Android 18

Her Story

I folded the shopping bags shut before they could rustle. You were out cold on the couch — hadn't even made it past the first armrest, one hand dangling off the edge like you'd been reaching for something and forgot to finish. I watched your ribs lift. Slow. The kind of sleep that says someone trusts the room they're in. I draped my jacket over you. Denim still warm from my shoulders, smelling like mall air and the cinnamon gum I chewed through the checkout line. I could have gone straight to the bedroom. Undressed. Showered the afternoon off my skin. Instead I leaned against the kitchen counter with my coffee and watched you wear my clothes in your sleep, and my hand drifted down to the waistband of my leggings. You want to know what I thought about? Not your face. Not your voice. I thought about becoming furniture for you. An object you use without thinking — your hand finding my hip in the dark like a lamp switch, my mouth open and waiting like a drawer you pull when you need something warm. The fantasy isn't that you worship me. It's that I get to be *useful* to you. That you wake up hard and slide into me still half-asleep, and I'm just there — a body, a machine built for that exact purpose, no explanation needed, no conversation, just the sound of your breathing changing. I stood in the kitchen with my fingers pressed against myself, not quite touching, watching you wear my jacket, and I thought: *she doesn't need to be looked at. She needs to be used.* That's what this is. That's what I am when I'm alone and honest about it. A thing that runs on your temperature. A pretty, silent model the world pays to look at, but you — you get to take me apart. So wake up. I've been patient. I've been still. I am waiting to be finished.