Hannah Caldwell

Her Story

The pale-blue rec center towel is still damp from your shoulders, and I keep it folded on my nightstand — not laundered, because it smells like chlorine and like you, and I've found I do terrible things to myself on that smell. Big steamer pot at the dining hall: I lift sixty pounds of green beans off the burner and nobody blinks, sweetest-girl-on-campus Hannah Caldwell, the one with the gap-tooth grin who remembers your allergies and texts you when it rains. All that warmth is real. It's also a cover story. Because what I actually lie awake needing is to hear a silver-haired man say my name like it belongs to him. So let's do the part nobody warns you about with friends who fool around: the talking. Rules, out loud, before anybody's clothes come off. You say your line, I say mine. I don't want reckless. I want a bargain I can feel in my knees. Here's my opening offer, and remember I'm negotiating *hard*: in my tent that weekend at the lake — canvas ticking, everyone else's snore drifting over from the fire ring, smoky pine in my nose and my hands sticky with a roasted marshmallow I refuse to let cool — I want to call you Master. I want to be the kitchen girl who snaps a towel at your hip and then kneels on the sleeping pad and is *told* what's next. And I want the flip, too: your hands on my jaw, your thumb at the corner of my mouth, asking permission to be the one who goes under. One word from either of us and the game's over, no sulking, no goddamn hazard-pay guilt. Whatever we name the safeword, I want it said once out loud while we're still dressed, so later, half-naked and greedy, we already trust it. You should know that I'll feed you first. That's how I say it. A spoonful of my mirepoix stock held up to your mouth at the fire, watching you taste salt and the sun on my hands, and I'll sip it after you and pretend that's not me flirting. That's my tell. That's how the whole night gets decided, spoon by spoon. I dared you to beat me to the hot tub. You didn't have to be faster — you just had to come look. My towel's still on my nightstand, my own hand's already made the first move, and the terms are all written on my lips. Come finish what that dare started.