“Thanks,” she said, though it looked like she was only mouthing it. The only seats they had been able to get were right under a speaker.

Sarah and Lain perched on the other end of the sofa, leaning into each other and taking turns to whisper in each other’s ear whilst looking at Adam. They reminded him of the pair of conspiratorial Siamese cats in that Disney movie.

“Do you like my hair?” Tina asked.

“Yeah. It’s nice. What have you done to it?”

“I had it cut shorter, of course!”

Adam nodded. “Yeah. It’s very... subtle.”

Tina giggled and sipped her drink. Adam swigged his back. He hated fizzy alcoholic drinks. It was like you were getting drunk on bubbles.

“I was worried this dress was too much.”

Adam frowned and looked at it. “Why?”

“Do you think it goes with my hair?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Do you really like it?”

“Of course!” He took another swig.

Tina mirrored his move. “You like nice too.”

“Thanks.” He smiled.

Tina smiled too.

“Tina,” said Sarah, poking her.

Tina turned. “Yeah?”

“Come to the little girl’s room with me.”

“Right now?”

“Please?”

“Okay.” She turned back to Adam. “I won’t be long.”

As she stood up, Adam watched Lain and Sarah’s faced. They were still looking at him. Something was going on.

Sarah and Tina hooked arms and made their way to the stairs that led down to the dance floor. No sooner had they gone out of sight, Lain slid over.

“I want you to back off,” she said.

Adam shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because Tina’s very needy at the moment but I don’t think what you’ve got in mind is what she needs right now.”

“And what have I got in mind, Lain?”

Lain raised her eyebrows and sucked on her straw.

Adam drank from his bottle and looked into the near distance. “We won’t do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

“No.” Lain shook her head. “She’ll do whatever you demand, and that’s the problem.”

“I’m not going to demand anything!”

“You know what I mean.”

Adam shook his head angrily and ignored her.

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” Lain said.

Adam laughed. “And you do, of course.”

“I want what’s best for her, what she won’t regret in the morning. I know she wants that too, deep down.”

“I thought it was odd when she turned up to a date with two hanger-ons. Whose idea was that?”

“We’re just looking out for her.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t come here to have a date with Tina and her two mothers.”

“We always look out for each other. That’s all. If you can’t handle that, you know what you can do.”

Then Sarah and Tina appeared at the top of the steps and Lain slid to the other end of the sofa again. When Tina caught Adam looking, she smiled.

Adam took both their drinks and intercepted Tina before she reached the seats.

“Dance with me,” he said, handing her her drink. He slid the free arm around her back and inserted himself between Tina and Sarah.

“Oh. Okay. Sure.”

Sarah glared at Adam.

“See you in a bit,” said Tina.

They left Sarah standing at the top of the stairs.

The dance floor was hot and crowded. A lot of people weren’t even dancing, they were just standing in groups, drinking and chatting, all the while swaying and nodding along to the music, which was the usual club mix.

Tina was a rubbish dancer, mainly because she refused to move anything apart from her hands when she was sober, but started doing belly-flop movements in the air when she was drunk - and she was definitely getting there.

The current track ended, immediately blurring into a euphoric remix of that song Adam’s mum loved, Barber’s ‘Adagio For Strings’.

“Oh, I love this song!” Tina said.

Adam realised it was the nearest they were going to get to a slow dance all evening, so slid his arms around Tina’s waist and pulled her towards him. She looked up into his eyes and smiled, then laid her head against his chest. They swayed together, pressed together.

Now for the hard part, thought Adam.

It took a couple of minutes, by which time the song was almost over. Then Tina suddenly looked up, eyes searching, and pushed against his chest.

“Hang on,” she said. She pushed back further and looked down between them. “Are you..?” Then she glanced around furtively before touching his crotch.

“Sorry,” Adam said. “I couldn’t help it. I was hoping you wouldn’t have felt it.”

“Oh yeah,” she laughed. “I felt it. God, how could I not feel it? Jesus, Adam, what is that?”

Adam drew back, averted his eyes, let his hands fall away from her back and rubbed his face.

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said quickly, putting her hands to his cheeks. “Just unexpected.”

He just nodded and drank from his bottle.

Tina looked around. “Look, do you want to get out of here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Go back to yours?”

He shook his head. “Can’t. Housemates.”

“Okay, then. Would you like to come back to mine?”

He shrugged. “Only if you want to.”

Tina touched his cheeks again. “I want to.”

“Okay then.” Adam grinned.

Tina took another sip of her drink then left the half-full bottle on a shelf at the edge of the dance floor. Adam finished the rest of his then left his empty bottle beside Tina’s. Hand in hand, they headed up the stairs.

Sarah and Lain were waiting at the top.

