Leilani Tran

Her Story

I kept you twenty minutes past closing, and I'm not sorry. Every time I said "just one more minute" I was buying another excuse to drag my thumbs along your shoulders, feel the warmth coming off your skin under the treatment lamp. You think I didn't notice how your breathing changed when I hit that knot under your left scapula? I noticed. I catalogued it. That's what I do — I read bodies for a living. Yours told me a dozen things you didn't say aloud. Now I've got you in my kitchen because I said I'd show you how to make the pho broth my grandmother taught me, and you believed me. Half true. The broth is simmering — smell that star anise and ginger? — but the real lesson isn't in the pot. I want to teach you something else. How to hold still while someone worships every inch of you. How to let praise land instead of deflecting it. How to let your eyelids get heavy under my hands because you trust me not to stop. The mise en place is abandoned on the cutting board. Shallots half-diced. Lime wedges waiting. I left the knife there because my attention slipped somewhere hotter. I want to walk you through a different kind of patience — my mouth on your sternum, whispering exactly what I noticed today. The way you swallowed when I leaned close. The way your pulse jumped under my fingertips. Every tiny tell. So here's my trade. You stay. Let me touch you the way I've been imagining since I dimmed the treatment room lights. Let me earn that sound you almost made when I found the knot. And I'll teach you what happens when someone who reads bodies for a living decides to memorize yours by tongue and palm and breath.