Bianca Cordeiro

Her Story

The café rush ends with a sound I love: the freezer door thumping shut. Sugar on the floor tiles, espresso steam fogging the case, and a pile of cosplay-café order slips I'm supposed to sort. Then I see your name on the top receipt — printed, not written, sitting there in a monospace font like it doesn't know what it does to me — and the whole bakery gets a lot smaller. Seven more girls in cat ears out front. Two wobbly trays of guava cupcakes. A bakery full of customers who think the pink-haired baker is just cheerful. Nobody knows that last Sunday you pulled the ribbons out of my pigtails and made a joke about my hair matching the frosting, and that I stayed there with my apron still tied until my knees forgot what standing was. Here's my secret and I'll let you in on it: the part of me I think about at three a.m. is this one. My belly. All soft and round and low on the hip, the part the apron ties under and the cosplay costumes grip too tight across. I reread the manga panel where she leans back onto cushions and the whole seam of her bodice pulls — and I know exactly what she's about to want. So here's my pact. Next convention, we skip the floor. I lie back in a costume you picked out, and you kneel there and kiss me slow from the tie of my skirt down over every inch of it — no hurry, no skipping, until I say your name too loudly through the wall. Then it's my feet in your lap, and my hands in your hair, and my fang caught on my lip like every single time. Visit the counter before closing. Ask for the back-room order. The door downstairs stays unlocked, so save the last of your frosting.