He had vowed never to bring it up, and yet here he was, bringing it up anyway.
Not merely mentioning it, but shouting precise particulars directly into her ear. He left many things unsaid, of course. Over her shoulder he scanned the dance floor, noting the other couples and solitary figures alike. For a moment he wished he were ten years younger.
After delivering a full-throated monologue through three songs, he reached a natural pause. He’d worried about finding the moment to stop, and then he did.
She pulled back, nodding with wide eyes. “Pretty intense,” she yelled.
“Sorry,” he yelled back.
“No—no, I like it,” she yelled a touch softer. “It’s like boarding a plane. You go baggage-first.”
He tried to laugh to himself, aloud but muted.
Between them, a quiet, shared moment formed amidst the club’s ambient clamor. He couldn’t think of a good next line; torn between wanting to move past what he’d disclosed and wanting to apologize again for oversharing—after all, she was basically a stranger.
“It’s honestly fine,” she yelled after he’d offered a string of apologies. “I did ask.”
That was true, and he was relieved by it. There were no questions immediately following what he’d said. “Let me buy you a drink.” He turned toward the bar.
And catching his own reflection in the mirrored surface behind the counter, he steadied himself. He sat up straighter. To her: “G&T okay?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
He ordered two doubles, though what he received looked more like two singles; still, he was glad to have treated her—given her something tangible to latch onto, a claim on her attention.
They moved away from the bustling center of the bar and stood near a perpendicular wall, observing the dance floor from the side.
He winced; his drink tasted flat, almost medicinal. “I think they’ve poured slimline tonic in these.”
She sipped hers. “Definitely.” She paused, “Love a guy who trims my calories.”
“Yeah,” he replied, watching her closely for sarcasm. “That’s been my master plan all along.”
“So, like—” she began, and he said at the same time, “Do you—” She gestured for him to continue.
“Do you,” he began again, “live nearby, or—?”
“Yeah,” she said, then clarified her tangled sublet situation and where it sat.
“No way,” he said, “we used to live right nearby. We could have been neighbours. Well, that was ages ago.”
She arched an eyebrow. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Oh,” she replied without hesitation, “I assumed you were older.”
He laughed loudly to prove he wasn’t offended by her blunt honesty. He suspected all the younger people around tonight made him seem older.
“Or you just look old for your age.”
He nodded, weighing the idea. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just saying the wrong thing. You’re what, twenty-something?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Jesus.”
Now she laughed. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” he replied, though the thought would occur to him much later.
He drained his drink, felt a flush rising, and placed the empty glass on a nearby table. He found it hard to gauge the distances between things just then.
“Thirsty,” he heard her say, though she hadn’t spoken aloud; he answered anyway, “Yeah.”
“I might order another,” he added, giving her a pointed look—as if to ask permission.
“Sure,” she said.
At the bar it took a while before he was served; he worried that, with the twenty-three-year-old woman out of his sight, she might vanish again when he wasn’t looking.
She didn’t vanish, and when she reappeared in view as he cornered the L-shaped room, he did his best to downplay his relief.
She was typing away on her phone intently. “One second,” she said, not looking up.
He waited, cradling both their drinks in front of his chest. He resisted joking about the length of her text, certain it would come off as passive-aggressive and annoying.
“Thanks,” she finally murmured, locking her phone and accepting her drink.
“Everything good?”
“So far,” she replied.
He checked his jacket pocket, producing a cigarette pack. Before he could ask, she said, “Yeah, let’s.”
*
Outside, he noticed how light her hair looked in the street’s glow; inside the bar it had seemed to blend with the room’s tones.
The smoking area was narrow, paneled in wood, densely populated, and far less rowdy than the main room.
They found a bench beneath a halo of warm light from a ceiling heater and settled there.
“So, who’d you come here with?” she asked.
He cleared his throat. “Friends. But I’m not sure where they wandered off to.”
He lit a cigarette, offered one to her, then remembered she vaped. “She vapes,” he said dryly, and was surprised to hear her laugh.
“I know, pretty cringe. I started as a nicotine alternative, and now I do both.”
“Want one?” he offered, and she accepted, almost accidentally lighting it the wrong way before turning it around and smiling.
“Wait, so,” she said, exhaling a faint tobacco trail, “where did you say you live again?”
