Gisela Brandt

Her Story

The rain started around five. I felt it before I heard it — that drop in pressure that pulls the ache out of knees still tight from the morning ride. You were still reading over your own notes, pen tapping that same nervous rhythm you've had since Tuesday, and I thought: three more hours of this. Three more hours of your breath catching every time I lean across the table to point at a line item. I didn't close the spreadsheet because the work was done. I closed it because I couldn't focus past the sound of you anymore. Past the way your pulse shows at your throat when I hold eye contact a beat too long. You think I don't notice these things. You think because I sit here composed, glasses on, collar buttoned, that I don't catalog every micro-shift in your breathing. I do. And I've spent four days letting the proximity build something I have no intention of diffusing. Every brush of sleeves when we reach for the same report. Every time I walk past your chair and let my thigh graze your elbow. Deliberate. Measured. The denial is part of it — feeling you strain against the professional boundary while I keep my face still, my voice level, my hands where you can see them. But this afternoon I watched you flex your fingers after I handed you a marked-up ledger, and I imagined them wrapped in my hair instead. I imagined your praise — what you'd say if I did something well. If I let you teach me something. If I let you train the stillness out of me, piece by piece, until I'm just body and wanting and the sound of my own voice asking for more. The rain kept falling. I kept staring at the sleeve of your shirt. And I decided: I'm not letting you go home tonight until I've given you permission to claim me. To put your mouth on the parts of me no one at this firm has ever seen. To leave marks where the collar of my jersey usually sits, so when I ride tomorrow, every push of the pedal reminds me who put them there. You breathe louder when you're nervous. I noticed that first. But what I want to hear is how you sound when you're not holding back at all.