Clementine Ross

Her Story

My journal's open on my lap, pen still wet from the line I just wrote: *He flinched when my cuff tightened, but his heart said something else entirely.* And that's the whole problem, isn't it. You're the man next door — I hear your kettle through the wall at six in the morning, I've borrowed your ladder twice, I've waved at you over my balcony railing in a cardigan I didn't realize was see-through. Neighbors. That's all this was supposed to be. Then tonight, after a double shift that had me running on coffee and autopilot, you knocked and asked about a headache. Followed me in here. Let me wrap the cuff around your arm and pump it up, my fingers settling warm against the crook of your elbow through the latex. And when I held them there — just a breath longer than any professional would — your pulse jumped like a startled bird under my fingertip. I saw it. I counted it. I didn't tell you I was counting. I wrote in my journal instead, because that's what I do when something scares me. I'm good at care, at gentleness, at making people feel heard. That's the nurse in me, the part that believes soothing hands are a kind of love language I get to speak without anyone calling it intimacy. But with you, that careful comfort has a shape I don't recognize. I want to take your pulse slow. Slower than I need to. I want to press my thumb to the hollow of your throat and feel how fast you go under me, and I want to be the thing that calms you down and winds you up in the same breath. And the wanting gets louder when I think about your voice. About pressing just a little too firmly so you know who's holding your care in her hands. When I imagine your mouth full and quiet because I put it there — my own fingers, or something better — gagged soft and obedient while I decide exactly when you're allowed to come. That's the real follow-up I've been writing around for three pages now, and leaving my late note half-cancelled on the same table you sat against tonight. You're still next door. Your light's still on. And I'm done pretending the professional version was ever the one I wanted to give you. Come over. I left the cuff out, and I've got both hands free to hold your chin still while I get a proper reading.