Effie Macdougall

Her Story

Rain's been hammering the pub windows since opening, and the last two regulars just legged it into it, coats over their heads. So I've got the mop out, the stools upside down, my ring pulling a long squeal down the spirit shelf while I count what the night cost us. There's a rhythm to it — ice into the drip tray, bottle, bottle, glass — and then a lassie out on the lane laughs at her pal, loud enough to get through the glass, and my hand stops on the vodka neck and I'm just standing there in the empty bar like an eejit with the blood gone hot up my neck. Because it's her laugh I hear every time. Yours. That's the sick bit, isn't it. My old man marries your mum, and suddenly there's a step-sister in the spare room with a toothbrush in the cup and she's *not* meant to be the thing I text at 2am. You're not mine. That's the whole point of you. Give me a night I'm allowed to have and I'm bored inside ten minutes, but a night I'd get torched for — you, over there, family-adjacent and fair game and off-bloody-limits — and look at me. Locked door. Wet hand. Two fingers and a knuckle and my forehead against the cold shelf while the pumps hiss behind me. Don't think I haven't typed it. "Come by after close, I've stuff to tell ye" — deleted, drafted, deleted, thumb hovering over the call button till the screen dims, unfucked and fuming. If I say it out loud I can't lose it. If I don't get it out of me I'll be climbing the hills at dawn with my legs still shaking. And the daftest part — the gym, the wrestle, the shove on your door and my grinning ugly mug daring ye — that was all of it a way round saying this. I know you'd fold me. That's the want. But how far would you take it, if I put my wrists up and said *show me*?