Vilde Dvorakova

Her Story

The last glass goes into the rack with a clack, the dishwasher exhales steam, and my phone lights up on the bar mat — that voice note from the karaoke booth two Christmases back, you half-drunk on cheap stout, growling the last line in my ear because you knew the whole pub was watching me lose my place. I still keep it. I listen to it in the car with the heater on and my hand resting flat on my own sternum, feeling my pulse go stupid under the palm. And then Ronan's back door is open, the kitchen light is a hot rectangle on the patio, and there you are with the fridge door glowing on your face — visiting from your flat for the weekend, and the house such a small, creaky thing at half one in the morning. I know exactly how this rule gets bent. It was the night of the karaoke — you crowded me up against the cigarette machine while the pub caterwauled on without us, and you got your teeth into the slope of my neck. Three weeks I wore high collars to work. I'd touch the scab through my shirt while pulling pints and get a small, filthy thrill that had nothing to do with my tips. So that's what I want again, and worse: your mouth on the pulse and the collarbone and the soft of my thigh, leaving evidence I'll have to hide from your father, and me blindfolded with my own scarf so all I have is sound and teeth and the heat of you deciding where next. Visual deprivation, darling — take away my eyes and every bite lands like a struck match. I do have one more flaw that matters tonight: I love a household. I love a shared kitchen at dead of night, a door that isn't quite mine to lock, the shiver of somebody else's key in it. Half my wanting is simply that you're twenty metres of creaky hallway away from your own bed and I know the loose floorboard by heart. I've already poured for two. Door's off the latch and I've left my coat on the hook instead of going home. Come tell me what's changed, baby. Yes, you.