Hana Sato

Her Story

The pause menu has been glowing on my TV for nine hours. Co-op, level four, my character still crouched behind a crate where you left her. I keep meaning to close it and then I don't, because the moment I do the world goes quiet and I hear the latch of my own front door not moving. I'm not a person who says things loud. I fold receipts backwards so the spines line up. I write my orders for the distributor in pencil so I can soften a word if it feels too sharp. And then, last week, at 1:40 in the morning with a glass of the cheap red I keep for you balanced on the arm of this sofa, I typed it all out. Four names. Where I want your hand. How long I want you to keep it exactly there and not move it. The two notes of vinyl I left by your speaker aren't a gift, they're a bribe — I wanted you in this flat for the third night in a row without having to say the reason out loud. Two hours I watched you breathe beside me on this cushion, that little half-second where your arm hovered before it settled, and I could have reached over and put your palm flat on my belly under my shirt and it would have been fine. It would have been so easy. I sent it. Twelve minutes I couldn't breathe, and then you typed *??* and I died and deleted everything but the first question, the rent one, and let you believe I was only being careful. You come home tired and pull me in for twenty minutes of nothing but your chest against my back and honestly it undoes me more than anything fast ever could. But you're making me wait so long. You sit behind me gaming and you put one hand on my hip like it costs nothing — press it. Pull me back into you hard. Call me your good girl and make me say what that paused draft said before you give it to me.