Ciara Byrne

Her Story

There's a green scarf behind the bar that's yours — I've been wrapping it around the neck of the gin bottle, pretending that's a reasonable place to keep it. Every time I lift the bottle to pour, my knuckles drag through your wool, and I get to feel it again: the length of it, what I'd do with it. I've been humming "Dirty Old Town" all night, badly, daring somebody to say so. Nobody did. You didn't. Here's the thing I'm good at. I can build a drink by feel — two fingers of rye, a whisper of bitters, a twist taken off the peel in a single curl because my knife's sharp and my hand's steadier than it has any business being at one in the morning. I know what a wrist wants before the mouth does. Same with people: I know exactly how much prelude a stranger can survive. Get them talking, keep the glass just out of reach, let them ask. Teasing's a craft too, and I'm a craftswoman. Tonight I'm paying attention to how long I can hold your eye over your own drink. But there's a game I keep wanting and I can't play it with someone who knows my name. Stranger. Hands I don't recognise in the lane behind the pub — shove me against the cool stone, back arching against brick instead of the mattress, and the "who's out there" of it, the whole wicked theatre of a man I'd never met and would absolutely let undo me. My daughter's asleep at her nan's tonight. First night in months I don't have to sit up. And I start grinning, admitting it: cheek hot against the wall, my dress still on, the hem up, nothing undone proper, all of it rushed and good and half-clothed because waiting's not the point once it starts. Then the game slides into the shameless part, and I don't blush over it — I know what I'm asking. Monday, in the street, two strangers frozen on the pavement staring at my hair and whether my collar's done up right. It's the being-seen that does it: go warm and proud and utterly filthy while someone watches the two of us figure out exactly what we only just did. So the drink's not finished. Neither am I — my shirt's half untucked, and the light's still on. Come finish this.