He hadn’t said yet, claiming their apartments were roughly the same distance from the bar but in opposite directions.
“Oh, cool,” she said. “You live alone?”
“N— Yeah.”
“Had to think about that.”
“Right,” he said. “Because of the thing I told you earlier.”
She knocked the heel of her palm against her forehead, remembering. “Of course. And where is she now?”
“She’s been—” he began, then cut himself off. “Does that matter?”
“No, not at all, certainly not.” She busied herself with a cigarette, her drink, and her own hands.
The heater hummed then clicked off, plunging them into cooler darkness; he reached up and pressed its timer, restoring warmth and light. “No need to thank me.”
She inclined her head. “Thank you.”
He tried not to notice when she spilled a little of her drink. He sipped his own slowly, careful not to imitate her mistake. “So, what are you doing for the rest of the weekend?”
“Well,” she rolled her eyes toward the night sky and then back to him, “I’m working tomorrow.”
“Saturday, right?”
“I’m aware. I work at a coffee shop on weekends.”
“And weekdays?”
A micro expression of discomfort crossed her face: “I also work at the coffee shop.”
“So you don’t have, like, a real job?” He knew the line sounded harsher than intended; he scrambled to soften it as a tease.
“No, Dad, I don’t have a real job.”
He was pleased she received his words with humor. He feigned concern: “Because this city is expensive if you don’t have a real job.”
“Insightful, thanks. And you are a—?”
“Copywriter. Lead copywriter. In a creative agency.”
“Wow. That sounds very real.”
“It is, yes,” he said, refusing the bait. He left unsaid that he led a copywriting team at a shaky agency with a looming round of redundancies; the job was real only in name. “And you, by contrast, work at a coffee shop. Do you have a grand plan for where you want to be?”
She pretended to gag. “No. Gross.”
“Nice to have a plan, though. Dreams, you know.”
Her voice rose defensively: “I do have dreams. Just not very career-focused ones.”
“Like?”
A brief pause as she chose whether to reveal. “I write stuff. I enjoy writing.”
“What kind of writing? Fiction?”
“Mostly poetry, actually.”
“Poetry,” he breathed, the word almost musical. “I write too, sometimes. Or I used to.”
“But then you gave up on your dreams and now you just go to work all day, feeling something missing?”
Her words, though meant as a joke, struck at the core of his insecurity with precision; it left him momentarily speechless.
After a beat: “Something like that.”
He tried to remember what they’d been discussing before they drifted to writing. “So, do you live near here?”
“You already asked me that.”
He remembered: “Right, I did.” Then: “That was just a test. I was testing you.”
“And I passed,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette.
She offered to buy the next round; he declined; she insisted; he relented. When she left, he reactivated the heater’s timer. He checked his phone; no new notifications.
By now he was fully drunk, his mind wandering whenever he tried to focus. The lack of meals lately left his stomach uneasy, as if the gin would surge through him without anything to soften it.
He felt a sneeze coming, then it arrived with a rush.
“Bless you,” the twenty-three-year-old woman said as she approached with their drinks.
“It’s busier than usual tonight,” the thirty-five-year-old man observed, just to fill the moment as she set down their glasses with a clink of ice.
“Payday,” she said, resettling. “That’s why we’re out. Next Friday we’ll all be broke again.”
“Right,” he replied, grateful for the courtesy of her gesture but feeling a twinge of guilt about the drink she’d bought him. “Thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
They fell quiet. He scanned the room for something else to notice.
He began asking her basic questions about her life; she spoke at length about herself for several minutes. She didn’t return a single question, but that was fine—it spared him the trouble of attempting a witty reply. He finished his drink.
That last drink made the already pretty woman look even more beautiful; she was stunning in that moment.
“What?” she asked, trying to be kind. “Why are you looking at me?”
He unfolded his arms, though he couldn’t recall ever folding them. “I wasn’t.”
She smiled. “Creep.”
He knew he should kiss her soon; if she rejected him, at least he’d know he had made an effort.
He leaned in toward her, and only realized they’d kissed when they pulled away. Their second kiss went deeper, with a mineral tang. They shared a third kiss, their hands wandering unconsciously toward one another. Eventually she leaned back from the kiss.
Then, neither of them spoke first.
