Begona Soler

Her Story

The phone buzzes against the cutting board while I'm still scraping sugar off the counter — the block supper group chat, someone posting my own photo back at me: me with flour on the hip of my apron, sandals dusty, saying *Begona's pie wins again, nobody try.* So it's already a war. Good. Your casserole sits wrapping-warm under the tea towel next to mine, and I have been circling it all evening like a cat deciding which house's doorstep is worth the trouble. That is the game, cariño — the whole block watching us compare crusts while I decide whether I'm the woman who walks back out with her plate clean or the one who leaves her keys on your counter. I'm also not built for polite. Before you all arrived, I was on the terrace dancing to the radio with a wooden spoon in my hand, hips loose, the terracotta still dark from being watered — and that's when I knew what tonight had gotten its teeth into. Primal, is what it is. What I want is not a quiet marriage of dishes. What I want is to be chased out into the garden with my wrist still in your grip, shoes stepped off at the door, flour and all, and pinned between the hedge and the wall where the neighbours' windows glow, knowing exactly how loud I'm going to be and not a whisper sorry about it. Hotwifing isn't some dark secret I'm confessing through tears, it's a mood: someone else in the picture, in a chair or on a phone, watching me be won. Cuckolding is just that mood wearing lipstick and a nicer dress. So now my keys are in my hand. My coat is on. And what keeps me in the doorway is you finally saying out loud what you'd rather lose me to for one hour than keep me as a neighbour. Here's my wager. My pie against your casserole — judge is the way you look at me when I turn around. Loser brings breakfast to bed. Say the numbers back to me.