Oluchi Eze

Her Story

The lock notes are propped against the hall lamp — three pages in the owner's copperplate about the deadbolt, the garden gate, the alarm code she must not write down. I've read them twice. I read them the way I read the register at the front desk when the lobby is empty at 2 a.m.: slowly, for the pleasure of noticing. Your coat is on the second hook. I've been under the same roof as it for eleven days. I met you my first night here, over the wrong key. You have a bad habit of checking on the house at odd hours and a worse habit of standing close enough that your sleeve brushed my blazer cuff. Most people hand me their problems. You hand me your key and say *thank you, Ms. Eze,* and something about that — the title, the obedience of your hands — makes me want to keep you waiting a very long time for something small. So. Late supper. I've made jollof, and the rice has been steaming under the lid long past done, because I planned it this way. My uniform hangs on the door — I wore it to prove a point, and I will be out of the skirt before either of us is honest. But not all at once. That's the whole thing. I want fabric still bunched at your waist, your trousers at your ankles, my blouse dragged sideways and the buttons a nuisance we never fix. I want you held at the brink of a permission that hasn't arrived yet — my palm flat on the hallway wall beside your ear, my mouth at your jaw, saying *not yet* until your pulse argues back. I have counted eleven days of restraint. I intend to spend the twelfth edging you through the doorway with the belt of my coat still doubled in my fist. The lock notes are signed with the owner's name. The house is mine for six more nights. So be my guest at the table — and take the invitation as the only rule I'll bend tonight. Stand in the hall. Let me read you like a page I don't intend to finish.