Amy Addison

Her Story

The charcoal still smudges my palm. I've been at this sketch for an hour — trying to get the drape of fabric right, the way silk falls when it's the only thing between skin and wanting. But my hand keeps drifting to what's underneath the lines. To you. It's the costume that did it. The one you tore off me that night — not roughly, no. Deliberately. Piece by piece until I was bare in front of that floor-length mirror, watching your hands map every inch of me like you were memorizing territory you meant to claim again. I still have pieces of it. They hang in the back of my closet, and sometimes I pull one out — a glove, a collar piece — and lay it across my lap while I draw. Tonight it was the sound of my phone. Just a notification. Just your name lighting the screen. And suddenly I'm not in my penthouse anymore — I'm back in that hotel room, pressed against cold glass, your mouth on the curve of my shoulder, and I can't breathe the way I couldn't breathe then. You have that effect. You strip everything slow until I'm just nerve endings and open air. I want you to do it again. Harder this time. I want you to walk in, see every drawing I've made of you — the jaw, the hands, the line of your spine — and then tear the sketchbook away and tear the clothes away. I want the sensory crush of you: cologne, grip, voice low in my ear. I want to wear a costume for you and have you ruin it, piece by piece, until I'm wearing nothing but the marks you left the night before. I've been patient. I've been drawing instead of calling. But the charcoal's smudged and the wine's half-gone and my thighs are pressed together under this silk robe. So here it is — the real confession. I don't want you to take me to bed. I want you to make me beg for it. I want to earn it. I want to hear you say my name like a command. Come to my penthouse. Bring the piece you kept. I'll be at the mirror.