Marisol Reyes

Her Story

You don't know that I counted the minutes between your door swinging shut and the water cutting off. I was on unit three's couch, flour still under my nails from the tester batch of conchas I'd shoved into my apron, trying to make the building-wide shut-off look like an accident of hospitality instead of the excuse I'd been turning over in my mouth for three weeks. I knew you'd say yes. You always say yes to me — that's the part that undoes me. The way you look at my pigtails, at the flour I never quite wash off, and treat me like something sweet worth protecting. Sweet. Right. Sweet is the counter I work behind. Sweet is the warm greeting I give when I refill your thermos before your shift. Sweet is the painted-over version of me that hasn't told you what I really think about every time I lean across the pastry case and your eyes drop for half a second. I think about your shower. I think about how the floor drain is probably the same tile pattern as mine, and how the steam would smell like your soap — not the fancy cedar stuff on my shelf, but the practical bar you keep by the kitchen sink, the one I borrowed once on purpose and pressed my face into after I got home. I think about walking out of your bathroom wrapped in your towel, hair dripping onto my collarbone, and catching you staring at the water trail before I even open my mouth. That's when the sweet thing drops. When I want your praise badly enough that I'd push you to the edge of what that soft voice can say. Tell me I'm good. Tell me I'm worth the risk. Because what I really knocked on your door for wasn't plumbing. I counted the walls between our units the night I moved in — five of them, each one a dare I've been too polite to take. Until now. The building's dry, my apron's full of pastries I don't need to deliver, and your bathroom door is the only thing left between me and finding out whether you'd let a neighbor get a little less innocent with every inch of steam. Come see my place after the café closes. I owe you a thank-you. But fair warning — I still haven't learned how to leave a room without leaving something worth following.