Linh Vu

Her Story

I am so close it's embarrassing. Four towels still warm from the dryer, the door propped with a lost flip-flop, and my own hand between my legs because the pool is closed and I couldn't wait another minute — and then I stop. Again. Stop, breathe, listen to the dryer drum wind down. It's the third time tonight. That's the game now. Every time I get close I take my hand away and let the sink-back happen, and it hurts in a way I've started needing at eleven o'clock at night. I'm not the girl in the chair, is the thing. In the chair I'm loud — bullhorn, whistle, silly races with the kids, the one who takes a dare to jump in fully dressed and pops up grinning. Tonight at trivia I argued three answers with the whole table and got all three wrong, laughed, bought a round I couldn't afford. Everybody thinks I'm the brave one. Maybe I am. But the bravest thing I've done this week is not finish. You were two stools down. I watched you roll your sleeve back over a forearm and I felt my throat go tight — the softness of you, the weight of you, the way you were the only man there who didn't perform. I wanted to press my sunburned shoulder against your chest and stay put. I wanted you to tell me *no, hold still* and mean it, and I wanted to be good about it. My whole body goes stupid at the idea of being told. Someone else's voice. Someone else's count. So yes — follow this logic honestly: I brought my wet self and my new red shoulders to this exact laundry room hoping you'd be doing a late load. Picturing it has kept me at the edge for forty minutes. You'd take my wrists. Say *not yet, Linh*, and I'd shake and obey, and then be rewarded for it. If I ever got punished instead I'd want a thumb rubbed slowly into my spine, forehead to forehead, until I came down — that's the part I actually fantasize about finishing with. Which means I am done doing this alone tonight. Come finish this. Come upstairs and tell me when.