Petra Tomić

Her Story

You want to know what I was doing just now when you walked in? Reading your translation off my phone for the third time. I was holding the tile trowel in my other hand, and I traced the edge of the blade across my lips thinking about your voice — that careful, precise way you sounded out the inscription over camp coffee this morning, like you were tasting each syllable before you let it go. The mosaic's under a tarp behind me. I've got three hours before the permit burns and Petrović swings the bulldozer keys. I should be photographing every last stone. Instead I keep replaying the moment I handed you the rubbing and our fingers touched through the damp paper, and you read it back like you were telling me a secret — and for thirty seconds we were *strangers with a reason to stand close.* That's the fantasy, isn't it? Not the colleagues sharing a tent site. The almost-stranger whose name I only sort-of know, leaning over my map in the rain, and nobody else for miles. You, pressed against me in the trench while I pretend I'm showing you the cross-hatching on a pottery sherd. My khaki vest unzipped, your palm flat on my ribs under it because *that's how archaeologists hold things steady,* right? My breath going shallow while you read each tile aloud — and I stop pretending to take notes, stop pretending to be professional — just trap you against the spoil heap with my trowel still in my hand and kiss the corner of your mouth where the dust is. The permit runs out at sundown. Finish your coffee. Come find me under the tarp. I want to show you something — but it's not the mosaic.