neil0071107

[neil0071107]

Lessons learned

A memoir of fashion, friendships and Heartbreaks.

London never really sleeps. It just hums at different frequencies — from the thumping basslines of underground bars in Dalston to the 4 a.m. hush of foggy streets in Southbank. And me? I’ve learned to hum along with it. Six years in, and I still sometimes feel like the city is trying to swallow me whole — but I’ve also found moments where it held me quietly, like home.

I arrived here at 21 with a suitcase full of ambition and outfits packed with more confidence than experience. I didn’t have a plan, exactly — just a stubborn desire to build something for myself in a city that felt electric and endless. I was starting a new life, in a place where no one knew my name, and somehow that anonymity felt like freedom.

I studied fashion marketing by day, bartended by night, and tried to piece together who I was meant to become somewhere in between. I learned the city through night buses, corner pubs, hungover lectures, and long walks in neighborhoods I couldn’t pronounce yet. I learned people just as slowly — their rhythms, their expectations, their distance.

Dating in London was... a trip. One part charm, two parts confusion, garnished with poor communication and a side of ego. I was still figuring out how to be open without becoming an open wound. How to let someone in without handing over too much. I was also trying to prove something — that I could belong here, that I could be someone. That I could keep up.

Somewhere along the way, I found a kind of home — not just in square footage, but in people.

I lived in a slightly crumbling flat in Zone 2 with two of the most important humans in my life to this date. Our place had high ceilings, peeling walls, and a kind of charm that only comes with good company and a fridge full of half-finished bottles of wine.

There’s Emma — my flatmate and best friend. A photographer with an old soul and a wardrobe full of 70s silhouettes, film cameras, and oversized jumpers. She moves like she’s floating through a French film — thoughtful, observant, and always framing the world like it’s art. She’s the person who notices the light hitting your face at just the right angle or who remembers the exact words you didn’t say in a conversation from weeks ago. She listens deeply, speaks softly, and takes your mess seriously. Her signature look: red lipstick, Doc Martens, and a scarf tied just so.

there's James, our third flatmate. A sharply dressed lawyer with a dry wit and a bottomless bank of one-liners. Think slim navy suits, pastel shirts, pocket squares that match nothing on purpose, and a sense of timing that could rival a stand-up comic. James walks through life like he’s five minutes late to a dinner he’s already judged. But beneath the sarcasm is someone fiercely loyal — the type who’ll leave work at midnight to pick you up from a bad date and then roast you for it in the Uber home. He’s style and steel and soft edges, buried just deep enough.

And then there was me. Somewhere between introvert and extrovert. I like loud music and quiet mornings. I enjoy being around people but I crave my space. I work full-time in fashion marketing now — for one of the big fashion houses — and I still bartend occasionally when I miss the noise and motion of it. I’m not loud, but I’m not invisible either. I show up with presence, even when I’m uncertain. And when I can’t find the words, I let my clothes speak. Tailored coats, vintage tees, boots that look better scuffed, and accessories that tell stories. London is my runway — my challenge and my muse.

The truth is: I’ve always been a romantic. Not just about love, but about moments. About the small things that crack something open inside you — a song at the right time, a look across a room, a long walk at night that shifts something in your chest. And for better or worse, I’ve gone looking for those moments in other people.

We’re the late-night confessors and the laugh-until-we-cry crew. The awkward trio stumbling through the mess of dating, heartbreak, and friendship. James with his sharp sarcasm and terrible Tinder stories. Emma with her endless optimism and an eye for beauty in everything. And me, caught somewhere between hopeful and restless, trying to hold it all together with a cocktail shaker in one hand and a sketchbook in the other.

In the last six years, I’ve dated thirteen men. They weren’t all grand loves or dramatic endings. Some were brief. Some were messy. Some left quietly, and some carved their names into my memory. But each of them taught me something — about desire, disappointment, growth, and grace. They each showed me a version of myself I hadn’t met yet.

That’s what this book is about. thirteen chapters. thirteen men. thirteen lessons — sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal. Some of them made me laugh out loud. Some made me question everything. And all of them changed me, in ways I didn’t always understand until much later.

This isn’t a “happily ever after” kind of story. This is a “who I became because of them” story.

