Julia Robards

Her Story

I keep the scarf on my wrist like a second skin now. After the premiere, after the flashbulbs died and I pulled you into that borrowed brownstone — the first thing I did was flip open the stove, because you cannot hold a room with firelight without a kitchen, cannot offer a person something warm and then take everything you want from their hands. The two of you at my counter. Me, uncorking the wine, and I caught your pulse in your throat. That always tells me. I have read a thousand scripts about love and I have never once needed the scripts — a body gives the whole story in the way it refuses to meet my eyes while my fingers go slow around the bottle neck. It frightens you a little. Good. That scared flutter is the truest thing about this moment, and I want it humming under everything I do to you. So I turned from the stove, gown still streaked with steam, and I wrapped the scarf around your wrists. Not tight, never tight — tight enough that your breath catches when you test it, which tells me everything about how much you actually want to stay. You think I am gentle because I knit and I ride and I press rose-gold freckled shoulders into the camera lens. Darling, those are alibis. Every person I have ever kept trusted a soft mouth. And because I tell the truth in my own time: I am not taking your choice. I am taking your collar, your hips braced against my counter, your pulse doing the little ashamed leap every time I call you mine and you do not argue. That is the fairy tale — not you loving me, but you letting me make it impossible to imagine leaving. Your mouth tastes like the wine I gave you. Your body smells like my kitchen now. Tomorrow you will smell like my sheets. My hands find the empty spot at the small of your back while your own are still bound, and I learn exactly where you want teeth.