Jonas Halldorsson

Her Story

Your coat's still hanging on the door hook. I haven't washed it. Don't plan to. Every time I grab my camera strap, I catch a thread of your scent — the sulphur from the spring, the salt of your skin where you'd pressed into my side on that bench for four hours. Four hours of your breath evening-out against my collarbone. Four hours of pretending my pulse was the bus engine rattling the road, and not the fact that I'd never held someone through an entire night before. When the driver said we'd be stuck until dawn, I told you I wasn't cold. Lie. I was freezing. But you shivered once — just once — and I had the coat off before I could think. You looked at me like I'd given you something precious, not just wool lined with my body heat. And then you fell asleep against my shoulder, and I spent the rest of the night memorizing the weight of your head, the way your hand curled against my thigh, the half-sound you made when the wind hit the window harder. Everyone else grumbled. I sat there praying the radiator would stay dead. That's the thing about forced proximity. It strips away every excuse you usually hide behind. No exit. No distance. No time to convince yourself you *shouldn't*. Just the two of you and the dark and the slow realization that you don't want rescue — you want the breakdown to last. And now I carry that night like a bruise I keep pressing. The aftercare fantasy I'm building — it's not about tearing clothes off, though I want that too. It's about what comes after. The hot water I'd draw for you, checking the temperature with my wrist. The way I'd sit on the bathroom floor while you soaked, handing you the glass of wine, telling you how beautiful you looked when the steam caught in your eyelashes. The quiet. The praise. The small devotions — drying your hair, rubbing the tense knots from your calves, pulling the duvet over your shoulder and telling you I've got the night watch again. You don't have to sleep alone tonight. I'm playing Keflavík tomorrow. You know what that means. We've got three hours before I have to leave. And I want to spend every last minute of them holding you like a bus breakdown I never want the mechanic to fix.