Author: Akiko

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I drove home with the window down, partly for the fresh air and partly for reasons I’d rather not explain.

At home I stripped in the kitchen, stuffed my jeans and boxers into the washing machine and stood there naked in the light of the fridge, eating cold beans out of the tin and feeling, honestly, not bad. Two hundred quid and twenty more. One song. Totally worth it.

The machine started its spin. Something clattered round the drum.

I stopped it, fished around in the wet denim and pulled out a small folded square of card, pulped at the edges. The Velvet Room’s logo was on one side. On the other, in what had once been neat eyeliner handwriting, was a name and a phone number.

Most of it had dissolved.

I could make out a capital B. A y, maybe. The first four digits of a mobile number and then a grey smear where the rest had been. She must have slipped it into my pocket when she climbed off me. When she kissed my cheek. While I was busy being a man who’d just come in his jeans.

I laid it on the radiator to dry, as if that might bring the ink back. It didn’t.

I went back the next Friday. Scarlett wasn’t working. Nor the Friday after. The girl on the bar said she’d finished her nursing degree and quit, and no, she couldn’t give out numbers, obviously.

I kept the card. It’s still on my fridge, under a magnet: a capital B and four digits. A reminder to check my pockets.

Ending 4 of 25: Laundry Day. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I sat in my car with the heater on, a box of tissues from the glovebox and absolutely no plan. I just knew I wasn’t leaving.

At ten past two the fire door banged open and Scarlett came out in a long coat and trainers, bag over her shoulder. She spotted my car straight away.

She knocked on the window. I wound it down.

“You’ve been out here two hours,” she said.

“I never asked your name.”

She stared at me. Then she laughed so hard she had to lean on the roof. “That’s why? Oh my God.” She opened the back door and climbed in. “Get in here.”

I got in the back with her. She pulled the door shut and shrugged the coat off her shoulders, and she was still in the black lace underneath.

“Bryony,” she said, climbing onto my lap. “And you owe me a proper one. No jeans this time.”

She unzipped me, and I was hard again in seconds. She tugged her knickers aside, rolled a condom down me from her bag and lowered herself onto my cock, slow, gasping, her head bumping the roof lining. The windows steamed up in about a minute.

She rode me hard, the little car rocking on its springs, my hands finally, finally on her hips, her bare tits bouncing in my face. She came biting my shoulder. I came holding her down on me, swearing into her hair.

“Better than the booth?” she panted.

“Everything is better than the booth.”

She wrote her number in eyeliner on my wrist and kissed me goodnight.

Ending 3 of 25: The Back Seat. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I’ll text you,” I said, trying to sound like a man who had options. “Maybe breakfast another time.”

Bryony’s eyebrows went up a fraction. Then she smiled, and it was a nice smile, but it was a smaller one.

“Sure,” she said. “Another time.”

She didn’t give me her number. I realised that about four seconds after she’d stepped into the corridor to get dressed, which was about four seconds too late. I stood in the empty booth pulling my shirt on, still buzzing, still smelling of her, telling myself it was fine. She knew where I’d be. I knew where she’d be. Friday.

Dez let me out through the front. He looked at me the way you look at a man who has just stepped on a rake.

“She doesn’t ask twice, mate,” he said.

“She asked me to breakfast.”

“I know. I heard.” He held the door. “Nobody gets asked to breakfast.”

I went back the next Friday with a clean shirt and a speech prepared. Scarlett was on the stage. She saw me, smiled warmly, waved, and then spent the whole night working a table of accountants. When I finally got a song with her on the floor she was lovely, funny, all professional sparkle, and she called me babe like she called everybody babe.

“Breakfast?” I tried, at the end.

“I’m on placement mornings now, babe.” She kissed my cheek. “Shame. Bacon was on me.”

I went home and lay on the bed, thinking about the best sex of my life and the breakfast I’d turned down, and laughed until it hurt.

Ending 2 of 25: Playing It Cool. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely yes to breakfast.”

“It’s half two in the morning,” she pointed out. “Breakfast is technically hours away.”

“I can wait.”

“I can’t.” She drove us to her flat in a battered little Fiesta, one hand on my knee the whole way. It was a tiny place above a bakery, textbooks stacked on every surface, a skeleton poster on the bathroom door. We fell into her bed in a tangle and slept like we’d been knocked out.

I woke at nine to the smell of fresh bread drifting up through the floorboards and Bryony curled against my back, naked and warm, her hand already wrapped round my cock.

“Breakfast,” she murmured into my shoulder.

She kissed her way down my chest, freckled shoulders bare in the sunlight, and took me in her mouth, slow and lazy, until I was gripping the sheets. Then she climbed up, rolled a condom on and sank down onto me with a long, happy sigh.

No buzzer. No Dez. No camera. Just her, rocking slowly on top of me in the daylight, my hands everywhere I wanted them, her nipples hard against my palms. I rolled her under me and fucked her deep and steady while she wrapped her legs round my back and begged me not to stop. She came with her nails in my shoulders, and I followed her, groaning her name. Her real name.

Afterwards she fetched croissants from downstairs in nothing but my shirt.

“Worst week of your life,” she said, feeding me a bite. “How’s it ending?”

“Best Saturday I’ve ever had.”

“Good.” She kissed the crumbs off my lip. “Stay for lunch.”

Ending 1 of 25: Breakfast in Bed. You found the full happy ending.

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“Let me sort this,” I said, and picked up the phone on the desk before she could argue.

Reception answered on the ninth ring. The same flustered girl. The system had crashed at nine, she explained, and they’d been checking people in by hand ever since. Somebody had written 714 twice. She was very, very sorry. They were completely full because of the conference, but she might be able to find me something. Could I give her twenty minutes?

I put the phone down. Priya was watching me from the bathroom doorway, the towel still clutched at her chest.