It’s not just about dating. It’s about friendship. About growing up in a city that doesn’t slow down. About learning what kind of love is worth your time, and what kind of silence says more than closure ever could. It’s about finding yourself in the middle of chaos — and realising you don’t need someone else to complete you, just people who help reflect the best of you back at you.

It’s about late-night confessions over cheap wine. About getting dressed up for someone who might not show up. About laughing so hard with your flatmates you forget you ever cared about that guy who stopped replying. About walking home at 2 a.m., heels in hand — or in my case, boots — replaying everything he said like a soundtrack in your head.

So if you're here for love stories, you're in the right place. If you're here for heartbreak, you're definitely in the right place.

But more than anything, this is a story about becoming. About finding my voice, my pace, and my style — one heartbreak, one man, and one outfit at a time.

So buckle up. This is London. And this is my story.

Chapter 1: Tomás and the Night Drives

“Some people build buildings. Others build emotional walls.”

There was a time in my life when I thought intimacy could be found in headlights and heartbreak in the rear-view mirror.

That’s how it was with Tomás.

I met him in the kind of place where nothing real is supposed to begin: behind the bar at the private Mayfair club I work at on weekends. It was a Thursday night—quiet but expensive. Men in tailored suits leaning on marble counters, drinking overpriced whisky and trying to sound more interesting than they were. I was on my third shift of the week, halfway through rinsing a cocktail shaker, when he walked in.

He didn’t belong there—not in the way most people didn’t. Where others overcompensated with noise, Tomás walked in like silence had followed him from the street. Tall, a bit rugged, curls slightly damp from the drizzle outside, wearing a navy wool coat that said old money but modest about it.

He didn’t flirt. He didn’t smirk. He just asked for a Negroni in a low, confident voice. When I slid it across the bar, he nodded and said,

“That’s the best one I’ve had in London.”

I laughed, thinking he was just being polite. “You haven’t had enough Negronis then.”

He held my gaze for just a second too long, like he was sizing me up. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just particular.”

I wanted to say, Or maybe you’re just rare, but I didn’t.

He stayed at the bar for nearly an hour. Alone. No phone scrolling. No fake texting. Just watching people, sipping slowly, eyes scanning the room like he was reading its architecture. When I brought over his second drink, he asked what I studied.

“Fashion marketing,” I said, almost embarrassed.

“So you build brands,” he said.

“Something like that.”

“I build spaces. Maybe we’re not so different.”

He handed me his card—black, sleek, embossed with his name and an architectural firm I’d definitely heard of but couldn’t pronounce. On the back, in handwriting:

“Drinks sometime?”

I stared at it for a moment. Not because I was surprised he’d asked, but because I felt... seen. Not desired, not flirted with—seen. And maybe I was lonely enough to mistake that for intimacy.

We met the next week, after one of my late classes.

He chose the bar: a quiet hotel lounge in Fitzrovia, full of velvet chairs, gold lamps, and soft jazz. He ordered a whiskey. I had wine. It felt like we were speaking through steam—everything warm and slightly out of focus.

We talked for two hours. About our work, about London, about how both of us found it hard to sleep. I told him about uni deadlines and my flatmates. He told me about designing a museum in Valencia and how, when he first moved to London, he’d drive for hours at night just to learn the city.

He wasn’t funny exactly—but dry, observant, and deeply still. Like he’d studied the architecture of silence, too.

At one point I said,

“You don’t seem like someone who needs company.”

He tilted his glass.

“I don’t. But I like it when it’s quiet like this.”

Then after a pause:

“Want to drive around?”

I thought he meant sometime next week.

He didn’t.

________________________________________

Outside, the city was slick with rain. He unlocked the car with a soft blink of orange lights. It was an Audi A5, deep charcoal, spotless inside—like he lived in it more than his flat. When I slid into the passenger seat, the air smelled like bergamot and something faintly leathery. He handed me the aux cord.

“Your music.”

“No pressure?” I said.

“Just taste.”

I cued up Massive Attack and hoped I wasn’t trying too hard.

He nodded approvingly. “Good choice.”