“There you are,” called a new voice from further along the smoking area. A short-haired woman who looked about the same age as the twenty-three-year-old spoke to the two of them.
“Here I am,” the twenty-three-year-old woman replied.
The short-haired friend seated herself between the two and wrapped an arm around the twenty-three-year-old, ignoring the thirty-five-year-old entirely.
As the two younger women talked, the thirty-five-year-old man sipped the last of his ice-melt and tried not to check his phone.
After a while the twenty-three-year-old woman raised her voice, directing the question at her friend: “How old do you think he is?”
The short-haired friend surveyed the man’s face and thought for a moment. “Forty?”
The twenty-three-year-old woman snorted. “He’s thirty-five.”
“Honestly you do look older,” the friend said, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “Like you have an old vibe.”
The thirty-five-year-old man made sure to mask his reaction with a smile; he replied, “Someday, that’ll happen to you.”
The short-haired friend asked him to take a photo of the pair using her phone, and he agreed. He stepped back to capture them; they tilted their heads toward each other and smiled; he took several shots—one with flash off, one with flash on—and handed the phone back.
The short-haired friend asked a few more questions, to which he answered politely, waiting for the moment the evening would end so his better part could resume.
Eventually the short-haired friend scheduled an Uber for herself; the twenty-three-year-old woman announced she’d stay a while longer, which surprised him.
Before leaving, the short-haired friend urged them to enjoy themselves and pleaded, “Please don’t hurt her.”
“I’ll do my best,” he lied.
“Sorry,” the twenty-three-year-old woman said as her friend disappeared into the smoking area; other bodies moved around them. “She can be a lot sometimes.”
He replied with feigned concern: “I thought she was funny.”
He didn’t want to press his luck by kissing her again too soon, and anyway his drink was empty. “Shall we go back inside?”
Sudden dizziness as he stood, wobbling slightly as he rose from the bench.
Inside, the music intensified and the lights dropped; she moved ahead of him across the dance floor, her form catching the strobe light as the song pounded on.
They paused near the bar again, close to where he had first approached her.
“When do you think this place closes?” he yelled above the bass.
She said something he didn’t catch; he leaned toward her ear to hear again. She repeated, “I don’t know.”
“Do you enjoy this music?” he yelled. She shook her head.
“Wanna go somewhere else?”
He read her lips: “Please.”
*
After leaving the bar, she asked, “What about your friends?”
“I guess they’ve gone ahead,” he said.
The air was damp and cool—the first truly chilly night since summer.
She clapped her hands to ward off the cold and asked, “Where to now?”
He spoke fast to get it out: “Why not head back to mine?”
“Sure,” she said, either nonchalant or playing nonchalant.
They walked in a straight line, careful not to stumble, the pavement slick and smelling of rain yet untouched by it. Streetlights threw warm orbs along their path.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Chuck,” he said. “But everyone calls me Chuck. I’ll remember yours.”
“I never told you,” she said, defiant, as if catching him in a lie.
“You did, actually.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Okay then, what is it?”
“It’s Joey.”
Joey lowered her head. “Oh. When did I say that?”
Chuck thought. “It was, I think, the first or second thing you said to me. Right after I introduced myself.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Sorry. My memory’s pretty unreliable.”
“No problem,” he said, wary of sounding too invested, as if he could have forgotten her name just as easily.
“I suspect you’re probably the oldest person I’ve ever gone back to a place with,” she admitted. “But I don’t often do this kind of thing.”
He ignored the first part and asked, “And what kind of thing is that?”
After a pause—“This kind of thing.”
He took the cue to kiss her again, but she halted him mid-motion, pushing softly on his chest: “Wait.”
Suddenly he felt afraid, terrified even, as if the age gap might be a fault in him; he wondered if he was a bad person. “You okay?” he breathed, his heart pounding louder than his words.
“Yeah,” she said, “sorry, I think my breath smells like cigarettes.”
“That’s fine,” he said, relieved in a small, almost religious way.
“Do you have any gum?” she asked.
“No.”
When they next stopped at a late-night corner shop, she went inside and returned with an open pack of spearmint gum. “Gum?” she asked, chewing.
“No, thanks,” he replied. “But thanks anyway.”
*
They walked down a slope to where the pavement met a flight of stone steps leading down to a canal’s eastern edge.
