‘Oh my God, are you crying?’

After all, maybe he’s doing it in the laughing at me way. I’m blubbering, and he’s like: ha ha ha, she’s upset! Look at the baby, all upset! Though I’ll admit, it’s hard to maintain this stance when someone just as suddenly tries to grab you.

‘Mallory, wait – please wait. Wait, let me explain … just let me talk to you for a second.’

All I can say is some version of no, over and over again. Said version seems to have a lot of vowels, and absolutely no solid tone to it. It’s sort of like a blob of plasticine coming out of my mouth, though I doubt it’s helped by the violent squirming I then have to descend into. I have to, because a moment after he grabs my arm he decides to go one better than that.

He actually grabs the rest of me. Which perhaps doesn’t adequately describe what he does because seriously: he puts one big arm around my waist and then drags me back down into the water. And it’s so the opposite of everything he seems to be about, and so shocking a thing to do – period – after just telling someone how disgusting you find them, that for a long moment I don’t know what to do.

I think I thrash a little, in the hot water. I know I try to squeeze myself out of his grip. But here’s the main problem: he’s almost unbelievably strong. It’s like I’m being weight-lifted or crushed to death, and though I don’t want it to happen my mind automatically reminds me of how big he is.

He’s six-five my mind tells me, and it doesn’t stop there. He’s probably going to drown you in the hot tub, now, for crimes against good taste. The jury will never convict him, because you said that thing about vaginas and now he’s all put out.

‘Artie, just fucking let go of me,’ I say, but he won’t, he won’t. And then somehow it’s just me and him, squirming and thrashing around in the bubbly water, limbs getting tangled, everything getting more and more frantic until … until …

We both go very still, all at once. I don’t mean to. Most of me wants to keep trying to get away, but once I feel the thing that’s very definitely happened I can’t even manage a weak wriggle. And as for him, well … he’s gone beyond rigid and into some state of temporary paralysis.

I turn my head just a little to see if I can make out an expression on his face, but there isn’t one. He’s just blank – so much so that I’d assume he was dead if I couldn’t see the flush creeping up over his cheeks.

And if I didn’t know what the hard thing was, that’s currently pressing right up against me.

He has an erection. Dear God, he has an erection. I can feel it against my thigh, so heavy and so obvious I don’t even need a paradigm shift to figure it out. It’s just there, like a pointed finger:

Artie is turned on. The squirming or the words or fuck knows what has turned him on, and now his big stiff cock is apparently super-glued to your thigh.

‘OK, well –’ I start, though I’m not sure how. I’m almost grateful he interrupts me, because God only knows what words I would have used to finish that sentence. I thought you were a Eunuch, maybe? I can’t believe you’re actually able to achieve stiffness, perhaps?

I just don’t know, and apparently neither does he.

‘Please don’t say anything,’ he says, but strangely he doesn’t blurt the words out in a mean way. He hardly sounds angry at all, any more – just mortified. And though that’s perfectly understandable, I can’t help thinking even stranger things, as we lie like that in a sea of bubbles.

I’m practically on my back, over the little plastic seats beneath the water. And he’s almost over me, his legs between mine and his big chest pressed against my breasts. I’ve got one arm around him, though I don’t know when that happened, and the second I shift just a little I realise he’s got an arm around me, too.

We’re almost in some sort of weird embrace. Somehow, we’ve struggled and shifted until we’ve locked our bodies together in a very familiar shape, and the longer this silence goes on for the more obvious that fact becomes.

His hand is pressed to the small of my back. The way that men do when … you know. They want to get a bit of traction and maybe fuck into you harder. And I can feel something in him, too – a kind of tension, vibrating through his body. As though we were in the middle of a good screw and I suddenly told him to stop.

Don’t come yet, I think, mindlessly, and this giant awful thrill spills through me.

What if he is about to come? What if he jerks and spurts all over the insides of his shorts – or even better, all over me? I can’t for the life in me imagine what someone like Artie would look like, if they had an orgasm, but I can feel my mind trying to gather the image together anyway.

That tight, tense face of his, suddenly slack with pleasure. God, that mouth. Would he bite his plump lower lip, maybe squeeze his eyes tight shut? Someone like him would never moan, but the thing is – what if he did?

I’d die. I’d die.

‘I’m so sorry, Mallory,’ he murmurs, but I can’t even say what I suddenly want to. I can’t reassure him. I’m too full of a million conflicting emotions, too angry from a moment ago and too suddenly stuffed with bizarre erotic thoughts and just no, no. This needs to be over. He needs to move away.

Only once he actually does the situation is made at least three times worse.

He’s big. Like hugely, massively big, and not just in the shoulders, if you know what I mean. When he shifts a little I feel the full length of his hard prick, and by God it just keeps going and going. After too long a moment I kind of want to ask him if it ever ends, but even with those words he said to me I can’t be that cruel.

He looks so shaken and unsettled. His face is bright red, and the harder he tries to disentangle himself the less he succeeds at it. By the time he’s finally gotten over to the other end of the tub, he’s practically shaking.

Oh – and he covers his eyes with one hand, too. Just for extra I’m ashamed of myself measure.

‘Artie –’

‘Please don’t. Just don’t. Really – I’m so sorry, Mallory. Those things I said … I take them all back. I don’t know what came over me, I honestly don’t.’

I can’t help feeling for him. He just looks so … distressed.

‘It’s OK,’ I say, and when I do the hand drops from his face.

He won’t look at me, however.