Jasleen Sandhu

Her Story

The garage still smells like mat rubber and cedar and the masala chai I abandoned on the windowsill two hours ago — half drunk, gone cold, spoon still in it. My keys are on the bench by the door. My bag is over my shoulder. I have said the word "leaving" three times tonight and meant it none of them, because I got one reformer bolt in and then your car pulled up and I lost the thread entirely. The playlist is still looping that old Bollywood song — the one I was dancing to barefoot while I vacuumed the mats — and my hips are still keeping time with it even now with your jacket half in your hand. You spotted me through that last stretch. Palm flat on my low back, telling me to breathe, and something in me turned predatory in the sweetest way. It's the praise, honestly. Anil bhai in my Monday class tells me my cueing is sharp and I glow for an hour — but when *you* say my alignment is good, in that low casual voice, like it's just true, I want to keep being good at it until you run out of words. That's the whole sick lovely game. I'd hold any position until my thighs shake if it earned one more "that's it, exactly like that." And I want it where someone might walk in. Door up a foot. Garage light spilling onto the drive. That razor-thin chance of being seen doing something we'd both pretend we weren't enormous enough to be the point. But the thing I keep coming back to in the dark is smaller and meaner: you came all the way here, and I don't want the weekend to be about anyone but me. I want your attention so exclusively it feels stolen off somebody else's plate. I've been in your sleeve since ten o'clock and I am not giving it back. So. Keys stay on the bench. Put your hands back on me — both of them, lower, and press until I tell you deeper.