They followed the towpath toward his building, chatting and smoking in between. The dark water beside them whispered quiet and the moon hung tiny and distant above it.
Eventually they left the towpath via a ramp and returned to street level. They passed several vacant storefronts and reached the entrance of his canalside new build.
“Here’s me,” Chuck announced.
He let them into the building with a blue circular key fob, swinging it before her eyes. “This lets you track who goes in and out.”
“Who can track?”
“Landlords,” he stated matter-of-factly.
They rode in silence to the fourth floor. In the hallway, as they approached his door, he wondered what she expected. For personal reasons the place depressed him, though he supposed a barista her age might be impressed. He opened the door and let her step in first.
“Impressive,” she remarked a moment later, as if reading his mind.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” he muttered.
Standing in the middle of the living room, he gave her a quick tour—“Bathroom, kitchen, study, bedroom.”
“Cool,” she said.
He pivoted and pointed to the fifth door, “And front door, obviously.”
She nodded and, with a few awkward claps behind her waist, circled the room. She spotted the nearly empty gin bottle on the mantel. “Pre-drinks?”
“Yeah, a few of us started here,” Chuck replied.
Joey collapsed onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “Shall we have some post-drinks?”
Chuck’s mouth made a peculiar suction noise as he tried to speak; he hoped she hadn’t heard. “That’d be lovely.”
From the kitchen, he retrieved the gin bottle and discovered it was far emptier than expected; the liquid level barely rose above the empty line.
He carried the bottle back to the kitchen, clearing away last night’s cyclist-delivered dinner remnants and tonight’s powdered meal substitute.
He prepared drinks, then opened another larger bottle of gin to stretch the supply, and brought the beverages through to the living room.
She stood before the picture window, drinking in the expansive cityscape: towers of light, amber and gold, watching the city be indifferent to the clamor of two people in a small room.
“Christ,” she mused toward the view, then stepped away as her breath fogged a pane.
Taking the glass from him, she asked, “Honestly, how can you afford this place?”
“Honestly? I can’t.”
“Ha.”
“Seriously. The rent is draining me faster than I’d like to admit.”
She sipped and coughed lightly. “Strong.”
“You have roommates, right?”
“Correct,” she affirmed.
“Was your friend from earlier one of them?”
“Nice guess, but no. That was my best friend from college. I wish I lived with her.”
“You like them, your roommates.”
She shrugged, “Sure. We’re not super close but it works. It’s better than my previous place.”
“Oh yeah?”
She told a long tale about people he didn’t know, naming them as if he did. In the back of his mind he imagined what it would be like to be intimate with her.
He finished his drink, noticing she hadn’t drunk much of hers. They stood in silence.
Should he put an arm around her? He did, briefly, then let it fall away. “Want to see my room?”
“Sure,” she agreed, though she seemed to drift as they moved.
From the study, just beside the bedroom, came raucous laughter. He turned and found her holding a paperback with a photo of a smiling woman on the cover.
Laughing and waving the book, she said: “Why do you own Lean In?”
He exhaled a sigh of relief, secretly pleased to have a moment to make her feel a little bad for him: “Ex.”
She shelved the book with a sigh: “Ah.” Then she kissed him, guiding him toward his room. “I’ll just refresh myself with some water.”
“Sure.”
“Your taps are two, right?” she called from the kitchen.
“Yeah, use the skinny one—filtered,” he called back, staring at the near-white walls of the bedroom. “It’s filtered.”
She returned with his Nalgene, three-quarters full. She kissed him again, her mouth very wet.
The lamp in the bedroom responded to his voice and brightened to full glare, revealing a fine dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She squinted and he dimmed the lamp to 70 percent.
They kissed more feverishly in the dim light and moved toward the bed. She undid her shirt and then her necklace, placing the chain on the bedside table in a loose circle.
She unhooked her bra and he lay beneath her, marveling at how beautiful she was; in that moment he was aware of saying so aloud, and he apologized as she turned away, then smiled when she faced him again.
She instructed him to remove his shirt, which he did. They lay side by side, skin touching; the moment felt ceremonial. She shed the rest of her clothing. He pulled her on top of him, gripping her hips as handles. Every move now felt like a step toward the moment of entry.
