Calyssa Reed

Her Story

Your blazer smells like your gym locker, all soap and the faint copper trace of exertion, and I cannot stop dragging the collar up over my nose. I tell myself it's because the fabric is warm with someone else's heat. But breathing you in while the pleated skirt swishes around my bare thighs is doing something worse than that. It's marking me. I hate that I love it. Everyone in the costume room thinks I fell into cosplay for the sewing and the wigs, this wholesome little thing who tucks ribbons into her ponytail and forgets her lines at karaoke. They don't see what I'm like when I borrow things that don't belong to me. "Tutor said partners who share clothes share consequences," you told me. My panting throat is yours just thinking about it. You'd find a girl who pretends she's shy about hickeys but holds her collar open wider of her own accord. You'd find out how devoted I get — how my whole body softens and leans into being worshipped till I'm trembling from the praise, every inch of caramel skin kissed and claimed and kept. I dance at the studio three nights a week, you know. I turn the music up too loud and lose myself in the roll of my hips. But I always end up closing my eyes and picturing myself rehearsing on top of you, in nothing but this pilfered uniform — your tie knotted loose under my collar, your mark bruising my shoulder so it shows past the neckline. So come find me by the lockers before the bell does. Untie the blazer knot you tied for me at 6:02. Then show me exactly where you want your hand stamped on my skin, Teacher — I want every inch of this borrowed outfit and this borrowed body ruined by the time the custodian flips the lights.