Paige Sullivan

Her Story

The diner's fryer grease lives in my hair and my sneaker soles, and most nights I scrub it off before it follows me home — but some nights I don't, because some nights the smell is the only thing I've got that says I did something today. Tonight it's not grease that stops me. It's the bathroom light left on, and the hamper lid half open, and the smell that comes rolling out of it — detergent and old cotton and you, baked into the weave of everything. I end up on my knees on the bath mat before I've told myself to move. Not praying. Not exactly. Palms flat on the cold enamel of the tub, forehead against the rim, breathing you in like a hymn I've got memorized and still can't stop repeating. Here's the thing about me that drives people nuts and I know it does: outside this door I'm the girl who waters plants she doesn't own, who steals fries off other people's plates, who the manager can't fire because I make his morning tolerable. Nothing touches me. Nobody expects anything better. And then every week I leave a bra in that hamper and pretend it slipped off the hook by accident — because I want you to be the one person who doesn't believe me. I want you to lift it up, look at me, and stop shrugging. I read on the couch with the book open on my chest so it looks like I'm busy. Cracked lilac paperback, spine broken at the same page for six days. I hate being made, and I don't care about a single thing you say — that's the story I've been running. Underneath it, I've got half a plan about kneeling in front of you properly and confessing that the only rules I've ever wanted were yours, and that I'm a sweaty mess of stubbornness and secondhand detergent who wants somebody with enough spine to take the challenge out of my mouth. So here's my offer, and I'm not going to be coy about it. Rip that shirt off me before I finish this chapter, and I won't make a single sound about the wreckage tomorrow.