The Date Was Going Brilliantly, Until We Tried to Change the Doona Cover

Leah kissed me at her front gate, with one hand on my belt, and I forgot the perfectly decent sentence I'd prepared. Thirty-eight years old, two divorces between us, and I could still be reduced to a bloke holding a jacket incorrectly.

"Come in," she said.

Excellent. Clear instructions. I followed them beautifully, up the hall and through the door, with her walking backwards and undoing my top button. Then we reached the bedroom.

The bed wasn't ready

A clean doona lay beside an empty cover. Leah stopped with her hands on my chest.

"Shit. I meant to finish that before I left."

"I'll help."

I said this with confidence. I'd owned bedding for twenty years. Surely some of it had rubbed off.

She handed me two corners, and put her arms inside the cover. "You do it inside out?"

"Of course."

I did not. I normally pushed everything through the hole and shook it until the lumps became someone else's problem. But I wanted Leah badly enough to pretend I had a system.

"Give me the corners."

I handed them over.

"The doona corners, Martin."

We'd reached the part of the date where she used my full name. I'd been hoping for different circumstances.

We both claimed to know what we were doing

The first attempt left all the filling down one side. Her cat walked in, looked at the bed and sat on the only part we'd managed to fill.

"There's a rolling trick," I offered. "Like a burrito."

"I want to get you into bed, Martin, not learn Mexican food preparation."

That should have helped me concentrate. It did the opposite. My shirt was half open, and all the blood I needed for this was elsewhere.

We watched a video. A pair of anonymous hands did it in seconds. We watched it again. Then a fitted-sheet tutorial started.

"Oh, fuck off," Leah told the phone. I liked her more with every passing minute.

The confession came before the kissing

We reached into the cover from opposite sides, and found each other's hands.

"Hello," I said.

"Wrong corner." She squeezed my fingers anyway.

Her hair had escaped its clip. Her top had slipped off one shoulder, and I could see the strap of something black. "I normally just shove the doona in," I admitted.

"So do I."

"You said of course."

"You were looking at me. I wanted to seem organised."

We stood there, considering the time we'd wasted trying to impress each other with laundry. Then she dropped her end, grabbed my face and kissed me until I had to hold on to something. No tutorial required. We were considerably better at that.

The cat kept the bed

We ended up on the floor, on a pile of doona that was at least the right temperature. It wasn't graceful. There was a moment with my elbow. Nobody asked for the tutorial. When I finally got that black strap off her shoulder, she made a sound I've been thinking about ever since, and I stopped caring where anybody's corners were.

Afterwards, we ate toast on the bedroom floor, wearing not very much. She told me she'd booked our supposedly spontaneous date three days before asking. I admitted that I'd ironed three shirts and rejected two.

"This one's nice," she said, holding it up with one finger.

In the morning, a photo arrived: perfectly covered doona, cat still on top.

"How?" I asked.

"Mum. We're not discussing it."

I booked dinner. She replied right away. "Bed's ready this time. Don't bring a method."

Keep reading

Try another fictional date, the snack that became a cook-off, or find out about unexpected turn-ons in everyday life. Our guide to sex on the floor might help as well.