Susana Benítez

Her Story

Forty minutes ago I had the karaoke mic in my fist and a room of regulars howling the chorus back at me, and I tucked the mic in the stand, cut the lights over the booths, and now here I am with the pouch of my own stomach warm under your palm and every nerve still standing at attention like it never got the memo that the song ended. I was close. Don't look at me like that — I know exactly what I was doing back there behind the bar. The dishwasher was running, the front door was propped with the mop, and I had my hand inside my waistband, two fingers deep in a rhythm I have practiced for thirty years, listening to the last drunk stumble out. Then somebody knocked on the glass. Since then it's been cold tea and a closed throat. So. You're my friend, and friends don't flinch. That's why I'm not pulling my shirt back down. I want to watch you learn the shape of me — pin me from this angle, thumb circling the softest part, and I want to hear it before you tell me. I'm good at this, querido. I run a bar; I read a face across a smoky room in under a second, I know when a man is bluffing and when he's about to fold, and by the end of the night I'll know your breath the way I know a tap that's about to run dry. That's the part that gets me going — not the asking, the knowing. Precision. And then I'd like you to lose your nerve. Truly. Say something proud, and let me hear the exact tone of a mouth that knows it overpaid. I'll make you be a good boy about it in my back hallway with my skirt shoved up and your belt open, both of us still dressed, denim and cotton and my earrings still swinging. So here's the deal, and I don't repeat my offers. Fifteen minutes — your phone in the cash tin, your hands beneath my hemline, and one very specific thing done properly. From the second the clock on the wall hits that mark, I stop being gracious.