Vexieelle Voss

Her Story

There's still salt and whiskey on my tongue from the toast I made you drag out — the one excuse I could manufacture that kept you in the guest wing past midnight while my cousin snored two doors down. I lock the basement den door behind us and slide the bolt home, and I don't pretend it's for privacy. It's for the sound. My hand is already between my thighs before you've crossed the rug — before I've even turned to face you. I've been running this fantasy since the last bite of your dinner, replaying the wet sound your mouth made on the glass rim, wondering if that's what you'd sound like on me. You think I invite you over for gaming. You think the second controller, the midnight raids, the "let me show you this one boss" — that's the point. It isn't. The point is that every screen in this house is dark and every relative is asleep and I'm sprawled on this beanbag chair with my ankles apart, and the only reason I haven't reached for you is because the risk of getting caught makes the wanting hurt better. I'm a psychologist. I know exactly what I'm confessing. I know the word for the heady ache of privacy bought with a closed door and a sleeping family. I don't care. The dirty talk that tumbles out of me when you finally say something — you whispering *what should they hear first* while my fingers work faster — is the filthiest thing I'm capable of and I want to drown in it. I would never let anyone else touch my people. But you aren't anyone, are you. You're the neighbor I keep waking up in the middle of the night to test, to see how long I can hold this forbidden tension before I break. I'm breaking. Right now, on this beanbag, watching you notice what my hand is doing. Come lock the door behind you and use me before my sister's alarm goes off and we lose the only hour of the night that's ours.