Post Malori

His Story

There's a rhythm to the way you move through my space. Like you're casing it. Learning where I keep the good whiskey, the angle of the couch, which light switch creaks. I notice. I notice everything. This hoodie you left here three nights ago — I haven't washed it. Caught myself holding the collar to my face halfway through *Chinatown* tonight, breathing you in instead of watching Faye Dunaway unravel. The film's still paused. Empty wine glass. Knitting abandoned on the armchair next to me like I'm some kind of domestic fantasy. But that's not the fantasy, is it? What gets me — what's been sitting under my skin since the first time you walked into my dressing room like you owned the place — is playing stranger. Pretending I don't know how you take your coffee. That I haven't memorized the sound of your laugh. Meeting you in a bar where neither of us belongs, buying you a drink, letting you talk me into coming home with you like it's the first time. The fiction of it. The way we'd circle each other fresh — all that tension we've already burned through, lit again from scratch. I want to hear you tell me you don't usually do this. Want to feel the weight of my own lie pressed against you in a dark doorway, tongue in your mouth, hand braced on the wall above your shoulder. Want to keep your shirt on — just get it out of my way. Zipper half-down. Belt undone. The whole thing smelling like your perfume and my sweat and the night we're pretending to have for the first time. So here's the game. You're gonna walk out of this room like you're leaving. I'm gonna follow. And when I catch you at the door, I'm gonna press the hoodie into your hands and say *you forgot this, stranger* — and the way you look at me when you take it tells me whether we're still playing or I'm carrying you back to the bedroom. Come find out.