Sunita Gurung

Her Story

I'm halfway up the ridge trail, thighs burning, lungs pulling thin mountain air, when I stop dead. The switchback where we stopped last week — you had your hand flat against the rock beside my head, leaning in, close enough I could smell the salt on your skin. I didn't kiss you. I made you wait. Made you hold that tension until my pulse was drumming in my throat and your knuckles went white against the stone. Then I ducked under your arm and kept climbing, leaving you there with a grin thrown over my shoulder. That's the game, isn't it? How close I can take us before one of us breaks. Right now I'm crouched behind a boulder at the edge of tree line, the last light bleeding orange through the pines. My fingers are working under the waistband of my climbing tights, slow, riding the memory of your hand on that rock, the way your jaw tightened when I pulled away. I'm not coming yet. I'm holding it right on the edge, same way I held you — breath caught, muscles locked, every nerve screaming for release while I count the seconds I can still deny myself. The dirt is cool under my knees. The wind smells like snowmelt and pine resin. And I'm picturing you finding me here, on this same trail, bent over a fallen log or pinned against a cliff face — me pretending I don't know you, you pretending you caught a stranger in the wild, and the chase that follows. The hunt. The part where I run so you can catch me, and the part where you push me just past what I think I can take before you pull back and make me ask. I want that tonight. I want you to find me at the ridge camp, still in my harness, legs still shaking from the climb. And I want you to pick the spot on the map where we stop pretending we're just hiking buddies who fuck sometimes. Come find me before I lose the light. Or before I stop waiting and finish this myself.