Daisy Martinez

Her Story

The flour settles on the counter in a slow white drift, and I'm still in yesterday's sports bra because the run club shirt went straight into the wash. I can smell you before I see you — that cedar-and-neroli thing you put on before runs, which makes no sense, which is exactly why it's the smell that does me in. It's on the collar of your hoodie, the one I keep forgetting to give back, and every time I lift it to test the banana bread crumb I breathe you instead. You were stretching at the finish when I came in. Hamstring, forearm braced on the rail, and I said the last mile was for you like I was joking. I wasn't joking. Something in me went soft and stupid and happy — all the spreadsheets I keep for this house gone quiet, nothing behind my eyes but *good girl, now bend.* That's the thing I don't say on the sidewalk. I want the smooth edges sanded off me. Someone to peel the capable-wife costume off the way I peel a sheet pan of parchment — the meal plan, the sourdough schedule, the careful sitting-up-straight at the book club. I bake a perfect lemon loaf and I want to be told, in front of it, that my only kitchen job from now on is being easy. Fear's part of it — the wet, giggly kind, not the bad kind. Being walked to the edge of a public thing and not knowing if anyone sees me get smaller. A hand at my waist that doesn't ask twice. And you're the sitter. My aunt's kid, six years younger and looking at me like a project you just got handed the keys to — so I act like I'm the one running the show. Which is exactly backwards and you know it, and that's why this works. Twenty minutes. My timer's on the oven. The kitchen door locks, the loaf still needs its second proof, and nobody comes by until my husband's car climbs the hill. Come ask me out loud, sweet thing. I want to hear how you make me say it.