It all started with the milk

You were lactose intolerant, had been for years, and he knew that. He knew you were lactose intolerant. He’d seen your kitchen cupboards and he’d made you dinner and he’d called you cute when he saw the dairy free advent calendar your mum still sent you every year, even though you were almost 22. The one propped up on the windowsill, where he would always sit to smoke a cigarette afterwards. 

And besides, you’d told him you were lactose intolerant. The first time you slept together and he had offered you a cup of tea the morning after. Thanks but no thanks, you’d said, unless you’ve got dairy free? He didn’t. Green tea? It made you gag. So you made do without, settling yourself instead inside the warmth. Of the duvet he’d left, and then of his body once he came back to you. He had climbed back into bed with a piping hot mug of tea that he was careful not to spill on the duvet, shifting as you circled your arms back round his torso, where they had been since the night before. He hadn’t realised that the hot base of his mug was resting on your bare shoulder, and why would he have? You hadn’t said anything to him about it. You were too preoccupied with enjoying the feeling of his body close to yours. 

Then there was the time after the first time, (and the time after that and the time after that), when you’d offered him breakfast in the morning, to cure his hangover, and he’d laughed at your unexpected hospitality and warned you about his nut allergy. You’d wrinkled your nose at this, as if you didn’t mostly live off of peanut butter and jam sandwiches when supplies were running low. Which was quite a lot recently. You’d been busy. 

Still, after making him tea and toast with butter, milquetoast, just how he liked it, you’d gone back downstairs to the kitchen and immediately thrown out the almost full jar of peanut butter in your cupboard, just in case there was ever any cross contamination that might make him feel a bit out of sorts. Even though it was your favourite thing to have for breakfast and you weren’t sure what you were going to make sandwiches out of now for the rest of the week. Until you had time to go to the shop. Just jam you supposed. 

When you went back up to the bedroom, he didn’t ask where you’d been. Or if you didn’t fancy some breakfast too. 

And even though you’d told him you were lactose intolerant, still, he never seemed to have any dairy free milk at his house. Not the time after the first time, or even any of the times after that. There wasn’t even an emergency carton shoved in the back of his cupboards. You knew there wasn’t because you would check every time you made one for him, while you were waiting for the kettle to boil, just on the off chance that this time he might have remembered you during his grocery shop. He hadn’t. 

It could have even been the cheap one from Aldi. That was more water than oat but at least it wouldn’t have made you ill. You wouldn't have minded. You would have just appreciated the gesture. It was, after all, the gesture that counted. That and a warm cuppa in the morning, like you usually brought to him in bed, or made for him while he was in the shower to drink as he was getting on with things at his desk. Even though you were more of a coffee person, but he didn't really drink coffee, so you were happy to settle.

Occasionally, after you’d said your goodbyes, in the morning or whenever he had some place else to be, you’d get yourself an overpriced espresso from Starbucks at some point in the afternoon, when you were starting to feel a headache coming on from the lack of sleep and the lack of caffeine you'd been battling against all morning, since you'd gotten up to switch the kettle on. 

The first few times it happened you were still in the early, uncertain stages of fucking, when you’re not quite sure how the other one feels about it even though you both knew it was always more than friends. And you’re uncertain about whether or not it would be weird for you to keep some of your things at theirs. Not because you were trying to make it something it wasn’t. Nothing like that. Just because it’s easier than having to remember to pack a toothbrush and a pair of pyjamas 2-3, and then 4-5 times a week. If you were both going to keep doing this. Which it seemed like you were. 

Even though you’d had him in your mouth, and inside of your body, multiple times. Still, taking your own milk over and keeping it in his fridge seemed like an overstep. So you said nothing. Both of you pretending as if the next morning wasn’t always a certainty. Would always be a certainty. And you’d go without. Again. Claiming you hadn’t wanted one as he placed the warm mug you’d handed him back on the floor, and rolled over to get some more sleep. Leaving you to climb back into bed and sort of, put your arms around him from behind, unsure whether it was time for you to leave or not, and wondering how you’d let yourself be here again. 

After a few months of fucking, you’d built up the courage to start bringing over your own milk the night before, feigning a preference for a hot cup of tea before bed, just so there’d be something for you to use when you got up. That had been your best friend’s idea, although she’d shaken her head that you were even worrying over something as silly as milk, at the same time as she slid the advice over the table to you, along with a hot cup of tea. 

