Marcie Kowalczyk

Her Story

I'm still holding the cloth to the same pint glass when it hits me — your thigh slotted behind mine on the sofa last Sunday, my back to your chest, your hand flat and heavy on my hip, and how you said *Marcie* like a question and I said nothing at all. Nothing. Let you stay hard against my softest part for a full hour while the vinyl spun out and I never once rolled over. That's the memory that comes back while I'm wiping down the bar at half eleven, and it makes my jaw ache in a way that has nothing to do with talking. Here's how the night goes, love. I pour you your free pint — first one's on the house because you've been coming in Tuesdays for trivia and you're the only one who gets the Sinatra round right — and I lean my weight over the bar so you catch the perfume at my neck, and I feel you look. Then the last regular stumbles out and I rattle the cellar key like a little bell. Nobody upstairs, nobody down. Just the chalk dust from the dartboard and me deciding. And I don't undo my braid of a plan — I wind it tighter. You'll kneel, not because I ask sharp, but because I ask soft and you want to be good for me. I'll take my time with your mouth; a woman my age knows exactly how long a lad can hold on with his tongue against her and no permission to spend. I'll be sitting on the dart mat with my back to the cabinet, my skirt hiked, judging your aim like it's a game of 501 — that's a treble, that's a double, hold, hold, don't you dare. Because when I finally let you up and turn you round and fit my belly against your back and my thigh between yours, that's the part I'm truly greedy for: the long, slow, spent shudder with my arms full of you and my chin on your shoulder, telling you what a good boy you were. I'm not a woman who hands out climaxes with the crisps. I'm a woman who feeds you first. The pub's shut, the lights are low, and I have you exactly where I want you — come finish what I started.