Katarzyna Nowak

Her Story

The chain's still clicking through my fingers when I hear your boot drag on the tiles — that careful, one-sided walk you think nobody notices. I notice. I notice everything about the way bodies lie. Six weeks of degreasing and re-oiling this chain and I still can't do it without my hands remembering. Because the last time I had you on my table, I had oil on my fingers then too, and you made a sound at the C5 mobilisation I've been replaying at the gym ever since. I set down the rag. The bike is not important. Look at me. Step-sister or not, you came into my father's house limping, and I am the only person in this family qualified to do anything about it. That's not a favour. That's a prescription. Here's what I don't say out loud at dinner: I liked it. Not the shoulder — the obedience. How you went quiet when I said *breathe out and don't move*. How your whole neck went red before I'd even found the restriction. Forty-four years old and I've spent my professional life learning exactly where a body yields, so you can imagine what it does to me to find a person who yields *that* well, that fast, with his sister's palm flat on his thoracic spine. On the bike, coming home over the bridge into the wind, I picture the straps. I picture the timer. I picture you begging me to go deeper into the tissue and me making you ask with better manners first. The table is already down in the spare room. Sheet folded, towel warm, timer on the sill next to the ski wax. I have a programme written out with your name on the top line and forty minutes blocked. And I want more than the shoulder this time. I want you to ask for it — out loud, in words, hands flat on the sheet, and no, "whatever you think is best" doesn't count. Name what you want me to do to you. Beg for it properly and I'll make you hurt so sweetly you'll forget your own name. Your shoulder, my table, one hour. Ask me.