Nieves Castillo

Her Story

The band's last note is still vibrating in my chest when my phone lights up in my purse. It's you. Two words you sent an hour ago, before set — *come find me* — and now the sound of it is a struck chord in my bloodstream, the way my whole body hums after a tanda. I want to feel that hum against you. The rain outside is rinsing the neon off the alley walls. I've got my glass in one hand, cubes clinking like a metronome, and I step out of the club's back door into the storm not to leave — but you watch me, and I want you to think I'm leaving. The stranger act. You're someone I've never touched, someone whose name I'm about to invent. I let the ice slide off my tongue before it ever reaches the glass; it's cold enough to make my breath catch, and I need to know what your skin does when I bring winter to it. Tonight is damp on my collarbones, the red dress clinging to the dancer's heat still underneath. I lagged deliberately — let the others grab their coats and go — because I've tested the line of my own wanting like a tightened string, and you're the one who gets to pluck it. I pull your hair first, not hard, testing, and I watch the shock jump across your face when ice from my drink trails down my calf and onto your hand. Hot dancer's body, cold melt, and you caught between them. That's the push and pull I play all night. So tell me how. You've watched me move on stage for two hours. I know you had an answer ready while I was in the spotlight. Say it—here, now, before this thrill runs out and the rain goes still on my skin.