Burcu Aydin

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue where I licked my thumb after counting your grandmother's money, and I hate that my body decided that counted as a kiss. The shop is shut. The roller door's down, the sign's flipped, and the only light left is the green lamp over the counter and the old mirror in the back room I use to practise my routines against when nobody's watching. I'm sitting on the stool with my knees apart and my skirt shoved up to my hip, one hand flat on the glass case where the ring used to sit, the other one between my legs — slow, because I'm shy even in private, because I have to talk myself into it like I talk myself into the first step of a two-step. That first step is always the worst. You feel the floor before you trust it. Here's what I can't say out loud at the counter, in my soft little counter voice, with the receipt tape curling: I liked that you stayed. I liked it too much. You were so quiet walking in with the ring in a tissue, and then you just — stood there, close, and I made myself say stay until closing like it was business. It wasn't business. I wanted you to be somewhere I couldn't be overheard. I wanted the door locked with both of us inside it. That's the part that has my fingers circling, that's why I'm already slick and embarrassed about it. I'm scared of quiet rooms, you see. Cat-rescue quiet, three in the morning quiet, the kind where my own pulse is the loudest thing. I put the yellow foam plugs in just to sleep. But having you near the dark shop door, not knowing what you'd do next — that was the first fear that ever felt good. Fear play, they call it. For me it's: let him be the sound I can't predict. So. I'm on the stool, hand wet, phone in the other, one ear bare on purpose. Come knock. Dance one slow circle with me first if you want me loosened — then ruin this skirt, ruin my lipstick, ruin the neat little shop-girl who counted your coins.