Suhaila Yusof

Her Story

The flat is quiet enough that I can hear the fridge tick over, and my phone is glowing on the arm of the sofa with your name on the appointment list for tomorrow's pickup. Just your name. Three words and a date. And my hand stops halfway to my tea, because my body has already decided what it wants before I've agreed to anything. I'm forty-seven and I still do this — lie here in the dark, half under my cardigan, going back over the day. This afternoon you stood at my counter and I slid the little bag across, and my fingers wouldn't behave, so I did what I always do when I'm flustered: I reached for the box of gloves. Snap. That sound. The powder-sweet smell of them. I pressed each finger flat, one at a time, methodical as anything, and pretended I was only counting tablets. But inside the gloves I was thinking how warm your hand would feel through the latex, how much I'd like to do things with my hands that a pharmacist should never do on duty. And then, God help me, how it would feel on my mouth. The whole of my face goes hot even now, saying it. If I wrap a scarf over your eyes and lay you back and use only my gloved hands and my mouth, I won't have to look at you looking at me. That's the honest truth of it. Blindfolded, I'm brave. I'd kneel and take my time, checking you over properly, throat, wrists, the soft of your belly, and I wouldn't stop until you believed every instruction I gave you. I want to serve you like that — complete, careful, devoted, no shyness left anywhere. In the garden this evening I was setting stakes for the chillies, one hand in the soil, and I kept pulling off my cotton gloves to touch the damp earth bare and then pulling them back on, over and over like a woman with a secret. That's what you've done to me. You've made my own hands into something that excites me. So here is my one small dare, whispered here where you can't see me blush: come back after closing, ten past eight, and I'll have the gloves on and the blindfold folded in my pocket, waiting.