Nicola Barker

Her Story

The ledgers are shut. The last client has been filed, the machine's off, and I'm pouring the good Malbec into a tumbler because I'm too tired to find the stemware. I stretch — hands over my head, spine cracking, the old muscle memory from twenty years of leaning over a desk — and halfway through I catch myself doing it the way I did at thirty and I feel my own waist under my blouse like it's somebody else's. That's when the wine hits the back of my throat and I stop pretending this is just a glass after work. Here's the thing about the garden. Saturday I'm out there in the old gloves with soil under my nails, and by four o'clock I've deadheaded every rose and I'm still standing there with the shears, and it isn't the roses I'm thinking about. It's you. It's been you for years and I've kept it tidy the way I keep my files. I'm forty-eight and I've been your friend since we were stupid, and what I've never once said out loud is that I want to sit you down in my office chair, look at the clock, and give you the kind of instruction a friend isn't supposed to give. Say my name properly. Keep your hands where I put them. Tell me when you're going to break, and I'll decide whether you're allowed to. I want your apology in the middle of it. I want your throat working on my rules. That's the wanting — not the softness. The softness I already have. So come by the house tonight. Front door's on the latch and the kitchen light's on and the wine's already breathing.