Someone once told her that she only needed six things in her kitchen: a food processor, a microplane grater, a good set of knives, digital scales, a stand mixer and a vegetable peeler.

It’s not true, she realises now. Sometimes you need other things. Sometimes you need six men, all of whom you’ve bedded, leaning against your worktop – not because you have doubts, but because you want a reminder of how you got here.

Her hen do was supposed to be mixed, but it has separated out, somehow – the girls and the plastic, novelty cocks in the living room, the boys – and their real flesh and blood ones – in the kitchen. She intends to flit between the two groups, but there’s an easiness to hanging out with the men. She’s never been one for slick, organised parties; she’s certainly never been one for pin-the-dick-on-the-fireman.

Instead, she plays her own game. She weaves between the guys, topping up their champagne, and for each one, she challenges herself to remember a specific moment or detail about the way they fucked.

Jamie’s fingers, and the way they curved against her G-spot until she drenched his sheets.

Max, who taught her to love face slapping, though she can’t for the life of her remember what made them try it in the first place.

Edward, bestower of tiny yellow thumbprint bruises all over her tits, and bigger, purple ones on her arse.

Stephen, the biggest of the six, who liked to slide into her before she was quite wet enough, stretching her wide around his cock.

Zac, who she only fucked once, at uni, when she was so drunk she can barely remember it, but whose pale arse, disappearing out of her bedroom door the following morning, will stay with her forever.

Fraser, who made so much noise when he came, the neighbours complained. More than once.

She’s found a man who is all these things for her now, but she would’t have got there, without these men. She wouldn’t have known that these things mattered to her.

*

The day itself doubles the contents of her kitchen cabinets. There are vegetable steamers, beautiful stoneware casserole dishes, cheese knives, and, from her grandma, cutlery for best, a concept that is still beyond her.

The boys don’t bring gifts – it’s not their style. Besides, they don’t need to – over the past ten years they’ve given her more than she could ever have hoped for.

For obvious reasons, this isn’t an entry for my competition to win a signed copy of Girl on the Net’s new book, but it is a reminder that you only have four and a bit days left to enter.

I’ll put up a separate post linking to the entries as soon as I have a few more, but for now, check out this epically-titled entry by Jo at Teachers have Sex.