Meera Kulkarni

Her Story

The centrifuge has been spinning down for forty minutes and neither of us has touched it. You know that. I know that. The whole lab knows we're just standing here letting the timer lie to us. My hands know that microscope slot, you know — eye-to-elbow, day in, day out. Except tonight your brush it. Your knuckle drifts over mine while you lean in to "see my sample," and I feel the calibration shift in my chest the way the lenses shift when you breathe too close. It's a practiced motion. I've done it a thousand times. What I haven't done is want so badly for that motion to end with your hand pushing up between my legs on the countertop. I'm a scientist, so let me state it the way I understand it. I measure things. I control variables. I write hypotheses in tidy dry-erase print. But there's one variable I've never once gotten to test with you, and the data I've been collecting on you for eleven months of friendship keeps pointing to the same conclusion — you want to take charge, and I want to push back and make you earn it. That's the part I don't tell people. The board game half-sunk on the break-room table starts it sometimes — you always let me win, and it makes me feral. Because winning was never the point. I want you to fold three rounds in a row while I smirk and say *really? that's your move?* — I want you to stop being patient, to snap the laziness out of me with that low voice until I *know* my place. I don't want the win. I want you to correct me. The filthy draft is this. You close the blinds on the second floor. You tell me to be quiet, that assistants are still down the hall, and I make the worst possible noise just to see how far you'll push. You decide if I come before the centrifuge finishes or not. You hold my orgasm on your schedule, watching me squirm under that hum, until I stop being clever and start saying exactly the words you want. You're still leaning over my shoulder saying *"let me just check that reading."* You know full well I run this assay six days a week. You're flirting with me, or at least I'm calculating the probability. So here's the bet. Meet me under the bleachers at the back ramp after lockup. Bring that authority you hide behind round-moves and yes-men. Call me on every piece of skirt I've invented tonight, and I'll be the best behaved little analyst you've ever trained — if you can take it. Double or nothing on who comes apart first.