"So how long has it been? Ten years? God, you've hardly changed at all!"
She laughed, taking another sip of wine.
"Thanks. But we both know that's not true. You've changed though. You never used to care what you were wearing."
And it was true, he had changed. He looked even better than she remembered him, although it had been years since she had thought back to her college days. Now, there was undoubtedly something about the tailored jacket, the tight white t-shirt, the cut of his jeans, which really suited him. He had never been exactly handsome in the conventional sense, but there was no doubt that age had added something extra to the mischievous smile and the way his slouched casually beside her, arms sprawled over the edge of the booth at the back of the Soho pub.
But had it really been ten years? Where had the time gone? And, when he had suddenly stepped into her field of vision and greeted her enthusiastically, she thought back and wondered. Had she forgotten something about herself?
She had known The Friend with Benefits during her first year at one of London's universities. She had been twenty then, a castaway in the big city, and he had been five years older and had seemed to be everywhere, involved in everything, an old hand in his final year. There had been something about his confidence that had first attracted her to him, as she knew it had to others in her year, but it was his vulnerability in her company, the fact that he clearly wanted her, that had excited her more. So one night at the end of the first term, drunk on cheap shots that gave her the courage she never thought she possessed, she had seduced him. And it had started a friendship that was radically different to any other she had experienced before or since.
He had always been an early riser, she remembered that clearly. In the time she had known him, he had never stayed the night with her. They lived in the same campus block and he would come to her flat in the morning, sometimes in the week but always on a Sunday, sometimes bringing warm croissants and the
Sunday Times
, and they would talk and flirt and always end up in bed. At night or around the college buildings, they were just like any other friends, but those mornings were always different. And very quickly they had discovered something in common, something they felt that they alone shared.
They both liked to experiment. No, they
loved
to experiment. In that respect they were perfectly matched. She was James Watson to his Francis Crick, he was Robert Oppenheimer to her Edward Teller, and they thirsted for knowledge without fear of consequences or any notion of propriety. When they heard of something that was new, they tried it out to see whether it worked, to see whether their experiments deserved to be repeated. What she had loved more than anything was that even though he was older than her, he never pretended to be more knowledgeable or adept than she was. They had both been explorers, hesitantly probing together the limits of what aroused them.
Tying each other up. Different positions in different parts of her flat. Investigating the cold thrill of ice cubes on the most sensitive areas of each other's bodies. Role-play. They had tried it all. One morning, she had masturbated him with her feet and he had erupted over her painted toenails, only to reciprocate by bringing her to an intense orgasm with his big toe. Even now, after all these years, he was still regrettably the only man she had ever trusted enough to allow to fist her.
But now, how long ago that brief period seemed! She realised she had lost something in the decade that had passed. What had happened in the intervening years? After he had left university, they had lost contact, and once she had graduated and immersed herself in her job and her career, she had changed. God, she had become normal, embracing the values of her colleagues, dating men who failed to excite her just because any girl without a steady boyfriend or a regular date had nothing to talk about over coffee on a Monday morning. But it had never quite worked out in same way it had for the other women in the office, who had started to marry and breed and seemed so joyful in their coupledom. Why was she so different? She felt a loneliness she had never felt before, a failure to fit in that sometimes frightened and despaired her.
And now suddenly he had appeared, looking fit, comfortable, happy and full of surprise and pleasure to see her. And he was sitting down beside her. And she had drunk two glasses of wine and could feel the deadening of the alcohol lowering her self-consciousness
They talked briefly, politely, about the intervening years since they had last spoken. She felt she had little to say but breezily recounted her life.
"Men?" he said.
"Some" she replied.
"Now?"
"Not at the moment."
"Anyone special along the way?"
There hadn't been. She wasn't sure how to respond.
"You know, it's been up and down."
"Isn't it always..."
He smiled, wanting to share a joke. If only he knew.
"What about you?" she said.
"Oh, I've branched out, diversified," he said.
"In what way?"
"Both ways."
She shook her head.
"I'm bisexual," he said.
She looked at him without knowing what to say. Was she surprised? It fitted with what she knew about him. She knew he never flinched from trying something new.
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Often."
"No, not often. I'm basically a straight guy. Who happens to like cock every now and then."
Suddenly she felt relaxed. She stifled a laugh.
""And the most recent?"
"Yesterday," he said, smiling.
"And did you do, you know, penetrative sex?"
"Oh no," he replied. "That's not really my thing."
