Pi doesn’t reply either. At least not the way I expect him to. He slaps his hand backwards and holds my wrist steady, and then he whines through gritted teeth, spilling over my fist and my clean sheets. I don’t stop thrusting. In fact, I speed up, until I’m bracing a palm between his shoulder blades and crying out into the chilled air as I come.
Afterwards, I remove myself as delicately as possible, and Pi drops to the mattress like he’s wounded. I get rid of the condom and go in search of a towel for him.
“Do you want to have a shower before you leave?” I say.
Pi blinks up at me, but we both understand there can be no “couple’s” shit between us. This is simply a fuck once to cross it off a checklist and be done with it situation.
“I’ll shower at home.” His home. He accepts the towel from me. “Is this clean or dirty?”
“Well, it was from my bath yesterday so kinda both, but I just rubbed your cum from my fist on it, so it’s less clean now.”
I watch him, fascinated, as he mops up the excess lube from his thighs and between his cheeks.
“Is this your wash basket?” Pi lifts the lid from my hamper and drops the towel inside. “We’re like . . . still good, yeah?”
“Huh?” I say. My mind’s reeling from the evening’s activities and the abruptness of it all ending.
He tugs on his pants. “This won’t make things weird between us, will it? We’re still friends?”
“Of course. Shit, of course we are. All we did was fuck.” I shrug. “No big deal. That was just something that we had to do, and now it’s done we can go back to how shit was before Halloween.”
He pulls on his socks. “Ripper.”
I find a pair of joggers and hop into them. Pi watches me this time, his eyes raking up and down my front, resting on my dick for a few moments. He smiles to himself, then pushes to his feet and climbs into the rest of his clothes.
“Are you okay?” I say, and Pi frowns at me. “Are you sore?”
“A little. But I’m fine. I’m a big boy.”
I swallow down my response. I want him to want me to take care of him, but that was never going to be part of our arrangement.
He pats down his trouser pockets. “Oh, wait, we got a taxi here. I don’t have my car.”
“I’ll order you an Uber.”
My phone’s still in my suit jacket on the hallway floor. I have an unread text message from Megan. She’s on a night out in Cardiff with Georgia, and judging by her spelling, she’s had a skinful.
I got mai tai in my eeye. Hey thar rhymeds. Lovr u xxxx
“Taxi will be here in sixteen minutes,” I say, typing a quick“Love you too xx”in reply.
A weight, like a lead ball, presses against my gut. No doubt it’s guilt. I just fucked someone who isn’t my girlfriend and I have zero intentions to tell her about it.
It should be guilt.
Only . . . it doesn’t feel like guilt at all.
Urgh, what are these feelings?
No, damn it. It has to be guilt. I’m a cheater, it can’t be anything other than guilt.
“You alright?” Pi says, assessing me with his X-ray yellow irises.
“Hmm?” I stash my phone. “Yeah. I’m good, pard, you?”
He doesn’t answer. He simply watches me for a few moments longer. I don’t know, the silence and the scrutiny should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. Pi just has a different way of processing information than most people I’ve met.
“I don’t usually do one-night stands,” I say, because this feels dangerously close to a one-night stand.
