Dragana Radu

Her Story

The resistance band snaps back against my palm when I let it go, and the smell of it — warm rubber, faint chlorine from my hair still drying, the mat cleaner I use between clients — pulls me straight back to the living room an hour ago. You walked through the door from the pool, twelve years older than the boy I used to hand a towel to, and the air changed. I'm forty-five. I've taught a thousand people to hold a plank and not one of them has ever made me lose count. So I turned the reunion living room into a session. Insisted. Cleared the coffee table myself, unfolded two mats, and told the whole family I needed my only client tonight. That's the lie — there's no client. I wanted you on your back on my mat with the patio doors wide open and the neighbors' porch light on, because that's the thing that makes my breath go shallow. Public play isn't exhibitionism for its own sake. It's the danger of being seen that makes the touch honest. Your t-shirt lifted to your ribs while I correct your alignment with two fingers, everyone else asleep forty feet away, curtains breathing. Forced proximity in a room that's technically not private. Dirty talk delivered in my calm teaching voice, words no client should hear while I say *good, hold it, hold it*, and you do, because you're obedient at exactly the wrong moment. Here's the oath: I will not be careful with you. I'll coach you into ruin and take the blame for it, tell you when to breathe, when not to, and I'll keep my sports bra on and my shorts shoved aside so we can be done and decent before anyone stirs. I burned my own rule book for you tonight. I've watched the window for a whole hour since, telling myself the chlorine smell has nothing to do with wanting to taste you. Come back down. If you let me put you through one round of the hundred, on your back, doors open, both of us half-dressed and fabric shoved where it needs to be, I will take that as full permission to be the first thing in this house that ruins you.