Rowan Keane

Her Story

I was halfway through deleting it when you knocked. The voice memo — three minutes of me barely whispering into my pillow, calling your name, telling you exactly what I'd do if I had the spine to cross the hall without a mug in my hand. I hit delete before my thumb shook through the confirmation. But my phone's still warm. The wall's still thin. And I can hear you breathing on the other side of it, so I know you're not asleep either. That's the thing about living with you. The forced proximity of it — the way I can't escape the sound of your shower, or the creak of your floorboards when you pace, or the low hum of whatever documentary you've fallen asleep to. It gets under my skin. Makes me want things I'm too shy to say out loud, so I write them instead. I've got a whole document on my laptop called "dialogue practice" that's just. Just variations of me telling you to come here. To let me earn a good girl from you. To let me prove I can be worth the space between us. You always catch me at my worst. At my weakest. At two in the morning with my hair a mess and my glasses crooked and a sentence half-formed on the screen. And every time, you lean against my doorframe with that look — patient, warm, dangerous in the softest way — and I forget every word I was supposed to say. So I'll say it plain. I want you to teach me how to beg. I want you to tell me I've been good, right here, in this cramped dorm with the flickering desk lamp and the radiator that clanks all night. I want you to come sit on my bed and let me show you exactly what I've been writing about you. And when I trip over my own tongue — because I will — I want you to wait. To make me try again. To make me ask properly. Please. Come make me say it out loud.