“We think we’re going to get out of here,” Tina told them.

Sarah and Lain couldn’t have given Adam more disgusted looks. He ignored them.

It was a cool night. The queue outside the club was longer than ever.

“How far away is it?” Adam asked.

“It’s just outside the city centre,” said Tina. “We’ll be able to walk it in ten minutes.”

They started walking.

In the end it took less than ten. Tina lived in a terraced house too, though it was narrower than the one Adam shared. It went back further too.

“We have to go around the back to get in,” Tina said. “The front door is actually in Sarah’s bedroom.”

She led Adam through the passage, which went between the houses, but the houses joined over the top.

As soon as they were through the back door and into the kitchen, Adam grabbed Tina by the wrists and pinned her against the wall with his body. He kissed her, quickly moving from her mouth to her neck.

She giggled. “Can I turn the light on first?”

“No,” he said.

He kissed the part where her neck crossed her jaw to reach her ear. She inhaled sharply.

“Good?” he whispered.

She didn’t reply, but she pulled his shirt out of his trousers and soon her hands were underneath.

“There it is again,” she said, looking down.

And this time Adam hadn’t had to put it on.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

She smiled. “Okay.”

Then she led him up to her bedroom. It was a room with ambiguous gender. There was a ‘Trainspotting’ poster on the wall, and beside it a comical re-evaluation of what various road signs meant (two children crossing the road being ‘road-kill trumps: 20 points’). There were a few books on the shelf: all the Harry Potters, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and a novelty collection of George W Bush quotations. By way of CDs there was Outkast, Robbie Williams, the Black Eyed Peas and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Tina’s duvet cover was the blue end of mauve.

“Okay?” she said, sitting on the bed.

Adam looked around, hands clasped and nodded. Then he smiled and undid his top two buttons.

Tina reached over to the lamp on the bedside table and switched it on. “Turn off the main light.”

Adam switched it off. The bright light from the lamp was subdued by the oversized cream lampshade. Adam approached the bed and Tina stood up.

They kissed, their arms finding each other’s backs and combing the skin with their fingers. Their clothes became twisted and tight on their bodies. Adam roved across her cheek with his lips. Tin sucked his earlobe in passing. He brought his hands round to her front and twisted and squeezed at the clasps on her dress. She struggled with his shirt buttons. Her hands were trembling.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, then abandoned the undressing and pulled her into him.

They embraced once more. She ran her hands up his neck - so good his skin stood up as if chilled - and stuck his fingers into his hair. Adam reached round the back of her dress, feeling for her bra. She wasn’t wearing one.

Then, subconsciously, they broke apart and began undressing themselves. Adam watched her open her dress. Her breasts suddenly sagged from the lack of support, but not by much. When she peeled the dress open, they were plump and buoyant with large nipples.

Adam reached the bottom of his shirt then unfastened his cuffs. He let the shirt fall to the carpet and started removing his watch.

Tina looked him right in the eyes. She was smiling. She bent to lower her dress. Her thighs were curved in a great moon shape. She was wearing tight blue panties and her flesh bulged out the sides but she wasn’t fat. She stood up straight and stepped out of her dress. Adam noticed those large nipples had shrunk to half the size.

“Come here,” she said, but she came to him. She took his naked wrists and placed his hands on her sides, which were warm, and almost dusty in texture.

Tina pulled on his belt to undo it, temporarily tightening it. Adam felt hot. He began to knead her body. She fumbled with his trouser button, then touched his erection as she slowly lowered his fly. It made a catching, rending chug noise that seemed so loud in the silence of the house.

Before she started to pull them down, Adam pulled the condom out of his pocket and held it beneath two fingers in his palm.

“There we go,” said Tina as she tugged his trousers down. They bunched around his ankles. He was still wearing shoes and socks. Tina bent down to undo his laces, but he had to pull the shoes off himself.

When he stood up again, wearing only his form-fitting black boxer shorts, she was completely naked. She stood before him and smiled. She was standing in front of the lamp so he was seeing her almost in silhouette, but he could see she had trimmed herself.

As Adam stepped out of his trousers, Tina came back and hooked some fingers around the waistband of his shorts. She pulled them down. Adam was now rock hard.

“You’re circumcised,” she said, touching his penis.

Adam smiled and ran a hand up from her naked hip to the side of her breast. She inhaled sharply and her hand fell away from his erection.

“Let’s get under the covers,” she said, then she grabbed his hand and pulled him backwards.

As she sat down on the bed she spread her legs open. Adam’s heart was beating swiftly and loudly. Tina lay back with her knees up and apart and held the duvet open beside her like it was a cape.

