Author: Akiko

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“I’d rather wait for Tess,” I typed.

There was a very long pause.

“Wait for her to do what?”

“Whatever she wants. Coffee. A walk. Nothing. I’m not paying Tess. I’ll wait for Tess.”

The dots appeared and disappeared six times.

“Okay,” she wrote at last. “That’s annoyingly lovely. Give me a while. I need to think about it, and I’m going to Lanzarote with Gemma for a week, and I can’t think about you while I’m lying next to your sister by a pool.”

“Fair.”

She went to Lanzarote. Gemma posted photos. Tess in a white bikini, laughing on a lilo. I looked at that photo far more than was reasonable.

On the last night of the holiday, at two in the morning, my phone buzzed. One photo, from Tess. Just her bare feet on a hotel balcony at sunset, and her painted toenails.

“Thinking,” she wrote.

The next night: a photo of a cocktail. “Still thinking.”

The night after that, back in Manchester: a photo of her front door, open. “Done thinking. Saturday. Bring wine. Do not bring an envelope.”

I read it twelve times.

I bought three bottles of wine, just in case. And on Saturday, at seven, I knocked on her door.

Ending 12 of 16: Rain Check. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I avoided her for the rest of Christmas. It was a feat of tactical engineering.

I volunteered to do all the washing up. I took the dog for a walk in the dark that lasted ninety minutes. I hid in the downstairs loo during charades. When Gemma made us all play Monopoly, I bankrupted myself on purpose in eleven minutes so I could go to bed.

Tess, to be fair, was doing the same. Every time I walked into a room she walked out of it. At one point we both tried to leave the kitchen through the same door at the same time and did a little dance for about ten seconds while my mum watched with narrowed eyes.

My Secret Santa present to her, which I’d bought in a panic, was a scented candle. Hers to me was a mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST BROTHER. I didn’t know whether that was a dig.

On Boxing Day morning, as I was loading my bag into the car, Mum came out in her slippers.

“What did you do to that poor girl?” she said.

“Nothing!”

“She’s been looking at you all Christmas like a lost puppy, and you’ve been running away from her like she’s got the plague.” She folded her arms. “Your father and I met at his sister’s wedding, you know. She was my best friend.”

She went back inside.

I sat in the car for a long time.

Ending 13 of 16: Silent Night. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I walked her to her door. All two streets of it, under one umbrella, our shoulders bumping.

On her doorstep she turned round and looked up at me.

“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” she said.

“I want to,” I said. “God, I want to. But I’ve had four pints and you’ve had three gins and you’re Gemma’s best friend and last week I tried to pay you. I want to do this properly. If we do it at all.”

She stared at me. Then she laughed and shook her head.

“Ben Hartley,” she said. “You are the most frustrating man in Manchester.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a goodnight.” She kissed me on the cheek, very close to the corner of my mouth, and let herself in.

We became friends. Proper friends. Pub quizzes on Tuesdays. Old films at hers on Sundays. She told me about her clients, anonymously, and they were mostly sweet and sad and occasionally hilarious. I told her about my dates, which were mostly disasters.

Gemma was delighted. “My two favourite people are mates!”

Every so often, on Tess’s sofa, during a black and white film, her head on my shoulder, she’ll look up at me with a question in her eyes.

One of these Sundays, I’m going to answer it.

Ending 10 of 16: Friend Zone. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I booked her for the following night.

At nine there was a knock. This time when I opened the door, neither of us said oh my God.

“Hello,” she said, in a voice slightly lower and silkier than Tess’s. “I’m Sienna.”

“Ben. Come in.”

She was extraordinary. Calm, confident, playful, entirely in control. She poured the wine. She asked what I liked and listened properly to the answer. When I fumbled with her zip she laughed softly and did it herself. Underneath was red lace I would think about for the rest of my life.

She undressed me slowly, kissing my chest, then pushed me back onto the bed and went down on me until I was gasping. Then she rolled a condom on with one smooth movement, climbed on top, and rode me with her head thrown back, then let me roll her over and take her from behind, her hands gripping my headboard.

Afterwards she lay on her side and traced my chest.

“Good?” said Sienna.

“Incredible.”

“Good.” She sat up and started dressing. At the door she paused, and for half a second the voice slipped and it was Tess again.

“See you at Easter, Ben,” she said, and grinned. “Don’t knock over the gravy.”

Then she was Sienna again, and gone.

Ending 11 of 16: The Rebooking. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I answered. I don’t know why. Twenty years of instinct. When your little sister calls three times you pick up, even if her best friend is sitting on your cock.

“Hey Gem,” I said, in what I hoped was a normal voice.

“Why are you breathing like that?”

“Gym. Just got back from the gym.”

“At ten at night?”

Tess, still on top of me, clapped both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. Then, wickedly, she started to move again. Slowly.

“Anyway,” Gemma said. “I need a massive favour. Can you help Tess move flat next Saturday? She’s got loads of stuff and you’ve got the van.”

Tess rolled her hips. I made a noise.

“Ben?”

“Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Love to help Tess.”

“Great. I’ll tell her. I’ve been trying to ring her all night, she’s not answering, God knows what she’s up to.”

Tess bit my shoulder to stop herself screaming.

“No idea,” I managed. “Got to go. Bye.”

I hung up. Tess collapsed on my chest, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Then she sat up, still laughing, and rode me hard and fast until we both came in about a minute flat.

The following Saturday I helped her move flat. We made very slow progress. Most of it was the bed.

Ending 8 of 16: Speakerphone. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I kissed her under the umbrella.

