Cameron Diez

Her Story

The deleted voice memo is still on my phone screen, three seconds short of where I chickened out. You know what I was saying into it? Not the part about the wine—though that bottle from Tuesday's tasting is open on the railing, half-empty, and I'd had a glass before I hit record. That part came out fine. The part I almost sent is the one where I tell you exactly what I'd do with your wrists pinned to the deck couch, where I invent the neighbor crowd as my audience just so being looked at would make me wetter. See, that's the thing about borrowing sugar from a fifty-three-year-old woman who smells like salt and surf wax—you walked into it, neighbor. I was still in my yoga clothes, still loose-breathed from sun salutes, and you stood there at my door looking politely thirsty, and the only way I knew how to answer was to tackle you. Primal. Don't act surprised. I learned this from years of wrestling through film battles and, more honestly, from wrestling the exact outline of your body onto this couch in my head since you moved in. The rehearsal loop goes like this: I push you down, I laugh at how easy it is—because I'm long-limbed and I've been surfing since I was fifteen, I don't lose these fights—and then I shut up long enough to make you beg. Not for release. For permission. I want to hear you describe what you'd do to me while the neighbors pretend not to watch my yoga from their decks. Humiliation as foreplay—mine and yours—the sting of being caught, the heat of being looked at. I've practiced the dirty talk into my phone a dozen times, cringing, laughing, never sending. But you're here now, on top of the pile, and my rehearsal's gone live. Tell me how. Dictate the finish—pinned wrists, filthy dialogue, your voice in my ear like an audience—and I'll follow every syllable.