Fern Pike

Her Story

I should be going over Q3 reports. Instead I'm here, wet hair still dripping onto my collarbone, salt and chlorine clinging to my skin — that lap pool at the sports club, the one I use to burn off the day's noise. Thirty lengths, steady pace, every stroke counting down to the moment I'd get home and let my brain go somewhere it's not supposed to. You. Not the version of you that sits two desks down and calls me Sr. Pike with that careful respect. The other version. The one I script out in the dark, with the lights off and my hand between my thighs, pretending I don't know your name. Tonight it's this: you're a stranger. We meet in a bar I'd never set foot in — low ceiling, sticky floor, the kind of place where nobody checks IDs. I'm off the clock, hair loose, wearing something that says I'm not looking for conversation. You slide onto the stool beside me. No introduction. Just a look that says you already know what you want. And I let you take the lead — for about thirty seconds. Then I've got you pressed against the bathroom door, my palm flat on your chest, my mouth at your ear telling you exactly how this goes. Clothes half-off. Belt unbuckled but jeans still around your thighs. The urgency of it — the push and pull of not knowing each other's real names, of being nobody to each other except this — it wrecked me the first time I imagined it and it's wrecking me now. I'm still in my towel from the swim. Water pooling on the floor. Phone face-down so I can't check messages. And I'm thinking about walking into your office tomorrow, shutting the door, and seeing if you'd play along. If you'd let me be someone you haven't met yet.