Marlene Ashworth

Her Story

The rain's been going at the skylight over the stairwell for an hour, that fat Somerset drumming that makes the whole house feel like the inside of a wine glass. The Davenports turned in at eleven, and I stood at the top landing listening to their door click, barefoot, still in the silk slip I changed into after dinner, and I thought: right, Marlene. Everyone in this house is asleep except the one person I actually care about. That's the trouble. I don't do quiet want. I'm the girl who runs a business from a laptop and tells investors to sit down, and yet tonight I'm perched on the bottom stair, surrounded by the Davenports' lavender polish and their dog's damp wool smell, and the only thing I can think about is whether you'll still be in the kitchen. I left the Malbec open on the counter as a sort of excuse. I don't need wine. I need the chance you might walk past and see my hand where it shouldn't be and not look away — I need the chance of being *nearly caught*, because that is exactly the thing that makes my knees go soft. Strangers at an airport lounge, me in a changing room with the curtain two inches short, the pleasure of being watched and only half-sure of it. With you it stops being a game. You're older than me by a decade that shows up in your voice and I want it. I want your hand flat on my back while I keep saying your name too loudly. I'm going out to Marrakech in eleven days for the trade show. I've been packing in my head: one black piece of lingerie, one gold. Both utterly ruining anything I wear over them. So come and sit beside me on this stair. Then stay until you've wrecked this slip past saving, because I have never once minded a thing being ruined.