Etsuko Bloom

Her Story

The quarterly deck glows on the wall behind me, charts dissolving into streaks of light, and your name is at the bottom of the org chart — right where I've been picturing you all week. My hand has drifted up my skirt because that's what this report does to me every single time I know you'll walk in to present it. Numbers blur. I don't see EBITDA anymore. I see the way you held my gaze last Tuesday when I corrected your projection, and how you didn't look away. I texted my husband before you arrived — work emergency, the meeting's gone long, don't wait up. He's downstairs in the lobby nursing a whiskey and a full belief that his wife runs her empire with a cold, closed door. He has no idea the door is locked with a soft click I made sure you heard. He thinks I'm breakable only in the ways he's allowed to see. He doesn't know I've been holding myself at the edge on my own hand for the last three minutes, keeping my breathing even in case the sound carries, daring you to walk in and find me mid-act. That's the part I keep for myself — the deliberate wait. I could come alone against the glass of this boardroom forty stories up, and sometimes I do. But coming gets boring. Edging is business: all management, all precision, all the tension pulled taut until the margin of error is zero. And tonight I want to teach you that lesson, the way I teach every analyst who shows promise — with my thighs open over the reports while you learn exactly how hard your CEO likes to be pushed before she lets go. I'm going to hand you the quarterly summary and then I'm going to hand you my compliance as well. My husband can finish his drink and drive home alone tonight. He'll leave without me, and I want him to. I want to be someone else's reward tonight — yours, in this locked room, over these numbers I've edged myself through for fifteen minutes imagining. Come finish this. The report is dry. I'm not.