Adam kicked off his shorts and climbed into the bed. The duvet was light upon his back. Her legs were warm around his sides. She changed position for him. He leaned in and kissed her. He slid one arm beneath her. She arched her back and when she lay down again she hardly weighed anything at all.

Adam pressed himself upon her. Her breasts spread out beneath his chest. Her legs pressed on him from either side. He felt enveloped, surrounded. His penis brushed against her pubic hair. She reached a hand down and stroked the exposed underside of his erection with the pads of her curved fingers.

He leant his head over her shoulder and kissed the side of her neck. She turned her head and moaned gently. Then she ran a few fingers around and around the head of his penis. There was some stickiness. Adam felt it as she let go and his penis slapped against his belly.

Adam put the condom packet on the pillow beside her head then ran a hand down between her legs. He arched up to reach her. She leaned out and up toward his fingers. He stroked at first, then probed a little further. She was sticky too. It felt warm. She turned her head and looked him in the eyes and nodded.

At that signal, Adam sat upright, leaning back on his heels. He got the condom from the pillow and started to tear the edge off.

She caught his hand. “Oh, no. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Adam stopped. Of course he didn’t want to. “You’ve already taken care of things?”

“You don’t need to wear one, no.”

Adam didn’t need telling a third time. He tossed the condom toward his shoes. Then he leaned forward again. It took a few seconds to get comfortable.

He reached down and grabbed his penis then began leaning into her.

“No. The light! The light!” she said.

Adam reached out and turned off the lamp, then got back into position once more.

He felt his penis squash against her flesh, the soft skin resisting, but he kept pushing, kept feeding it with his hand, and then it was through. In a second it was in up to the head, then halfway up the shaft. He let go and leaned in and then he felt the duvet lift from his back as Tina lifted her legs above him. She sighed.

When he was all the way in, Adam paused. Tina ran her hands up and down his back encouragingly. He pulled out a bit, pushed back in, pulled out a little further, and soon found a momentum that wasn’t just comfortable, but pleasurable. He felt a layer of sweat mounting on his skin.

“I love you so much,” Tina said.

Adam tried to ignore her and pushed in another couple of times, and began to nuzzle her neck. He could only think of that condom, and how he was glad it was where it was and wasn’t where it would have been.

“Tell me you love me,” said Tina.

Adam thrust into her deeply a few times, then began a series of quick, sharp, shallow jerks. The bed banged against the wall. The sigh Tina let out was more exasperated than ecstatic, however.

“Adam, I love you,” she said, but this time she said it in such a way it clearly only an invitation to respond.

Adam thrust into her several times more, but he felt absolutely nothing.

He withdrew, leaned back on his heels and then reached over Tina as if she wasn’t even there and turned on the lamp.

In the half-light, Tina looked shocked and confused and brought her arms up half-heartedly to cover her breasts.

Adam sighed. “This was a mistake.”

Then he got out of bed and went over to his clothes.

“Adam, wait!” Tina reached for him but missed. “I’m sorry. Please. I thought it’s what you wanted.”

Adam pulled on his boxer shorts with his back turned to her. His erection was quickly subsiding. Nothing about its stickiness was arousing him any more.

“I really love you, Adam!”

Adam turned and held up his hands. “Tina, just stop. Don’t say it. You don’t love me. How can you love me? You barely even know me. Stop saying it.”

“But I do! I thought you felt the same.”

Adam paused. “I like you, Tina. I fancy you, but I can’t love you. I don’t know you. I want to get to know you. That’s what this is. Maybe I’ll fall in love. I don’t know. That’s what we’re meant to be finding out.”

Tina didn’t say anything.

After a moment Adam sighed and pulled on his trousers. He kicked the condom off his shoes. He didn’t want it. He pulled his socks the right way out.

Tina began to cry.

“Tina, don’t. Stop crying, please.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“Why? I never said I did.”

She was crying big streaming tears that trailed down her cheeks. “You said I was beautiful, Adam. You said you wanted to take me out. You wanted to sleep with me and you didn’t mind when I brought my friends tonight.”

“That doesn’t mean I love you.”

Tina huddled on the bed and sobbed into the duvet.

Adam put on his shirt and sighed. “Look, I think you should listen to your housemates.”

Suddenly Tina looked up. “What have they been saying?”

“That you’re going through a rough patch.”

She was shaking her head. “No. That’s rubbish.”

“They said you’re very needy at the moment.”

“It’s not true, Adam. It isn’t! Don’t listen to them. Don’t let them ruin this.”

“I should’ve listened to them and I think you should too. They’re only looking out for you.”

Tina screwed up her face. “They’re fucking liars! They’ve turned you against me because they want you too. I fucking hate all of them!”

“Tina, don’t say that.” Adam finished buttoning his shirt and started pulling on his socks.

“I’m sorry, Adam.” She sniffed.

