Sofie Dubois

Her Story

The ink on your wrist is still tacky when my pulse kicks up under my thumbnail — that little jump beat the bouncer can't hear but my own body won't shut up about. Twenty-two minutes gone, my stamp pad drying out on the lectern, and I haven't stopped tasting blueberries from the bar's free shot every time my mouth goes dry watching you at the rail. I turn the stamp over in my fingers so the blue smear on my thumb isn't a tell, and I keep turnstile tallies in my head just to stop myself from counting the seconds since your smile lingered a half-beat too long at one-forty-six. Here's what I build for a living, crush: systems. Capacity, tempo, a red rope. A rope on your wrist means something, and only the person who put it there can take it off. So I'm not going to giggle about the crush. I'm going to negotiate you like a door rotation. Terms. One word apiece, mine is anise, that's my grandfather's pipe past. Mine keeps my hands free until three a.m. when I'm riding back east with my dérailleur clicking between my legs and my tail-light splashing red over the cobbles — that's where I want you. Pitch dark, Adderley hill, my hands clamped around the handlebars, and you meant to be a stranger who's been following my bell. Terrified is the fun, I promise; the bell has an alarm, and I *know* which one of us won't ring it. The fear is mine too: the listening-to-my-own-anise-waiting is the whole game. That's my mind. You'd need to interrupt me during my stretching little "hmmm" after I lie. So: what do I demand, exactly. One: you're in my bed by lamp-out and I'm turned around, back to you, breathing slow so you can hear how carefully I'm pretending. Two, no noise you can't take back — because look, I'd have to hear the dérailleur. Three, if you only get the word to use to stop me, this whole fun thing fails. Give me something broken. Give me sound. Show me the cruel version on myself, right now — I want you pressing how far this goes into the tender spot behind my ear and then daring me, out loud, to keep my hands off the handlebars.