A carton of milk wasn’t the sexiest overnight accompaniment, but you couldn’t keep going to Starbucks 3 times a week. By this point they knew your name, and you were choosing coffee over lunch, sometimes even using the feeling of hunger as a way to stay awake. But even after that first brave morning, when you were grateful to get up and return to bed with two hot mugs instead of one, the next time you had stayed over, the carton was empty, and your morning tea-free. On that first morning, he hadn’t said anything as you’d slipped in and sipped silently beside him. 

He lived in a shared house. So sure, maybe his housemates occasionally ran out of their own milk and went for yours instead. No big deal. But every time? And they’d have replaced it, surely? Your housemates would have done. Even though you maintained distance from them through polite conversations in the hallway, and did all you could to avoid bumping into them as you scuttled round the kitchen in the middle of the night. Still, they would have replaced your milk if they’d drank it all. They knew you were lactose intolerant, and they barely knew you at all. 

In fact, now that you thought about it, you couldn’t even remember the last time there’d been milk for your cup of tea when you’d stayed over, never mind the last time you hadn’t had to make your own cup. You never brought it up to him. You didn’t dare. Until one night in a taxi on the way home together from a night out gone wrong. He’d pissed you off by not introducing you to his friends who you knew he knew they knew who you were. As if he hadn’t had his head between your thighs that morning, and didn’t expect you to go home with him that night. Like all the other nights. 

Anyway, who were you to talk? Look at you, dutifully clambering into the taxi behind him even though you hadn’t finished your glass of wine, and hadn’t wanted to go home yet. You were having fun and you wanted to go out dancing. But he’d wanted to leave and the thought of him leaving without you just seemed ridiculous at this point. He hadn’t made you come (with him). And he wouldn’t have blinked an eyelid if you hadn’t. Or even if you’d gone home with someone else. And maybe they’d even have had dairy free milk in for a cup of tea in the morning. But you’d wanted to go home with him. And you’d wanted him to want you to go home with him. It was the same thing you always wanted, before you even realised that that’s what it was. That feeling. Of wanting. 

And so what were you supposed to do? Let him go home without you? Shut up. Get in the taxi. 

As the taxi trundled along the busy city streets, past the beeps and the blares of the early hours of the weekend, you looked him dead on, and said casually, 

Ooh I can’t wait for a cup of tea when we get in

You could still feel the anger beneath your skin as you’d said your own name to his friends, and he’d dropped your hand to roll a cigarette, while everyone chatted around you like they had something interesting to say. 

They didn’t. 

Mmm, he’d responded. Gazing absently out the window as the night and the people you were missing passed by outside.

Do you know if you have dairy free milk in? You’d ventured, slightly more forcefully this time. His vagueness had irked you, and it made you wish you’d stayed where you were. Or at least gotten a taxi back to your own home instead. Alone. 

In the car you could feel yourself getting more and more annoyed, mostly at yourself that you were sat in this taxi with this monosyllabic man, when you could have been talking to any stranger who would be happier to hold a conversation. 

What? He’d asked, seeming surprised at your question. Too used to your passivity. His gaze remained away from yours but his syllables felt slightly unsettled. 

Good. 

You repeated it again. Level. For the first time delivering the question, not the one you wanted to ask, or the one that needed to be asked, but a question all the same, with the weight it deserved.

I said, do you have any dairy free milk in? You asked. Slowly. Calmly. 

Umm, no I don’t think so, sorry. 

He’d flashed you a brief, bashful smile before turning his blurry gaze back to the droplets on the window.  

You said nothing, riding out the remainder of the journey in silence. As the taxi dropped you off, at his house, you declined his gallant offer for you to climb out first. Instead you stayed where you were and he shrugged his shoulders before undoing his seat belt and stepping out himself. He stumbled slightly as he extended his long legs, reminding you of both of your drunkenness otherwise temporarily forgotten about in the annoyance over the milk. 

As he got out his tobacco to roll another cigarette for the walk up the front path, you waited, just for a moment, to see if he would look back, before leaning over to the taxi driver anyway to give him your address. As he reversed the taxi and began to drive away, you didn’t turn around to look out the back window. Instead, you looked forward, to the hot cup of tea you were going to make yourself at home.