The Perfect 10. Louise Kean

so that he can picture somebody else, but now they spring open, and he smiles, and says my name, and then carries on pumping, which sounds like a Sid James special set in a petrol station.

      My feelings for him are old, and forgotten. I am having sex with him simply because I can. We are not in love, and never will be. He is a sweet man, but he doesn’t know how to hold my hand or stroke my hair in a way that will move me. It is all mechanical, insertion and lubrication and squeezing and pulling. We make random impersonal sex noises, both of us lost in our own worlds, trying to please ourselves. We are not a couple, having sex. We are two individuals using each other to get off. I think this should be the last time we have sex, but I doubt it will be.

      The first time, three weeks and four days ago, we met for a drink on a Thursday to catch up, and he had been astounded at how different I looked. Men often dish out ‘compliments’ lazily, and Adrian is no exception. His words were, ‘You look about two hundred per cent more attractive than the last time I saw you!’ I could have cried. Men don’t seem to realise that I have just lost weight, and not become a whole new person, and thus an insulting remark about my appearance last year is still an insulting remark about me, even if they are cushioning it with some current nicety. ‘You look good’ or, ‘You look great’ would have done nicely, but Adrian messed it up. I had to ignore it, if I was going to stay in my seat. Even the smallest reprimand for his choice of words would have made things uncomfortable. Plus Adrian isn’t the kind of man who thinks about things like that. He is ‘easy-going’. Intellectual effort is a fun time wasted.

      He didn’t see the need to be subtle in his advances, because that would require thought. It didn’t occur to him to tread softly, or try to mask the fact that he now found me attractive, simply because my body shape had changed. My face was and is still the same, just thinner. My eyes are still my own. I haven’t had surgery. Yet. The words coming out of my mouth are exactly the same, the only difference being that Adrian seems to find them more interesting now, or is going to the effort of pretending to, at least. We had a few drinks and got a cab to go home, and he kissed me. Despite the two hours leading up to it, and how obvious it would have been to any onlooker, I was still surprised when he did it. He had rejected me, albeit unknowingly, for four years, but his kiss wasn’t hard to earn. I just had to be thin enough. This confused me. Now, instead of being ‘Sunny’ I was ‘Sunny who he would like to have sex with’. Nothing groundbreaking had been said during the evening, no pivotal conversation had. It’s a depressing thought. I had been good enough all along, just not thin enough. We had both exited at my house, and we had the first night of sex. At the time it didn’t feel as rushed as it sounds – I didn’t feel like a slut – I’d been waiting for four years, after all.

      We had sex twice that night, but not in the morning. He had promised to call me when he left for work the next day, and sure enough he did … two weeks later, last Friday, drunk in a cab and en route to my house but he couldn’t remember the number.

      Foolishly I reminded him.

      This evening, Monday, thirty-five hours after the ‘incident’ – I’ve almost forgotten all about it – we at least arranged to meet when we were both sober. We went for a coffee, but that turned into wine, and we ended up back at mine, and now we are having sex again. I am afraid that we have become fuck buddies, but I don’t want to confront him because I have nothing to say. Adrian is a nice but average thirty-year-old bloke, with a big laugh and good hair and trendy trainers. He works in IT. I know what I am getting, I know that his favourite film is Rocky IV, I know he prefers Indian to Chinese, I know he reads his horoscope, and is mildly left wing.

      Adrian is still somebody’s dream man, if such a thing exists, but I am starting to wonder whether he is still mine, now that I am learning to differentiate between liking somebody and being attracted to somebody. I realise that I have to feel something deeper: he can’t just be funny, or bright, or look right. There has to be something that makes him right for me, even though I admit that I don’t know what that something is. Maybe it will be something small. Maybe we will both like film quizzes, and sit late into the night on his battered old leather sofa making our way through two bottles of wine and a bar of dark chocolate, and quizzing each other, until we decide to go to bed … It could be that small, I think, but it will matter, of course.

      Adrian rolls off me onto the bed. This time I made the necessary pleasurable noises without going to the effort of actually faking an orgasm in its entirety. I don’t have the energy or the inclination. He doesn’t seem bothered.

      Adrian mumbles something into the pillow.

      ‘Sorry?’ I ask.

      He raises himself up on to his elbows and looks at me seriously. ‘Who would have thought it, eh?’

      ‘Thought what?’ I stroke the hair out of his eyes.

      ‘You and me.’ He smiles at me, and kisses my forehead.

      ‘It’s not the strangest thing that’s ever happened.’

      ‘No, I know. Not now. It just shows …’

      ‘Shows what?’ I ask.

      ‘You know,’ he closes his eyes and hugs me, drifting into sleep, ‘what a difference a year can make.’

      ‘Well, people’s feelings change all the time,’ I say, nervously trying to stop him before he goes too far.

      ‘Hmmm?’ His eyes are still closed, and he presses his face into my neck. ‘You’ve done so well …’ And he falls asleep.

      Three hours later I am still awake, while Adrian snores loudly on the other side of the bed. Yep, I’ve done so well.