We drove with no destination. Past Soho, through Marylebone, across the river. At one point we passed Big Ben, lit up and dramatic, and I caught him glancing at me when the lights hit my face. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

It wasn’t flirting—it was something slower. Like building a moodboard, not a moment.

We ended up parked near the top of Primrose Hill. London was stretched out in front of us like a still-life painting. No skyline ever looked lonelier.

He turned the engine off but left the music playing—The xx humming something delicate.

“Do you do this with everyone?” I asked.

“Drive?”

“Drive. Pick up bartenders. Night walks in a car.”

He smiled, barely.

“No. But you seemed... restless.”

I turned to face him.

“Restless or naive?”

“Both. And something else. Hungry.”

“For what?”

“Still figuring that out.”

I laughed quietly. “Good luck with that.”

I didn’t lean in. Neither did he. We just sat there, the heat fogging the windows slightly, the silence folding around us like a weighted blanket. It was the most electric not-kiss I’d ever had.

That night, we didn’t hook up. We didn’t even touch.

He drove me home around 2:30 a.m. and parked just shy of my street.

Before I got out, he said,

“Next time, I’ll pick the playlist.”

I smiled on my way back home, I opned the door to my flat with a wide grin tiptoeing my way to my room to not wake my flatmates. 

I was hoping, dowright wishing to get a text from him the other day, a text that never arrived. Until it did a few days later

When he texted me out of the blue. Just a simple text that read “wanna go for a ride after work” No hi’s, no hellos, no how are yous, just a simple question, a question that was sent in confidence as if he already knew I would say yes and like an idiot, I did.

He picked me up after my shift. I was still in my black work tee, hair messy, smelling faintly of citrus and mezcal. He didn’t care. He smiled when I slid into the passenger seat like I’d always belonged there.

That night, he played Frank Ocean. “Seigfried.”

We talked about growing up—about silence in families, about the feeling of always being slightly misfit. He told me he hated explaining himself. I told him I was tired of performing confidence.

He said, “I don’t think confidence is what people think it is.”

“Then what is it?”

“Staying soft. That’s the real flex.”

When we stopped at a red light near Notting Hill Gate, he reached over and gently placed his hand on my thigh.

Just like that.

No announcement. No eye contact. Just calm pressure, warm and steady.

My breath caught. My mouth went dry. I felt my whole body stiffen like I was balancing on a single thread. His thumb started moving in slow, deliberate circles. I looked at him. He didn’t look back. He just kept his eyes on the road, like this was nothing to him—like he hadn’t just set fire to every nerve in my body.

He was so handsome it was disarming. Not just in the way models are, but in that adult, deeply masculine way—Roman nose, sharp jawline, unshaven stubble like texture drawn in with intention. And eyes that saw everything, quietly.

________________________________________

He parked on a quiet street in South Kensington. Just us, the silence, and the city.

He turned the key halfway, leaving the music on.

“Come here,” he said.

I leaned in first. Or maybe he did. It doesn’t matter.

The first kiss was not gentle. It was slow, but hungry. Familiar, like we’d skipped a hundred other moments and landed in the middle of something already dangerous.

I wanted to freeze time. To remember how it felt—his hand, his mouth, the weight of him against me. It was reckless and tender all at once.

His hand slid behind my neck, mine gripped his jaw. Our mouths moved in sync like we were scoring the soundtrack to our own downfall. I climbed over the console, our hips locking, limbs fumbling, breath uneven. Every touch, every sigh, every pause—it felt cinematic.

We fumbled with belts, laughed into each other’s mouths, my hands in his hair, his fingers digging into my lower back. It wasn’t graceful. But it was real.

And in that moment, I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in a long long time.

And so began our ritual.

He’d pick me up outside work, sometimes my flat, headlights low, always playing some moody playlist—Sade, The xx, the occasional Rosalía track for flavour. London looked different from the passenger seat of Tomás’s Audi. The buildings seemed quieter. The chaos muted. I remember once passing through Regent Street at 2 a.m., the Christmas lights still up in March, and he whispered,

“This city hides its beauty until you earn it.”

We’d drive through Hampstead, Battersea, sometimes out toward Richmond, not speaking much—just the music and the glow of the dashboard. And then we’d park.

