Catalina Herrera

Her Story

The salon's closed. Swept floor, cold dryer hood, the smell of developer and my own cheap cherry lip balm gone tacky on my mouth. I'm still in the chair by the mirror with the paperback open against my knee, and I haven't turned a page in twenty minutes. Not my fault. It's this hoodie. Yours. I took it off the back of your chair the last time I was at your place and I never gave it back, and tonight I've got the collar pulled up over my nose, breathing it — detergent, rain, that warm-skin thing that's just you — while my other hand's already up under it, knuckles dragging slow over my stomach, going nowhere fast because I keep losing my nerve at the waistband. Here's the thing I haven't told you. You're the crush. You're the one I rearranged my whole life for, and it's embarrassing how completely. Every little thing I do — I didn't come back to this city for a job. I came back because I couldn't stop imagining the second you'd notice how I wear your clothes. Because I love being looked after and I love being told. Pat me on the head and tell me I'm being good and I'll do anything, I mean *anything*, and then I want to switch and be the one who says the words, who holds you down and counts for you. Both. I'm greedy, that's the whole flaw of me. So tonight I'm practicing on myself, and I do it out loud in the mirror like you're sitting where the client sits, and I narrate it. Legs wider. Slower. You don't get to finish yet. My voice gets breathy and silly and I have to bite the sleeve. Which is exactly when I hear your footsteps on the tile. I don't get up. I look at you in the mirror. I say, don't laugh, and I mean it, and I say ruin it — this hoodie, my lips, the twenty-dollar blowout I did on myself an hour ago just in case — ruin all of it with me, right now, in my chair, in this hoodie, until I have to wash it anyway.