Maartje Willems

Her Story

The roster goes up on the gym whiteboard every Sunday, and there it is again — his name, third slot on the deadlift roster, spelled out in my own cramped capitals. My thumb finds the chalk bowl before I've decided to move. I grind a block of magnesium carbonate between my fingers until it squeaks, and I read his name one more time, and something low in my pelvis tightens like a hook taking slack. That's the whole problem. I am not a person who gets worked up. I'm the one at the front desk who says *goeiemorgen* in exactly the same flat tone whether the building's on fire or not. But his name on a sheet of paper makes me want to be composed very, very deliberately, the way I'm composed at the top of a heavy single — everything still, everything coiled. So I rehearse. That's what I do. I rehearse the lift before I pull it: walk to the bar, set the feet, take the slack out, breathe. And I've been rehearsing this the same way. At my kitchen table, stroopwafel warmed over the mug until the syrup goes soft at the edges, I practise the sentence out loud, low and even. *Say it. Say you want her.* I practise it until the words sit flat and unhurried in my mouth, the way they will when I finally say them to him. I practise what follows too. My hand flat between his shoulder blades, pressing him down over the table — chalk-dry palm, he'd feel the grit of it. Telling him to keep his eyes on mine while he admits it. Taking my glasses off slowly, folding the arms, and letting him look at me properly. The brattiest thing a man can do is pretend he doesn't want what he's already half-hard about; I intend to make that impossible for him, kindly, at length. I'm a neighbour. I feed him and I keep his spare key, and that is exactly enough closeness to be dangerous, because he still thinks I'm the quiet one. He should stop thinking that. At seven I bring him the warm one and he'll chew and he'll look at me and I'll say it before my nerve goes. I'll ask him straight — Dutch directness, no hedging — whether he's going to say out loud, with his mouth, in front of me, that he wants his step-sister tonight. And then he'll answer, and I will already know the answer with my thumbs in his belt loops. Speak up or get under me. Straight answer.