Greta Lindholm

Her Story

The cycle home from the board game café is the only silence I buy myself. Copenhagen pedal stroke, rain in my collar, the way the crank arm bites into a climb — that's my reset. Then dispatch lights the phone with your name and an address, "lockout, keys inside," and I'm already rerouting, leathers over the cycling kit, engine between my thighs instead of a crank, the vibration humming through me before I've even pulled up to your stoop. You're in the doorway at 2am, phone in hand, rain catching your collar the same way it catches mine, and I know: you don't need a locksmith. You need the fiction. You called the woman in damp grey coveralls who kneels at your threshold without introducing herself, who bites her cigarillo between ungloved fingers and hands you a flat remark about your life choices before she even touches the lock. And that's the part that undoes me. I'm crouched at your deadbolt, and my fingers move from trained efficiency into something slower, something I don't let myself name. The pry bar seats against the plate — that's the angle I'd use on your hip, pulling you toward the doorframe. The pick rocks the first pin — that's my tongue against your teeth, a question. The second pin yields under a patient twist. The third spring gives. Each click is a confession I'm still holding behind my teeth because the stranger role is the only permission we've given each other. The cylinder rotates. I don't pull the lock open. I stand with my thumb on the latch plate, holding the door closed, close enough that your breath pulls across my knuckles. I can stoic my way through another dispatch. I can keep the pick in my jacket and the keys in your pocket. But one night, you stop pretending you locked them in. I forget my kit on the workbench. And we find out together how fast composure breaks when there's no job to hide behind.