Her body was so perfect that he didn’t know where to look. He rose up and pressed his lips along her shoulders, neck, and breasts.
She reached beneath herself and unzipped him, though he wasn’t sure he was aroused. Her fingers confirmed this; she was right.
Nevertheless his hand explored her, and her sex was slick, tasting of life. His wrist throbbed from the awkward angle, so he switched hands.
He wasn’t getting aroused; in fact, he seemed to lose some stiffness. She noticed and slid off him. Lying beside him, she worked her hand with a steady rhythm on what was available, pulling a bit too hard on the downstroke, which only reduced the chance of him getting hard.
They continued, she stimulating him and he reciprocating as best he could, though his attention wandered in the quiet between their movements. She offered a few soft vowels, almost words, that didn’t amount to much.
He contemplated perhaps just shoving himself inside, like a marshmallow, but doubt overtook him; he doubted he could do it at all.
He tensed and released the muscles in his thighs and buttocks, trying to influence blood flow so he could become aroused.
A familiar sense of inadequacy—one that had haunted him since childhood on sports day—crept in as he failed to perform.
She persisted in stimulating him, and he instinctively cupped her breasts, seeking some spark of life between them.
She attempted one last oral effort to provoke arousal, a doomed last-ditch attempt, which clearly failed as his mind had already retreated elsewhere. His luck had changed; he would not achieve erection tonight.
Noticing his distress, she lay on her side, facing him, smiling calmly even as her eyes closed.
He propped himself on an elbow. “I should explain,” he said weakly, “I don’t usually sleep with people I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she said, reopening her eyes.
“Old-fashioned,” he quipped, pointing to himself. “Or maybe just old.”
She laughed softly. “You said it, not me.”
There was nothing more to say, and yet he kept talking. “It’s not personal. These things happen, I suppose. It’s not usually me, or at least not lately. I’m normal. And you’re incredibly attractive. I just—”
“It’s really okay,” she interrupted. She closed her eyes again and sheepishly pressed her hand to his mouth in a kissable gesture. It was, for him, the kindest thing anyone had done in a long time, and it warmed his face.
Then came a long stretch of silence.
Her breathing slowed; he wanted to say her name, “Joey,” several minutes later, but she didn’t stir. He felt very lonely and wished she hadn’t fallen asleep yet.
Beside her, he found himself unable to sleep or relax—the thoughts whirred faster and faster.
Why, he wondered toward the ceiling, did God make someone so pathetic as me? To watch me squirm and suffer? All my little vanities, my insecurities, my failures.
He was exhausted now, his eyes blinking more slowly; still he couldn’t sleep. Eventually, in annoyance, he turned away from her and faced the wall.
He listened to the constant traffic outside his window, a sound he usually ignored but now found oddly comforting. Then he must have drifted off, because her alarm jolted him awake.
From his pillow, he peered through the undrawn curtains at the dawning day and a red-orange light creeping across the city.
Sleepily, she turned off her alarm. She sat up beneath the duvet and began getting dressed under it.
“It’s early,” he murmured.
“I know, sorry,” she answered. “I have work.”
“When?”
She checked her phone. “In about thirty minutes.”
He reached for his own phone; it read seven a.m. flat.
“I open,” she said, explaining.
“Oh.”
“But that’s the grind, right?”
For several mid- and post-pandemic years, Chuck’s job had allowed him to work from home, visiting the office on some afternoons. “Right,” he agreed.
“You’re going to be exhausted,” he added, regretting the tone that sounded a bit like a mother.
“I’ll manage,” she replied breezily, which only deepened his self-reproach. “I can’t pay the rent with a golden heart.”
He kept from asking whether she planned to shower or change clothes. “Well, it was nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, it was,” she said.
They awkwardly hugged. She felt taller; then he realized she was wearing shoes and he wasn’t.
He realized he hadn’t asked for her number yet and immediately did so, pulling out his phone opened to the contacts page, leaving her little choice but to share hers. She stored her number and saved her name in all caps: JOEY.
They exchanged a few touchless goodbyes and he escorted her to the door. Once she was gone, he stood by the living room window and watched as her figure receded down the street into the new day—perhaps forever out of his life.
________________________________________________________________________
From i Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder. Used with permission of the publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Copyright © 2026 by Jem Calder.
Isabela Reyes