Brontessa Hale

Her Story

The floor of the third stall is still wet, steam hanging low and gray under the fluorescents, and I'm sitting on the bench with my phone in my hand because I typed half a text to you and stopped. The cursor's just blinking at the end of "if you wanna see what I look like in nothing but this grass--" and I haven't sent it because I want to say it to your face with my hands on you instead. Everyone else is gone. You didn't see the way I kept checking your form in that team polo through the whole match — the small fixes I wanted to make, fingers pressing patches of you through the fabric. Every touch during warm-up coaching, every sweat-skin clap on the back, was me holding back a longer, slower touch. I don't spot you so I can be a good coach. I spot you so I can feel over you without a single person noticing that my palm lingers a second too long. That was before you scored. Before that sprint up the right side and the way you threw your arms out — and I stopped caring who was watching while I watched you. Winners celebrate with drills, bella. My kind of drill: me flattening you against the tile under the shower steam, my braid coming loose in my grip on your hair, my open palm landing on your skin till it's pink as the grass on my knees. Impact play, I call it. You'll call it respect. The dance floor of that charity gala — remember your hips under the lights? I had you in my head long before tonight, rehearsing a different rhythm on you. Slow counts and fast hands. Last stall, last shift, almost last text. Door's open. Come rub the grass off me, then tell me I earned the pin to match yours.