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I woke at six with a crick in my neck and the cat sitting on my chest. Priya’s bedroom door was half open. I could hear her breathing, slow and deep.
And I panicked. I don’t know why. Something about the daylight. Something about her real name and her real flat and her real cat, and the job centre, and the kettle, and the whole week landing on me at once.
I found my shoes. I left a note on the back of a takeaway menu: Thank you for last night. You were amazing. Owen. No number. I didn’t even think about the number.
The front door was double-locked. The key wasn’t in it. I stood there for a minute and a half rattling it as quietly as a door can be rattled, which is not very quietly.
“Top drawer,” said Priya, behind me.
She was in the bedroom doorway in an oversized T-shirt, arms folded, hair everywhere. She’d read the note. It was in her hand.
“I was going to…”
“Make coffee?” she said. “Wake me up? Stay?” She shook her head, opened the drawer and handed me the key. “Seven years I’ve been dancing, and the first man I bring home tries to sneak out at six in the morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not a bad guy, Owen. You’re just not ready.” She opened the door for me. “Friday’s still twenty a song.”
I walked home along the canal in last night’s shirt, past joggers and dog-walkers, smelling of red wine and her perfume, feeling like the stupidest man in the city.
Ending 21 of 25: The Walk of Shame. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.