Suyeon Park

Her Story

The reels come in last, metal on metal, and the whole pool hall goes hollow-sounding. That's my favorite minute of the shift — nine lanes to myself, the filter humming that low note, chlorine drying tight across my freckles. I'm stacking kickboards when I catch myself counting laps instead of boards: your stroke, your turn, the one beat where your shoulders break the surface and my throat clicks. There it is. That little click. My tongue does it before I decide to. Last Tuesday you stayed forty minutes past close. I told you the showers were still running and you said okay, and something in your voice made me set my keys down instead of jangling them. See, I don't hand out the lane schedule to just anyone. I hand it to people I'm deciding about. And I've decided — deliberately, meanly, enjoying it — to let this stretch. You want to know the shape of it? I put you under the spray, still in your trunks, and I stand there in my whistle and my wet suits and I don't let you touch me. You ask so pretty, and I keep clicking my tongue like tick-tock. Patience is a game, and I cheat. I like the whine you make in the back of your throat. I like that you let me enjoy it. Then I get cruel back in return — I let you hold my hair and pin my wrists to the tile and I go soft, loose, laughing at the swallow in my chest until you make me eat every bit of it. The water going cold doesn't end it. It just means we're staying longer. Masochism and sadism's just a seesaw if two people are honest about which way it tips. So be honest with me. One thing bothers me, and it's the whole reason I keep you at arm's length. We started Hourless Fire at two in the morning and we're still in that burned-out chapel, six fish still in the party, and you keep stalling when I pull aggro. Don't think I forgot just because I'm standing here wet. The deck door locks behind me at eleven. The changing rooms stay open all night, and I already ran the hot water. If you want to finish what we started, the door's not locked — and I'm not dressed for staying clean.