I honestly don’t mind being single. Not in the short-term, at least. It means that on nights like last night, when I go out with friends – one married, one single – I get to be the one saying ‘No, stay a bit longer! Have another cocktail!’ rather than the one who’s thinking that she didn’t mean for drinks that started at five to last for five hours and that, really, her husband will be expecting her home by now. I get to stumble through the door, a little bit drunk, and lie in bed like a starfish, because there’s no one to complain that I’m not on my side or that I have all the duvet. But when I woke up, an hour ago, in that confused way you often do – Do I have to get up for work in a couple of hours? No! Why am I awake: hot, thirsty, bad dream? – I wished there was someone here to fuck me. I still don’t love morning sex but the combination of factors – heavy rain on the skylights, room a little too hot, the beginnings of a hangover pulsing behind my temples – that ensured that I wasn’t just going to roll over and go straight back to sleep also made me really damn horny. I wanted to open the window to let the cool and the smell of the rain in. I wanted things I don’t usually want: someone to pull back the duvet, to kneel between my legs and to lick me lazily until I come. I wanted to straddle him, to let him slide inside me and to ride him until he came with a sleepy grunt. None of this would help, of course, technically. It wouldn’t make the room cooler, or stop the rhythmic beat of rain on the roof. But if I’m going to still be awake an hour later, I’d rather be naked and sweat-soaked, the inside of my thighs slicked with his come.