Page 48 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

Ac/Dc

YOU SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT LONG

‘I could murder fish and chips.’

It was the least romantic thing anyone had ever said to me after sex.

Sheila had stood in her kitchen wearing an oversized shirt and a smile as she tapped an order into her phone. I was wearing something similar – a blue and white striped number that Sheila had thrown on the bed for me – and I tried to remember whether I had ever before worn a girlfriend’s clothes. After stripping free from our sodden wears, we had somehow made it to the bedroom and misplaced nearly three hours. My body was sore and I felt utterly full of… something, something I hadn’t felt in the longest time. And as I stood in the doorway of a kitchen I didn’t recognise and watched Sheila skim through the online menu for a local fish bar, it crossed my mind that it might be something like love.

She showed me around the house while we were waiting for the food to arrive. It was everything I’d expected it to be: bright colours and soft furnishings, with all of Sheila’s renovation work banished to the garage so she could keep a safe distance between that and home. With smugness, she also showed me her spare bedroom; which was, in fact, a small library. The room was dressed with shelves from base to brim and every free space was taken up by books that looked to be, at a glance at least, alphabetised.

‘Are you trying to seduce me?’

Sheila pulled me to her and kissed the corner of my mouth. ‘Always.’ The front doorbell cut through the moment and she hurried from the room to the stairs. ‘But I am going to need a hot meal to recharge,’ she shouted back as I followed her down.

We ate the fish and chips hungrily, standing up in her kitchen. Our lips were stained with red and mustard colouring as we alternated between ketchup and curry sauce; we broke off whole chunks of cod and rushed them into our mouths. Sheila stripped away part of her batter and rolled two chips into it, in what I thought was a show of absolute genius.

A laugh erupted out of me. ‘We’re eating like animals.’

Sheila cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘I don’t know whether you saw what we just did in that bedroom…’

‘There is a possibility that I blacked out for a minute or two.’

And even though Sheila laughed, I wasn’t sure that I was joking. It was the first time in perhaps years that I’d even been with another woman and yet somehow, the whole thing had clicked into place like muscle memory – but better. While the hours had rushed by at the speed of a train without stops, there had also been moments where we’d taken our sweet time. Moments where I had cupped my stomach to shield it from view, and Sheila had eased my hands away to place them on the back of her head instead. Moments where Sheila had closed her eyes so tightly that it looked like a medley of pleasure and discomfort that she was feeling all at once, and I’d forced myself to pause until she could look me in the eye again – which she did, shortly followed by her strangled voice asking why I’d stopped. There were so many snatched moments caught in my recent memory that I wanted to file them all away for safe-keeping in a box that would forever live right at the front of my brain.

‘Right.’ Sheila wiped her hands together with a slap. ‘I am absolutely done.’

‘You’ve had your basic needs met,’ I answered with a chuckle. I was midway to creating my own chip-batter-roll contraption when Sheila closed what little space there was between us and wrapped her arms around my waist. The cool of the cotton was a blissful contrast against the heat of my skin, and the weight of Sheila’s body against mine somehow now felt like one of the most familiar things in the world.

‘Stay.’

It wasn’t a question, I realised, but a statement.

‘I’m not finished with you,’ she said. ‘Stay here, tonight?’

I thought of my husband. To begin with, I imagined David sitting up at home waiting for me to come back and tell him about my evening. When I fact-checked that thinking, though, I realised David probably wasn’t even home himself, never mind worrying about whether I was. I landed on a happy medium, to assuage the soft flutter of guilt I was feeling.

‘Let me message David to let him know.’ I reached for a towel to wipe my greasy hands on. ‘He’ll only think I’ve been kidnapped by Russian drug lords otherwise.’

Sheila laughed. ‘Does that happen to you a lot?’

‘No.’ I was looking around for my phone. ‘David just reads a lot of crime novels.’

Sheila grabbed my hand and kissed my temple. ‘It’ll be downstairs, where your clothes are.’ She planted another soft kiss before she moved away. ‘I’m going back to bed…’

* * *

If I thought I ached the night before, it was nothing compared to the morning after. I stretched out on my side of the bed – my side of the bed, I tried the phrase on a second time for comfort – and simultaneously felt the beginnings of cramp in both calves paired with what can only be described as a spasm in my left thigh. I didn’t like my odds for standing, so the wash of relief that flooded me when I lifted my head to see Sheila sneaking back into the bedroom with a mug of tea in each hand was something else altogether. She laughed when she saw my expression.

‘I’ll go ahead and guess that your legs are as good as mine.’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered as I fidgeted myself upright in bed. ‘At least you’re walking.’

She shrugged. ‘I do a lot of yoga.’

‘Well that explains a lot of last night.’ I took my tea from her, holding the mug awkwardly by the rim, while I arched an eyebrow and smirked.

Sheila climbed back into bed next to me and shuffled over until her right thigh was pressed tight against my left. ‘You brought your own moves to the table, I think you’ll find.’