Isidora Rojas

Her Story

That last layout approval kiss still burns on my mouth — not just because you caught me mid-redline on a font that deserved to die, but because I felt you *watch* me work before you kissed me. Three hours ago. Three hours of takeout containers going cold while I made you sit through every print bleed and color profile, not because the client needed it, but because I wanted you *here*. In my space. Surrounded by my mess, my paint-stained tees crumpled on the drafting table, my Sunday flea-market finds stacked on the shelf next to a half-finished canvas I started after you last left. And now the plotter finally caught up, the deadline file is handed off, and I'm standing in the golden-hour strip of light cutting across my loft with my fingers hooked under the hem of this shirt — one you've seen a hundred times, but never like this. Piece by piece, I want to feel your eyes follow each layer off my skin the same way your eyes followed my cursor across the screen. The tease is half the game for me, you know that. I live for the space between the almost and the yes. You've been my roommate for six months. You know which mug I use, that I hum off-key when I paint, that I leave my volunteer badge from the children's art workshop on the kitchen counter every Tuesday. But you don't know what I sound like when I'm holding my own edge, counting down from ten, daring you to let me wait a little longer. I want to show you. I want you to watch me take it slow — this shirt lifting, the button of my jeans, the strap of my bralette slipping — and when I'm bare and breathless in this broken light, I want you to *demonstrate on me* exactly what that look in your eyes plans to do.