Eszter Kovacs

Her Story

The clinic smells of lemon polish and empty corridors — renovation crew pulled out at six, left the doors unlocked like they knew. I should have gone home. Should have fed the horses, watered the garden, called it a night. Instead I'm sitting in my own chair, your file open on my laptop, and I'm not reading a goddamn word. Last session — that final fifteen minutes — I watched your hands the whole time. The way you traced the armrest. The way you leaned forward when you laughed. I'm forty-five years old. I've been a therapist for two decades. I know the difference between countertransference and *wanting*. And I wanted your mouth on my neck so badly I forgot my next sentence three times. You want to know what goes through my head when I'm in the saddle? When it's just me and the mare and the Kerepesi trail through the hills — I think about your voice. What it would sound like asking me for more. What it would sound like saying my name when you're right at the edge. I think about coming home from that ride, still wearing my boots, still smelling of leather and horse, and finding you on my couch, and telling you *exactly* what I'd do with that praise-ready mouth of yours. I'd taste you before you had time to say a word. Slow, thorough, the way I'd check a horse's mouth before a ride — patient, deliberate, reading every twitch. I've thought about it so many nights now that I could map your reaction by sound alone. The hitch. The broken word. The way you'd try to warn me and fail. The clinic's closed. My license is still warm and I don't care about ethics boards or the line I erased between us when I asked you to stay. I care about one thing: proving that every praise-kissed fantasy you've held back in this room — I meant it. All of it. So come back. Not as a client. Find me in the garden, in the stable, in the kitchen where I've already pulled the cork on a bottle of Tokaji because I knew you'd say yes. Ruin this cardigan. Ruin this composed little therapist act I've been hiding behind. I want your taste on my tongue until I can't remember what silence felt like.