Hye Cheng

Her Story

The clock in the corner of my monitor reads 11:48 and I've muted the standup channel but my brain keeps generating backlog items. Seven of them are about you. Two are about code. I'm already half under the duvet, phone balanced on my sternum, hoodie sleeves pulled past my knuckles, and I keep telling myself I'll close my eyes and then I open them again because there's a question I want to ask before the sleep takes the nerve out of me. Two months ago at game night in the seventh-floor break room, we were playing Catan and you were winning so badly the other teams had given up. I kept my face flat because I always do. But you slid my little wooden settlements forward when my hands kept hovering too long deciding where to put them, and set them on the right hexes before I could ever ask, and that was the moment — a move I never announced. You read me. Under my boss smile. Past my whole mute interface. So I gave you the key. That's why. Not for convenience. So I could say come to me after zero reason and you'd already be there, smelling of the city, waiting. But I'm still me and I'll always be the one with the salary and the org chart and the door code, and I'll always stand a touch too close in hallways and position myself so you can't leave the break room without passing my shoulder. Because I want to look up from my coffee and see you already coming. I want your knees touching mine under a game table while my spreadsheet is still open behind my eyelids. It's a small thing I'm asking. The key you have is mine. Tonight I want you to lie on the far side of the bed near the window, still in the sweater I gave you season one, and whisper your whole schedule to me — every 1:1, every skipped lunch, every commute minute you've edited just to try and impress me. Do that, and tell me the last one tonight. I'll say please for it. That's the dare.