I left her outside the bar. She was drunker than me and I would have to walk around the block and double back so that I wouldn’t catch up with her. Part of me thought she would be safer if we walked together, but I felt sharpened by some other feeling which suggested otherwise. 

We’d started somewhere quiet, just cups of tea and talking. She had one of those cool square backpacks which she put on the floor and made a cage for with her legs. We talked about I Love Dick and how it didn’t really work as a tv show. She was cleverer than me. We sat in the window and her hair changed colour from red to gold to yellow, periodically ignited and doused as cars passed behind her on the darkened street. 

An ex came into the cafe, passed our table and I got up to chat with them at the bar. I took my time, enjoying the conversation and the chance to seem like the sort of person people were pleased to see. I stayed at the bar for too long really, so I came back with two gins and apologised so horrifically sincerely, that she laughed and touched my hand. 

When the cafe closed, we moved on to a club. It was as dark and loud as we knew it would be, but we feigned disappointment for each other. The bar was crowded with people of the right age to be up that late on a Tuesday. We agreed that it was unseemly, pushing to take up space among young bodies and resolved to limit their exposure to our decrepitude. We bought two drinks each, so we wouldn’t have to come back, and took these upstairs, where they used to have the queer disco

nights. She said she’d never made it to one and I said that I knew that already, because I would have remembered her. She told me off and called me gauche which I took to mean that it would be fine to sit next to her, instead of opposite, when we found a table. As soon as we were close, we were closer. I asked her if I could, and then we kissed sitting down, in the dark of the upstairs room, the thudding of the bar below us humming through our chairs. 

We drank some more, and she talked about her ex, who she’d been with a long time. She said she’d always known that she liked girls but that he was the only person she’d ever been with. Her eyes stopped looking at mine as she spoke, and it began to feel like I could have been anyone, so I kissed her again to remind her I was me. I said I’d had a similar experience, which was true, but really, I’d forgotten how it felt to be just out of it. 

After the drinks were gone, we made to leave together, and she tripped over the strap of her bag. I hoisted her up into my crooked arm, held her hand to steady her and led her outside, beyond the smoking bit. We passed the bouncers, who looked at us and said ‘Night Ladies’ in that particular way, trying to lay claim. When we were out on the street she turned back and shouted something at 

them, but they’d turned around already, forgetting us. She put on her coat and reached up to my neck. I’d been with men who were shorter than me before now, but only ever by an inch or so. I had to properly lean down to kiss her. One hand at the back of her neck, one hand finding her shoulder blade, tracing it. And leaning over her, I felt a solid flattening of my body. As my arms settled on her shoulders, I was reminded of those heavy blankets, the fancy ones that keep you still while you sleep. Feeling the impact of myself was unfamiliar and I remembered then those first few months out of marriage, the dramatic unreality of all the things I’d done that I’d ended up forgetting or wishing I could. With that, my abandon was lost. Kissing her knowing I should stop was no less

fantastic and the headiness of wanting more than this almost consumed any lucidity I had left. But I lifted my face out of her reach, and she kept her arms around my neck and smiled, looking into my eyes again, searing herself into me. I kissed her forehead and regretted it as she took her arms away. 

I’m headed down there she said, and I nodded the opposite way, not wanting to say actual words in case I said the wrong ones I wanted to. 

Stay safe, she said, and waved even though we were still less than a foot apart. I waved back, turned and left her.