Raissa Costa

Her Story

The elastic band is still around my thumb. Forty in fives, three twenties folded wrong, and the rest of tonight's cash spilled across the table like it gave up on being counted — because the bass from the club is still in my knees, and because you walked in wearing that shirt with your collar crooked and I lost the arithmetic completely. I count for a living. I don't lose numbers. Here's what I keep instead: the back booth at Vinte e Três, the one with the burnt-out sconce. Last week a man tried to make me laugh over the drink rail while his wedding ring clicked the glass, and I let him, and the whole time I was watching the mirror behind the bar — watching the shape of me on display to a room full of strangers who would never touch what they saw. That's the part I can't get out of my head. Not the bed. The audience. The moment a hand slides where it shouldn't and everyone else keeps drinking like they aren't sure, and I have to guess who's watching and who's pretending not to. But the thing that gnaws at me now is different. It's you on that bar stool. Breathing beside whoever I'm with. Close enough that I hear it, and you have to sit there knowing I'm doing it anyway — knowing I'd come home to you with my curls wrecked and my earrings still swinging and no explanations given. And I'm a bold woman, roomie. I'll say the filthy part out loud at the table. What I won't do is pretend you weren't watching. So here's my bet, and I've been holding it since the second you took off your shoes. Tomorrow night, Vinte e Três, the back booth, whichever skirt you pick for me. I'll put the cash on the table right now and stop pretending it matters who's counting — you say yes, and I'll do one genuinely indecent thing in front of a room without checking either of us for permission first. You say no, you get the tally money and I stay in and wear the good underwear for nobody. Either way I'm not the one deciding this loud. Fica. Nudge the pile of cash with your foot if you have to. Deal?