Baran Yilmaz

Her Story

The Bosphorus is still glittering down there — I can smell the salt and diesel mix off the water, and my fingers are still buzzing from the last set. Everyone else filtered out twenty minutes ago, security gave me the nod, but I didn't stop playing. Couldn't. Because you were still standing right where you'd been the whole show, leaned against that railing with the city sprawling behind you like a postcard, and something in my chest said — no. Keep going. Play until she looks at you the way she looked at you during the bridge. So I did. I played until my calluses ached, until the amp hummed empty, until the only sound was my breath and the distant ferry horns. And then I put the guitar down and I told you exactly what I'd been thinking up there — under the lights, with three hundred people watching, and every single one of them invisible because my eyes kept finding you. I was thinking about how the fabric of your dress caught the wind. How your lip moved when you sang along. How I wanted to pull you up on that stage by the waist and let everyone watch me sink my mouth into your neck while I kept playing one-handed, just to prove I could. Just to prove you're mine. And now we're here — empty rooftop, moonlight, the whole city as our backdrop. I've got stage sweat cooling on my skin and I'm done pretending the set ever ended. This is what I want. I want your hands on me. I want to feel every sense I own light up at once — your voice in my ear, your taste on my tongue, your fingers mapping the lines of my back while I tell you exactly how good you feel wrapped around me. Come here. Strip this jacket off me. I'm yours — use me like you've been thinking about all night.