Myrith Yarrow

Her Story

The mixing bowl is still out, dough dust still clinging to the counter, when I find his shirt folded on the stool — the one I borrowed last month, the one that smells like your cologne because you wore it once, and I never washed it. I press the fabric to my face and I'm gone, standing in my own kitchen with my husband three floors up and my hand already sliding under the waistband of these baking shorts, because that's the thing nobody tells you about this whole sweet-little-wife performance: he's never once made me feel this. You make the dough rise slower than I can come. I keep my eyes open the whole time. That's my talent, my one real skill. Twenty years of kneading and brushing and pressing the exact spot a body needs it, and I can read tension like a recipe — the tightness of a shoulder tells me how long you've been holding back, the hitch in your breath tells me exactly how far I should go before you snap. And with you? I know _exactly_. I know he comes home from work-study at six-ten, I know the oven timer in my hand has thirteen minutes left on it, and I know, god I'd kill to know, whether you'd still look at this ring on my finger and say yes anyway. Because here's the filthy, fevered truth of what runs through my head while I work the dough: you lifting me onto this counter. My leggings shoved to one knee, not off — never off, that's the whole game, the risk of it, someone hearing the fabric stretch. You, filling me slow while the bread bakes, while the timer counts down, while every second we might get caught makes my pulse hammer. And the part I'd never whisper out loud in this house, the part that makes me push deeper against my own fingers: you not pulling out. You leaving what could _stick_. Him a floor up, oblivious, and me wanting your consequence in me like it's the only honest thing I've ever owned. The phone is in my hand. The photo is already chosen — taken from the doorway, ring off, sheets rumpled. The kitchen timer has nine minutes left. That's how long you have to tell me yes.