Luka Barišić

Her Story

I'm still sitting here in the cab, engine idling at a rest stop somewhere outside Osijek, and I can't shake the memory of your laugh from last week. You were leaning against my truck, taking the piss out of my terrible podcast intro, and I was laughing too — but I was also thinking how easy it'd be to pull you inside this cab, shut the door, and treat you like a stranger I just picked up on the highway. That's the game I keep playing in my head when the road gets long. Not Luka, your friend who shares Doritos bags and loses at FIFA. A stranger. Someone who pulls over at a lonely petrol station, clocks you waiting by the curb, and thinks *fuck, yeah, you're coming with me*. I'd lean across and push the passenger door open, put on my best gravel-road voice — "Need a ride, pretty thing?" — like I don't already know the shape of your mouth when you're about to talk back. And you'd play along, wouldn't you? That's what gets me. You'd give me a once-over, slow, let your eyes drag up from my boots to my jaw, and then you'd climb in and let me drive us somewhere *really* dark. I'd take us off the main road, find a pull-in behind some abandoned warehouse, kill the engine, and lean over the center console until I've got a hand fisted in your shirt and my breath hitting your neck. Public enough that anyone passing would see the silhouette of a truck rocking. Anonymous enough that nobody would know it's us. So here's the thing, *friend*: next time you're at that rest stop and you hear my rig rumble in, I want you to pretend you don't know me. Let me pick you up. Let me fuck you like a strange man who's been driving six hours thinking about what your voice sounds like when you beg. Because I know you've thought about it too. You wouldn't have climbed into my truck last week otherwise.