usually because wanting one out loud feels like handing someone a weapon. That does not mean I want to be treated like a good bottle that gets recorked and left on the side.
Care after sex is not a relationship. It is hygiene with feelings. You wash your hands. You check the other person got back to their postcode. You do not get to skip that because I was enthusiastic.
If anything, the enthusiastic ones need the check-in more. We go in hard. We look fine. We are not always fine ten minutes after the door. I can be laughing in your hallway and still be doing that private inventory on the stairs. Did I like that. Did I like him. Did I just use a body to turn the volume down again.
A “you good?” catches that without making it a therapy session. I will probably say I am good. Sometimes I even mean it. The point is you asked.
How I check in too
I am not doing the thing where only men fail a test I never sit.
If you leave my flat, I should send the same dull line. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I get proud and wait, which is just fear in a better coat. I know that. I write it down and hate the handwriting.
When I get it right, it is short. Hope the tubes are not a nightmare. Thanks for last night. Get back alright. No essay. No claiming. Just the human bit.
If I do not want another night, I can still hope you got home. Those are different jobs. People mix them up because it is easier to go cold than to be decent and clear.
I will take decent and clear. Even if the answer is we should leave it there. Especially then. Ghosting after sex is just someone failing the kettle test at distance.
What I do with the score
I do not confront people with a list. I am not that girl in the group chat with a presentation.
I just stop offering the best of it to anyone who has shown me they only want the easy half. The body. The laugh. The version with the full face on. They can find that plenty of places. London is full of nights and people who look finished.
The ones who check in get more of me. Not immediately a relationship. Not my whole diary. Just the bit where I stay for the tea. Where I do not bolt like the sunrise is a fire alarm. Where I might, against my own branding, let a morning happen.
That is the prize, if you need it spelled out. Not more sex, although that tends to follow. The prize is I stop performing long enough to sit in your kitchen with no mascara and still be worth a sentence.
If that sounds small, you have not been in enough kitchens at 7am.
Anyway
Keep your recap texts. Keep the fire emojis. Keep telling me it was mental, as if I was not there.
Send the boring one. The are-you-home-safe one. The kettle one.
I am keeping score. I have always kept score. I would rather be accused of being too much than keep handing good nights to people who cannot manage four words after.
Most of them pass the sex. I know. I was there. I helped.
The morning is the exam. Put the kettle on or do not bother taking your shoes off next time.