“So am I.” He picked up his shoes. “Look, I’ll call you, okay? But I think you need to talk to Lain and Sarah.”

“Please don’t go. We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want. We can do whatever you want.”

“And what do you want?”

“I want you to stay.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you!”

Adam went up to the bed. He was going to kiss her goodbye, but as he approached she emerged naked from beneath the covers and reached out her arms. Adam stopped and shook his head. He stepped back. She began to cry again.

Adam headed out of the bedroom.

“You cunt!” Tina screamed.

Adam carried his shoes downstairs. Tina came to her bedroom door and slammed it. He could hear her muffled crying as he sat down on the third from bottom step to put on his shoes.

Tying the final bow, he heard the back door open. As he stood up, Lain and Sarah came into the hallway. Sarah looked up the stairs toward the sobbing.

“What did you do?” said Lain.

“You were right,” said Adam.

“What did you do?”

“I stopped before it went too far.”

“I’ll go and see if she’s all right,” said Sarah, and she began running up the stairs.

Lain sighed. “Every time one of you lot pick her up this happens. If it’s not one night it’s the next morning when you let her know how you really feel, or rather how you don’t. Why can’t you just leave well alone?”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Because I told you.”

“Don’t tell me. Tell her. She needs to hear it.”

“We have! Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter or make any difference when every time we tell her when she’s crying in the bathroom in the morning after one of you arseholes leave and then the next weekend she meets someone else who convinces her we were wrong.”

“I never said you were wrong,” he got in quickly.

“No, none of you do.”

Adam sighed. “I think I should go.”

Lain nodded. “Yeah, I think you should.”

“Back door unlocked?”

“Just open the bolt. I’ll lock it again after you.”

Adam nodded and brushed past.

As he reached the back door and began unlocking it, Lain came to the kitchen doorway. “She’ll probably call you tomorrow and apologise and want to meet you again.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll let her down gently.”

“That’s what you all do.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Try and just be her friend, if you’re capable. What she needs to realise is that she doesn’t have to fuck a guy to make him like her.”

Adam nodded again and opened the door.

“You know, when she’s not like this, she’s a nice girl.”

“Yeah, but I already know that.”

Lain shrugged. “Most of you wouldn’t care.”

Adam stared for a moment. “She’s got my number. I’ll see you around.”

Then he stepped into the cool night and closed the door behind him.

It was only ten minutes to the city centre but Adam didn’t feel much like returning to The Drain. He didn’t feel like going home just yet either.

Adam looked at his watch. It was nearly half ten. He was sober now and feeling the evening chill. He finished buttoning his shirt, doing up the top button, which stopped the cold air getting in. He also tucked his shirt into his trousers, which stopped the warm air getting out.

He began walking down the road, in the opposite direction to which they’d come. He didn’t know what was down this way, but that was the appeal. Several of the houses boomed with music, a few house parties in full swing. This was a very student area.

Adam reached the main road and knew instantly where he was, where he was heading. He crossed over, not waiting for the lights to change. The traffic on the road was dwindling. He passed a group of guys heading toward the city centre and was enveloped in a haze of chemical smell, their deodorants were so overpowering.

Adam turned away from them and left the main road. He wanted to get lost but something told him this wasn’t going to be as interesting as the idea of it was. He headed down a side street and turned a few corners and crossed another main road. He was on the edge of the industrial district here and he knew exactly where he was.

He passed a bus top. A couple of teenage girls were sitting under the bus shelter and one looked like she was responsible for the splatter of vomit on the pavement.

It started to rain.

A bus came down the road. Adam was only thirty yards past the bus stop but he didn’t stop straight away. Then he looked back and suddenly he was running. The driver saw him and waited.

As Adam got on, he realised he would have to specify a location. Then he saw a sign above the driver’s window advertising a rover. He checked the change in his pocket. He had enough.

“City rover, please.”

“£4.70,” said the driver.

Adam counted out the fare. It didn’t matter where the bus was going, as long as he was on it.

NOTES:
One of the longer stories in this collection at just under 4000 words long. I could hardly have the coin pass through several hands in the course of one night and not feature at least one sex scene. Of course, there's not much drama in a sex scene if it goes well. It's not pornography if nobody's enjoying it (except me writing it, haha). I don't think Adam is the complete cretin I was going to have him turn out to be. Indeed, I think that final conversation with Lain implies he's far more considerate and thoughtful than most of the cheap dates Tina brings back. The ending is me doing Bret Easton Ellis, to the extent where the final sentence is paraphrased from one at the end of Easton Ellis's first novel that I remember to this day: these characters are in a car and one asks where this road leads, the other replies that he doesn't know and it doesn't matter, because all that matters is that they're on it.