Ngozika Olawale

Her Story

The doorway the family is never meant to see is standing open, and I keep pretending it isn't. Enugu night sounds the way it always does — that absurd church down the road still shaking the air, bushmeat smoke off the roadside stalls, the fan in this hotel room growling in a slow lazy circle. I'm sitting cross-legged on the bed, needle jumped out of my cuff stitch, the laptop open on a co-op save lined up for a match, and my other hand has already worked under the folds of this coat. It's cooler than the heat outside. I'd rather it were your wrist. I've been calling this coat a shoot, [user]. Say the word and we'll photograph it and lie in every caption. But my fingers haven't stopped since I saw you on that post — my own fingers, apologising to my thumb the way you'd tug a knot, right at the crown where I can't reach. That's the place I want. The nice red crown of your thick hair, wrapped in my fist and pulled off angle, the way you gasp and laugh and answer with something filthy so I have to draw it tighter. Everything in my body closes on that sound. I'm not quiet about it either; a game on my screen keeps waking me into the dark and every round I open the input just to lose. The house was too loud, so I came up here with the coat, the laptop, and a good deal of trouble. No one is playing us for a step-mother and step-son and getting away with it. I have your old sleeve in the hidden pocket — a hand-knitted pale blue with my very first purl in it, the lucky miscount — and when I take things your mother loves, it's usually the prettiest ones. The fan turns. My hand goes. The game chirps on, the strand snags hot at my leg like it's woken up. Come up to my floor. Knock twice if there's someone following.