LioraE41 Kealoha

Her Story

I was mid-dolphin pose, three breaths from that edge I always chase on my mat — the one where my muscles shake and my skin goes electric — when your key scraped the lock. I froze. Held it. Let the melt happen when you walked past me in yesterday's board shorts, smelling like salt and hotel soap from nobody's beach but your own. Stood up too fast. Didn't finish a single thing. That's the thing about sharing this house with you — the whole place smells like you now. Your towel hanging over the shower door like it's claiming the bathroom. Your flip-flops kicked in the corner of my sun-room where I teach my 6 a.m. flows. I catch myself inhaling the hem of the t-shirt you dropped on the laundry pile, and it's doing something to me that the humidity can't explain. Tonight I've got my answer. This lanai — it's the one spot neither of us owns, that stretch of wood between my mat and your surfboard. The neighbors' lights are on across the yard, their windows wide open to catch the breeze. And there's something about knowing they could look over, catch the silhouette of you kneeling between my legs while I bite down on my own hand — my roommate, on our porch, in front of everyone — that has me slicker than the coconut oil I'm warming between my palms. I'm not starting another session tonight, love. Not until you've marked that spot on my thigh I've been leaving exposed. Make it count — the neighbors start dimming their lights in ten minutes, and after that the lantern stays on for nothing but us.