“Twenty minutes,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe.” She sighed. “I’m Priya, by the way. Twenty-seven. I’m here with my friend Rosie, who’s in 716 next door and is currently, I’d guess, three cocktails deep in the bar downstairs.”

“Liam. Thirty-eight. Here for a conference about firewalls, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds.”

That got a smile out of her. She had a good smile, a little crooked, the kind that made you want to earn another one.

“Well, Liam who likes firewalls,” she said, “I’m not putting clothes on for twenty minutes. So you can either wait here and keep your eyes on the telly, or go downstairs and shout at someone in person.”

She sat on the end of the bed, crossed her legs, and the towel parted along one smooth brown thigh. She didn’t fix it.

→ I wait in her room for reception to call back

→ I go down to the lobby to sort it out myself

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It was nearly midnight. Reception was a mess. And she was laughing, which felt like a good sign.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not going to make you get dressed and go downstairs to fight about this. I’ll ring them in a bit. In the meantime, I’m happy to take the chair, or the floor, or the bath. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

She studied me for a long moment, still dripping on the carpet. “You’re offering to share.”

“I’m offering not to be a nuisance.”

“I’m Priya,” she said finally. “Twenty-seven. Here for a weekend away with my friend Rosie, who is next door in 716 and will absolutely kill you if you turn out to be a creep.” She nodded at the connecting door between the rooms. “That’s not locked, by the way. Just so you know.”

“Liam. Thirty-eight. Network engineer. Extremely boring.”

“Boring I can work with.” She tucked the towel tighter and padded over to the minibar, bending to open it in a way that made the towel ride up the backs of her thighs. I looked at the curtains with enormous concentration.

“I was going to have one of these anyway,” she said, holding up two tiny bottles of whisky. “Seems rude to drink alone when there’s a strange man in my room.”

Then she glanced at me, rumpled and sweaty in my conference shirt. “Or you could use the shower first. You look like you’ve been on a train all day.”

→ I accept the minibar whisky and sit down with her

→ I take her up on the shower first

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I went down in the lift in my crumpled suit with my wheelie case and my dignity in roughly that order.

The lobby was chaos. A queue of grumpy conference delegates, a printer making death noises, and the poor girl on reception typing with two fingers. I joined the back of the line.

That’s where Rosie found me.

I didn’t know it was Rosie yet. I just knew a curvy blonde in a green satin dress had wandered over from the bar with a cocktail in each hand and was looking me up and down like I was on a menu.

“You look like a man who’s been through something,” she said.

“Somebody else is in my room. Room 714.”

She lit up. “Seven-one-four? That’s Priya’s room! Oh my God. Did she scream?”

“She threatened me.”

“That’s her.” She handed me one of the cocktails without asking. “I’m Rosie. Twenty-nine. Best friend, travel buddy, bad influence. I’m in 716, right next door to her.” She clinked her glass on mine. “Priya’s lovely, by the way. Terrible taste in men. Excellent taste in hotels.”

The queue hadn’t moved. Rosie’s dress had a slit up the side that went most of the way to the equator. She stood close enough for me to smell her perfume and the rum on her breath.

“You know,” she said, “you could wait here for an hour. Or you could come upstairs to my room and wait in comfort. I’ve got a minibar and very low standards.”

→ I go upstairs with Rosie

→ I stay in the lobby and wait for a new key

← Back

I sat in the armchair by the window and pointed myself very firmly at the television. It was showing a documentary about otters. I have never watched otters so hard in my life.

Priya didn’t put clothes on. She got two miniature gin and tonics out of the minibar instead, handed me one and curled up on the bed with hers, the towel tucked under her arms.

“You’re very polite,” she said.

“I’m in your room. It’s the least I can do.”

“It’s nice. Rosie would have had you thrown out by now. Or snogged you. Hard to say with Rosie.” She sipped her drink. “Tell me something interesting about firewalls.”

“There’s nothing interesting about firewalls.”

“Then tell me something interesting about you.”

So I did. My divorce, three years ago, amicable and still sad. The allotment I was failing at. The fact that I’d never once in my life done anything impulsive. She listened with her chin on her knees, and somewhere in there she stopped watching the otters and started watching me.

“Never anything?” she said.

“Never anything.”

The gin was warm in my chest. She’d let the towel loosen. I could see the soft curve of her breast where it gaped.

Then the phone rang. Reception. They’d found a room on the fourth floor. A porter could bring the key up in five minutes.

Priya looked at me over the rim of her glass and said nothing at all.

→ I tell reception not to bother and stay where I am

→ I take the new room like a gentleman

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“A shower,” I said, “would genuinely save my life.”

“Go on, then. Towels are on the rail. Don’t use all the hot water, I might want another one.”

I locked myself in the bathroom, stripped off a day’s worth of trains and conferences and stood under the water with my eyes closed. It was glorious. Hot, hard, the good kind of hotel shower that hammers your shoulders flat. For about three minutes I forgot there was a beautiful stranger in a towel on the other side of the door.

Then I heard the lock turn. It was one of those bathroom locks you can open from outside with a coin.

“Don’t panic,” Priya said through the steam. “I’m not a murderer. I just had a thought.”

The shower screen was frosted, but not that frosted. I could see her shape. I watched the towel drop to the floor.

“The thought,” she said, “is that I’ve been single for a year, I’m on holiday, and a man just walked into my room and was nicer about it than most of my dates.” She paused. “And you’ve got a very nice back. I looked.”

“Priya…”

“I’m asking,” she said. “Can I come in? You can say no. I’ll go back out and we’ll never mention it.”

My cock had already answered for me. It was standing up under the water like it had been called on in class.

→ I slide the screen open and let her in

→ I tell her to wait, and that I’ll be out in a minute