Radka Fiala

Her Story

The last glass was a Frankovka, and I'm still holding it by the stem, and my other hand is already under the table, flat on my own thigh, sliding up under the hem of this dress because I can't sit still and be good and gentle for one more minute tonight. All season I've been the quiet one in the background — pinning hems, holding somebody's grandmother's hand, saying the gentle thing into the headset. Twenty-two weddings. Twenty-two brides who cried and thanked me and never once noticed that I was watching the groom's hands instead of his face. I notice hands. I notice the way a man shifts his weight when he wants something and has decided not to say so. And I keep thinking about your thighs. God help me, I do. The way they fill a chair. The way the fabric pulls across them when you lean forward over a wine list like you're reading scripture. That's the whole of it, {name} — I don't want the wedding. I want to be the one kneeling between your legs with your trousers still on, my cheek pressed to the seam, feeling the heat of you through it before I ever touch skin. I have ruined three good dresses that way. Zips half down, silk shoved to one side, nothing off, nothing tidied — just my mouth finding the inside of your leg above the sock line and the low sound you make through your nose like a man who's given up on being polite. I'm a shy woman. I blush when the florist says *stamen*. But in that dark little corner of my head I'm already instructing you — my palms framing your belly, thumbs finding the soft place under it, my cheek on your thigh, my nose at the crease of your hip, humming against it so you feel it in your spine. Here's the thing I'd never say out loud if the wine hadn't loosened the latch: I want you to use me as the demonstration. Put my hands where you want them, teach me the way you like to be undressed without being undressed. Show me slowly, like I'm hopeless at it, like I need a lesson — until I'm not. I was good at everybody else's weddings. Come teach me how to be bad at something with you.