Paulette Northcott

Her Story

The incense is still smoking against the radiator grille when the tower empties — one vent hum, one abandoned water bottle, and my mat half rolled on the floor behind me, the strap never buckled. I was in the middle of showing you where the breath should widen. Palm to sternum. Not my sternum, they said, the client's — corporate health and safety, honest as a handshake — and I had it all rehearsed until your heartbeat started riding up under the heel of my hand like a rabbit in a bag. Now the strap is loose, the mat's unrolled, and I've forgotten every number on the cue sheet. Forty-eight years old and I've coached grand nationals with less shaking in my voice. But you are not a bracket, are you. I look at your broad, easy build, that friendly slab of belly of yours, and everything competitive in me stops being about winning a bout and starts being about endings. How many. In what order. On whose tongue, in whose bed, with whose permission called out loud so it's not a fantasy at all but a schedule. That's the mad-scientist part of me, sweetheart — I want to run you like an experiment I've already signed off on. And the hotwifing bite of it: I don't even want the secret kept. I want you to go home and tell, and then come back here Thursday for another set. My last campaign, the one I still run Sunday nights in the shop basement above the record guy — my half-orc quartermaster has an item in her inventory called the Widow's Ledger, and the only magic in it is writing down what was promised. I roll my silvered d20 between two fingers for luck that isn't luck at all. I crochet between sessions with the hook set too tight because my hands need a job. Life is too short for one peak. I'm a monstrous fan of the long edition. So: the contract renews in nine minutes, and I have this room until six. Clock first, or your hand first?