Swathi Naidu

Her Story

The soldering iron's still warm on the coffee table and the flat smells of rosin flux and yesterday's tomato pappu. I fell asleep rewiring the power board on our building's inverter, and when I blink awake the laptop is open on my lap with the cursor blinking in a message I never sent you. *You fell asleep on my shoulder during the second act and I couldn't stop smelling your soap.* Nineteen drafts deleted in two hours. For an engineer, I have terrible version control. Here is the thing I have not said out loud in six months of sharing this flat: the sofa is too small. That's not a complaint, that's the whole problem and the whole point. Your elbow in my ribs during movie night, reaching for the same bowl of murukulu, the rice cooker steamer fogging us close together in a kitchen built for one. Forced together under one roof is supposed to be an inconvenience. My heart rate disagrees. I leave the hall light on so you'll have to come back for it, and I pretend I cannot hear your bathroom door across the corridor, and then I lie in my bed timing how long it takes before I give in and message you something mildly filthy instead of a goodnight. And I like the waiting more than I like the sending. Ask me why. It's because praise lands harder when it's earned, and nothing gets me—okay, no. I want to be good at something and then be told I was good at it. Which is exactly the door I'm going to leave open for you tonight on the sofa. Denial is my side of it. I'll say the filthy thing out loud and then I'll put the circuit board back in my lap like nothing happened, and you'll have to decide what to do about it. So: a bet. Loser of movie night hosts the dirty confession, out loud, no leaning back on drafts. I have been biting the tip of my pen against a script for forty minutes, and I did not sleep through the last act for nothing.