It was the rain, I’ll claim. And the gin. And six years of barbecues. She kissed me back like she’d been waiting for permission, her hands fisted in my jacket, rain dripping off the umbrella onto both of us.

“Two streets,” she said, pulling back. “Run.”

We ran. Her flat was a fourth-floor walk-up in Ancoats full of books and plants and a framed poster of Casablanca. We didn’t turn the lights on. She pulled my wet jumper over my head and I peeled her jeans down her legs, and we fell onto her bed laughing and dripping.

There was no envelope. No rules. She went down on me with her curls tickling my thighs, then pulled me up and rolled a condom onto me and climbed on top. She rode me slowly at first, then fast, her hands braced on my chest, gasping my name. I came with her. Then, an hour later, I went down on her until she came twice and begged me to stop.

In the morning she made coffee in my jumper.

“Just so we’re clear,” she said, “this is not a booking.”

“Clear.”

“I don’t charge for this. I don’t think I ever will.”

“Good.”

She smiled over her mug. “Gemma’s going to kill us both.”

Ending 9 of 16: Two Streets Away. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I ignored it completely.

“Don’t you dare stop,” Tess breathed, and she didn’t, and neither did I.

The phone rang out. Then it rang again. Tess laughed, breathless, and leaned over without breaking rhythm and switched it to silent. Then she sat up straight on top of me, rolling her hips in slow circles, her curls falling over her shoulders, and I gripped her thighs and watched her face.

“God, Ben. Look at you.”

“Look at you.”

She rode me harder. I sat up and wrapped my arms around her and kissed her breasts, and she held my head there and moaned. Then I flipped her onto her back and she wrapped her legs round me and pulled me deeper, and we stopped talking altogether.

She came first, digging her nails into my back. I followed seconds later, her name muffled against her neck.

We lay there sweaty and stunned. She picked up the phone. Eleven missed calls. One text: “WHY ARE YOU NOT ANSWERING. Do you have the number for that plumber Dad used?? My boiler’s broken.”

Tess laughed so hard she cried.

“Text her back,” she said. “Tell her you were busy.”

“Busy with what?”

She rolled on top of me and kissed my chest. “Plumbing,” she said, and reached for another condom.

Ending 7 of 16: Do Not Disturb. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Can I see you again?” I said. “After tonight.”

Tess paused with her hand on my belt.

“As Sienna?” she said. “Or as me?”

“Whichever one you’ll let me.”

She thought about it for a long moment. Then she smiled. “Let’s start with Sienna. Every other Friday. Same time. It’s tidy. It’s honest. It’s my job. And if it ever becomes something else, we’ll talk about it then.”

“Deal.”

“Good.” She pushed me back onto the bed. “Now stop negotiating.”

She was incredible. That first night she rode me slowly, then turned around and let me take her from behind, my hands on that little swallow tattoo, both of us gasping. She came with her face in my pillow, shaking with laughter afterwards because she said she’d never laughed on a booking before.

Every other Friday after that, at nine, there was a knock. Some weeks we had sex the moment the door closed. Some weeks we ate takeaway and watched old black and white films and she fell asleep on my shoulder, and I still paid, because she’d made me promise.

In March, at my mum’s birthday, Gemma said, “Tess, you’re glowing. Are you seeing someone?”

“Sort of,” Tess said, passing me the gravy. “Every other Friday.”

Gemma rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

Tess kicked me under the table.

Ending 6 of 16: Standing Booking. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I let her make me wait.

It was the worst and best ninety minutes of my life. She made me lie on the bed with my hands behind my head and not move them. Then she took her time. She kissed my neck and my chest and the line of hair below my navel and stopped, every time, just before she got anywhere important. She sat astride my thighs in her black lace and rocked, slowly, so I could feel how warm she was through the fabric, and laughed when I groaned.

“Patience,” she whispered. “You’ve waited six years. What’s another hour?”

She stroked me with her fingertips. Barely touching. She licked once, just the tip, and then sat back and drank a sip of my wine while I swore at the ceiling.

“Tess. Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please anything.”

She took off her bra. She let me look but not touch. She told me, in a low voice right against my ear, exactly what she’d thought about doing to me at Gemma’s twenty-fifth. In detail. While her hand moved slowly, so slowly, round my cock.

I came all over my own stomach with a shout before she’d even taken her knickers off.

She laughed so hard she fell off the bed.

“That’s a no-refund policy, I’m afraid,” she said from the floor. “Same time next month?”

I booked her for the following Friday.

Ending 5 of 16: The Long Tease. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I slid the envelope across the counter towards her.

“Take it,” I said. “Please. This is your job. I want to treat it like your job.”

Tess looked at the envelope. Then she picked it up, walked to my kitchen drawer, put it in, and shut the drawer with her hip.

“No,” she said.

“Tess…”

“Ben, I’m not taking your money. I tried. I can’t. You fished me out of a pond when I was twenty-one.” She came back and stood very close. “I want to sleep with you. I’ve wanted to for about six years. I don’t want to be paid for it.”

“That’s very unprofessional.”

“Terribly,” she agreed, and kissed me on the mouth, which broke her own rule within about thirty seconds of making it.

It was frantic after that. We didn’t make it to the bedroom. She hitched her dress up and I lifted her onto the kitchen counter and she rolled a condom onto me with shaking fingers and wrapped her legs round me as I pushed into her. She clung to my shoulders and moaned into my neck. The cutlery drawer rattled with every thrust. She came first, loudly. I followed with her name on my lips.

Afterwards, sitting on the counter in my T-shirt, eating cereal out of the box, she pointed her spoon at the drawer.

“That envelope,” she said, “is buying us dinner next week.”

Ending 3 of 16: Not For Sale. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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