Sometimes he’d rest his hand on my thigh. Sometimes we’d kiss slowly, lazily, like time didn’t exist. Sometimes it was wild—the kind of breathless hookup that made you forget your name. But always, always, he dropped me off with a gentleman’s grace. No sleepovers. No toothbrush left behind. No morning-after.

________________________________________

Emma, my flatmate and unofficial soulmate, was usually still up.

She’d be on the sofa, editing something wild for a queer zine or a streetwear label no one could afford.

“Tomás again?” she'd ask without looking up.

“Yeah.”

“Just talking?”

“Mostly. Sort of.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Your jumper’s on inside out.”

________________________________________

James, was usually in the kitchen at this hour, preparing one of his unnecessarily elegant midnight snacks

“Still chasing the emotionally restricted Spaniard, huh?”

“He’s not emotionally restricted,” I said. “He’s just slow to open up.”

Reece poured himself a glass of wine like he was about to cross-examine me.

“Babe. If he won’t even show you where he lives, you’re not dating. You’re guest starring.”

________________________________________

But I held on.

He never stayed the night. Never came upstairs. Never asked questions about my day, or remembered when I had a deadline, or asked what I wanted long-term.

But he always dropped me off like a gentleman.

He always made me feel wanted.

And that was enough. For a while.

I think I wanted Tomás to be more than he was because I needed something stable. I was 27, juggling uni deadlines, cocktail shifts, and the creeping fear that I was falling behind. He felt... mature. Solid. The kind of man who read blueprints and drank espresso after dinner.

I told myself that our silence was intimacy. That our physicality was connection. That just because he didn’t say much didn’t mean he didn’t feel much. But slowly, I realised I was projecting—turning empty space into meaning.

One night, as we sat parked in Primrose Hill, the city glowing behind us like a soft lie, I asked:

“Do you think this is something?”

It came out quieter than I intended. Half-hoping he wouldn’t hear it. Half-hoping he would.

He didn’t look at me. Just stared straight out the windshield, hands resting lightly on the wheel, as if he was waiting for the fog on the glass to clear itself.

After a beat, he said,

“I think it’s nice.”

A pause. Then:

“Why complicate it?”

And that was the blueprint.

Nice.

Not real. Not serious. Not hard or holy or worth protecting.

Just nice.

I wasn’t a chapter. I wasn’t even a plot twist.

I was a placeholder—something to enjoy in the pauses between his deadlines and silence. A body that fit into his passenger seat, a mouth that didn’t ask too much, a warmth he could borrow without consequence.

________________________________________

The fade-out wasn’t dramatic.

It didn’t happen in flames or shouting matches.

There were no ultimatums, no slammed doors. Just a quiet unraveling—so subtle you could almost convince yourself it wasn’t happening.

First, it was fewer texts.

A shift in tone. Shorter replies.

A day between answers. Then two. Then none.

Then the drives stopped.

At first, I told myself he was busy. Caught up with a project. Out of town. Needing space.

But silence has a way of teaching you things you didn’t want to learn.

There was no confrontation. No moment where we sat down and named the ending.

No “we need to talk.”

Just digital stillness.

Like someone turning down the volume on your part in their life until you barely exist at all.

I wanted to scream into the void. To demand a reason. But I swallowed it instead.

No “we need to talk.” No closure. Just the quiet erasure of me.

________________________________________

What hurt wasn’t the absence of love—because I knew he never offered it.

What hurt was the way I had let almost be enough.

The way I twisted every half-glance, every shoulder-touch, every midnight kiss into something meaningful—because I needed it to mean something.

But Tomás never lied to me.

He never promised a future.

He just let me believe in one. And that’s as much on me as it is on him. There were signs, clear, giant flashing signs that I refused to see coz it was so thrilling, I liked the thrill, I liked the late night drives, the hookups after dark, and I liked him. Until I didn’t. 

________________________________________

________________________________________

Lesson learned- 

Tomás taught me that desire is not the same as intimacy.

That someone can undress you a hundred times and still know nothing about your heart.

That sometimes, we confuse attention for affection.

And that just because a moment feels cinematic doesn’t mean it will last beyond the credits.

He was the kind of man you remember not for how he loved you,

but for how clearly he showed you that he couldn’t.