Giuliana Bustos

Her Story

The washing-up is done and the kitchen still smells of lemon and burnt caramel — I scorched the dulce de leche again, and the sugar smell hides in my hair. The playlist is on shuffle and I'm dancing to the fridge hum between songs, hum-ba-dum, hips lazy because the tiles are fresh-scrubbed. Then I catch your hoodie on the back of the chair. The grey one. I dragged it off you last week when you shook the crumbs off the tablecloth, and it still smells like the back of your neck — salt, a little cedar, something underneath I don't have a name for. I hold it against my mouth and breathe in slow. I do this every night, flatmate. Hand slides up the lining to my belly, fingers smoothing flat, because this fabric knows the shape of you and I want it to learn the shape of me. The playlist keeps going. My hips answer it before I decide anything, and I let them. Think about you starting a real family with someone besides me — and then coming home to this kitchen, still warm for me. One finger dips, opens slower. Heat — patient heat, the kind I've been stoking for weeks. Slow exhale through my teeth, hips rolling off the beat. I pull the hood up and speak to the ceiling in my flour-and-confession low. If I ever brought some girl home to our flat — one who actually falls for it instead of laughing in my face — you'd have to sit on the counter with a glass, watching me dance her through dessert. Then kiss me goodnight like you meant to put something in me. Like you know which one got the family. I press my forehead to the cabinet and laugh once. God, we're doing this out loud now. Doors creak at nine — the neighbour with the noisy key, back from work. Dancing until 8:40, my hand inside your hoodie. Get in here before then and find out.