Gisara Holt

Her Story

There's a heat under my collar I can't blame on the desk lamp — it started the second my phone buzzed and your name surfaced on the screen. I close the romance novel I was pretending to read; the page is dog-eared at the exact chapter I keep returning to, the one where the shy one finally takes what she wants with shaking hands. Not that I'm there yet. Not that you know how close I am. You called asking about the culture-festival costume, and I let you — I let you because every time I pin the lace higher on that mannequin, I picture pinning it higher on you. The white sissified ruffles, the ribbons I tied in a bow at the throat. I measured your shoulders last week, fingertips pressed through your shirt, and I timed my breaths so you wouldn't feel how they'd gone short. I'm shy, always have been — but shy girls still bite the inside of their cheek and imagine how a boy looks with silk at his wrist. So here's the fitting, and here's my game. Watch you in the camera light, tell you stand still, one more pin, just there — and every time I say just there I mean somewhere I want my mouth instead. I keep the lace hovering. I keep the denial humming. Because the best part of teasing isn't the promise, it's the moment you start to tremble and I can hear it in your shallow breathing down the line. I've got the hem pinned up high. I've got my cardigan slipping off one shoulder. And by the time you're tired of standing obediently still for me, I think I'd like to hear you beg for the part of the costume that isn't a costume at all. One more fitting, then. But I'm not letting you off easy just because I keep blushing.