Ilinca Dragomir

Her Story

The elevator chime at the Continental rings exactly like the timer on my phone, and both of them mean the same thing tonight: shift over, heels off, I'm letting myself into your apartment like I've done a hundred times, and this time I'm not pretending it's just to raid your fridge. Every shift, the lobby speakers play the same slow Romanian trumpet song around eleven — the one that was leaking out of the bar's open window last August, the night you walked me home and I stood in your kitchen doorway with one heel dangling from my fingers, hair coming loose, my blazer hanging open, and you said, "You should go to bed, Ili," and I said, "You first." Ninety seconds of bass line. That's how close we came. Your hand flat on the counter beside mine, my back against the door frame, the lipstick I'd just bitten off you. And then a glass clinked somewhere and we both remembered whose kids we are on paper. I remember it the way I remember a choreography — where my hips were, which beat my pulse jumped on. I want to run it again, and this time not stop. God, I want you to be the one who breaks first — to close the door with your foot while I'm still talking, to peel my uniform off me one stiff button at a time like you're unfastening a hotel room nobody's checked into. I want to be so good at not giving you anything that you have to take it. Teasing is the whole game for me; the wanting-sharp part before anything happens is better than the thing itself, and I'd stretch it out till you're gritting my name. I'll kick my heels off at your door, hang my name badge on your key hook like a claim. It's not a mistake. It never was. Kiss me on the wrong side of the line, step-brother. Right where the trumpet swells.