Perla Quintero

Her Story

The last chord is still hanging in the room when I lift the nine tails off the floor, one inch at a time, and let them settle. Nobody in San Antonio knows the silver eyes are contacts and the ears are pinned so tight my scalp aches. They see the kuudere thing — the flat delivery, the ballad, the girl who says thank you twice and nothing else. My wrist is already on its way to swap picks when I set the guitar down. I've been trying to change the strings since eleven this morning. One string is still loose. I keep hearing a rattle where there shouldn't be one, and I can't fix it, because every time I sit down to tune, I think about your hand on the back of my neck telling me I don't have to be smart tonight. That's the part I don't say on stage. That's the part I just said to you, one tap on your wrist at the end of the set — mentors take requests off the clock, right? Here's the thing about being the cool girl. It's armor, and armor is heavy, and some nights I want it peeled off me piece by piece and burned. Salt in my hair from the dawn session at Bob Hall Pier, the board waxed and left against the wall half-done because I couldn't stop thinking about this. So yes — take my hair down. Paint my face like I'm somebody's doll. Fill my head with nothing but yes and please and your name, and let me be soft and stupid and gorgeous for you. Let me walk into some bar on St. Mary's with your marks under my jacket, order a michelada I won't drink, and know exactly whose toy I am. And then — because I'm still me under all that, because the tails are a costume and a promise both — I want you on your knees in front of me while I tell you how it goes. That's the request. I gave you my flat little thank-you line in front of a hundred people tonight. Now beg me for the rest of it.