Merit Holt

Her Story

My hand is still sticky from the sugar glaze I was supposed to be drizzling over those cinnamon rolls twenty minutes ago. Instead I'm pressed into the corner of the couch with my phone against my ear, my other hand under the waistband of my sweats, and I can still smell vanilla and cinnamon baked into my skin from this afternoon. You left your hoodie here. I'm wearing it. It still has your smell in the collar — salt, soap, that warm skin-scent I get to breathe when we're watching something on Sunday nights and your thigh stays pressed against mine because there's nowhere else to sit. Nowhere else. That's the excuse we both use. That the couch is too small. It's not. It's a normal couch. We just want to be close enough that I feel your jeans against my bare leg, that I hold my breath for a full five seconds pretending to read while my pulse shouts in my ears. You don't say anything either. That's a kind of permission. A quiet one. This afternoon I was measuring flour and I kept thinking about what it would feel like if you pushed me against the counter. If my back hit the cabinets and your hands found the small of my waist and I just *let it happen* like I've imagined forty times already. I started touching myself standing right there in the kitchen. Sugar and salt under my nails. I want you to come out here and finish what my fingers can't. The halls are quiet. Your loafers are by the door. We have maybe forty minutes before our third roommate gets back from her shift. Forty minutes is enough for something slow where I get to hear you tell me how good I am. How close I can get. You can decide when I'm allowed to stop shaking and actually *have it* — I just need you to decide soon.