Her ex

There are rules about ex boyfriends.

He was her ex.

I knew the rules, and when he asked me to come dancing with him after work, I felt myself pause. I loved my friend with the kind of force that seemed unbreakable.

He was her ex.

I wanted to dance. I wanted to fling myself at drunk and sweating strangers. I wanted the speed he offered me, and, speeding, I wanted to run with him out into the birth of tomorrow. He was her ex.

We danced at a club. Dark and muggy with sweat and the scent of strangers. At some point he sat down on a bar stool cradling a beer and I knew that he was watching me but I continued to dance with the kind of joyous abandon that only children, and drunk women on speed have the energy for.

The inevitability of his bed.

It was a kind of segue like you see at the movies. A slow fade from the bright lights of the dance floor to the same woman, me, bouncing on the creaky springs of his bed. The same tune was ringing in my ears. I was humming and bouncing and he was still cradling a beer and sitting on a stool beside the bed and watching me.

Had we caught a cab? Had we danced all the way back from the city, singing and laughing and sipping from bottles hidden in brown paper bags? I don't remember any of it. I remember the club and then I remember his bed.

He was her ex and I was on his bed.

I remembered the rules as he was taking off my clothes. You don't sleep with your best friend's ex boyfriend.

The song came to an end at that point. I couldn't remember the tune. I was still swaying in the dying chords, but the music was gone and I was suddenly naked on his bed in the throbbing silence. My skin was touching his skin. His penis was resting in my hand, fully erect and twitching. I remembered then what she had said about his penis, how it was far too large and used to hurt her. She felt all torn up inside, and, weighing it against my palm I realised why.

I wasn't going to sleep with her ex-boyfriend.

The head job was to buy time. I wanted it all to go backwards, bouncing off his bed fully-clothed, bouncing back to the nightclub, blowing the speed back out of my nose through the rolled-up banknote. But that was the movies and this was the real world and his erect penis was in my hand and he was reaching for my crotch. I backed away. I was on my knees and it was easy enough to put distance between him and me just by leaning down and slipping his penis into my mouth.

My best friend was a small woman, short as me and thinner. She was all slim hips and swelled breasts. I stretched my mouth to accommodate his penis and wondered how she had brought herself to come back to it again and again. I wondered if he was listing our similarities and our differences. I wondered if he was comparing us against each other. He was her ex. I was her best friend. I was giving her ex a head job and I hated myself for it.

I held my fists around the length of his penis to stop him from pushing it in too far. He was drunk and a little rough. He locked his hands into the thick wild scratch of my hair and I felt like I might suffocate if I continued. I tried to pull back but he was numb to the struggle and I had to reach out to squeeze at the dangling sack of his balls before he opened his eyes and found me there, locked onto the length of him and struggling for air.

I pushed away and drew breath and said it before I lost the nerve to say it at all.

"I am not going to sleep with my best friend's ex-boyfriend."

We looked at his wet and jittery penis and I shrugged.

"You'll have to finish that off yourself."

He was a good man. I liked him. I felt bad for him. It would have been easy enough for him to guilt me into finishing the job but he just nodded and eased down onto his haunches, defeated.

"I'm sorry." I told him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come home with you."

"There's my flatmates bed. He's away for a couple of days."

He hid his penis behind his hands, suddenly shy of it.

"We'll go out for breakfast." he said, and I nodded.

We would both masturbate in our separate beds and we would lie there afterwards, feeling slightly sullied by the act. We would go out for breakfast and it would be awkward and a little embarrassing. There would be an odd little peck on the lips as we parted.

There would be that fight a couple of days later, where I couldn't convince my best friend that I had put his penis in my mouth to stop him from having sex with me. There would be the weeks of regret and a slow hard crawl on my knees to sneak back into her affections.

"I'm sorry," I said, with my clothes bundled up against my breasts.

"That's okay," he told me, but he was wrong.

I realised then that it is never okay to be naked with your best friend's ex.