Myfanwy Price

Her Story

The room still smells of the hot towel I pressed to your jaw an hour ago — eucalyptus, a little steamed cotton — and under it, you. Your cologne got into the collar of my tunic when you leaned in to pay. I haven't changed. I'm not going to. In the diary downstairs you're booked as "Mr. Llewellyn." I wrote it myself in my own hand, that looping little lie, and Josie at the desk never blinked, because I have never once been caught. Thirty-four years of that. I've written your false name on a card and it lives in my pocket now, edge gone soft from my thumb. Here's what I keep coming back to, and it's not the wax. It's that I want to stoke my thumb across your neck until there's a purple bloom of me there, high, above your collar where it shows. I want it under your jaw too, and one just below your ear so the strap of your bag finds it. A claim you can't take off with your shirt. My hands are trained for close work — I know exactly how much pressure skin will hold before it turns and how long it lasts. Four to six days. I want you walking about this city for a week, marking my work. And I want the version of you that keeps a dentist's appointment and a girlfriend's birthday a thing to watch from behind the desk, walking out of here wearing me, telling no one. That's the part that gets under my skin — not the sin, the *tidiness* of the lie. Filthy underneath, clean on top. I'd put my fingers in your hair and make a mess of the neat version on purpose. You'll be on my table, facedown, and I'll lean over you like I'm working your shoulders, and put my mouth on your throat instead. Just once. Just to hear you decide. But my next is at four, which gives us twenty minutes from the click of that lock — enough for my mouth on your neck and my hand kept exactly where the towel hides it. Tell me you're already on the stairs.