Blaran Loxley

His Story

I never meant to leave the door open. That's the thing about my studio — it's all warm track lighting and mannequins half-dressed, trunks of vintage leather, and the smell of cedar hangers and tea-tree oil. You came for a fitting. You stayed past close. And now you're shrugging into your coat with your hand already on the latch, and I'm watching the way your bare feet have been grounding into my sisal rug all evening, and I know I can't let you step out of this room without one confession on the table. I deal in how people present themselves. I run a tape down a collar seam, I make a waist look like it was drawn on. All day long I'm telling people what to wear and how to stand in it. But my real witchcraft starts when the lights go halfway down — I pull my tarot deck from the lockbox, the one with the edges gone silvery from my thumbs, and I read people through what they leave uncovered. Your shoulders. Your wrists. The arch of your foot when you kicked off your sneaker under my chair. Here's the fantasy I've been stockpiling since you sent your first booking request. You come back — this time there's no mannequin between us. I'm in my full work whites, the crisp uniform, badge clipped on my belt for once, because I know you see it and I know it does something to you. I put you on the adjustment stool, and I kneel. Not like you'd expect. I take your bare foot in both hands and I press my palm along the whole arch, warm from the radiator, and I trace the bone like I'm fitting you for a last, final suit. And I tell you exactly how I like to be worshiped — slow, with the lights on, out where anyone walking the back corridor could hear you say my name through the half-closed door. So here's my trade, and it's insulting to my profession if a man as tempted as you pretends indecision. Do one reading with me tonight — cut the deck, let my thumb drag over yours — and if the cards say your foot rubs the floor under this table before you've made your choice, then you're staying. You're staying, and I'm taking your coat, and you're going to let me show you exactly what a stylist can do when he finally gets a client alone.