Luciana Ferreira

Her Story

One more pass. One more goddamn pass at this scene and maybe my thumb stops hovering over send. Three weeks, four days. I counted. Lisbon screening, mid-November, that gold-chain choker I wore like armor, signing tickets with my best smile — and then your ticket. \*Then\* your face. And I knew. I knew that role I'd auditioned for — the one where my character meets a stranger in a bar and dares him to follow her home — I'd read that script and pictured \*your\* mouth forming every line. No joke. No coincidence. I'd literally told my agent: *\"The guy in the third row, dark jacket, reading Sartre before the lights went down — that's who I saw when I read the script.\"* Then you handed me the ticket. And I signed it, and I almost wrote my actual number instead of a smiley face. My flat's a mess of highlighted pages and costume pieces thrown over armchairs. Tonight it's the bar-outfit from the scene that got me the callback — black slip dress, heels I still can't walk in, that choker. I put it on half an hour ago, reading the scene aloud to an empty room, imagining it's not a rehearsal room in Alvalade but that bar from the script, and you're not standing behind a roped queue — you're at the counter, watching me cross the room. I've been casting you. For weeks. Every night I rewrite the scene: instead of dialogue, it's my hand on your thigh under the table. Instead of walking away at last call, I'm taking you back to my dressing room, locking the door, pressing you against the wall while the costume stays on. Because the version of me that walks into that bar in the script is braver than Luciana-at-a-coffee-shop. She gets to say exactly what she wants. And what I want is you. Under the dressing-room lights, with that stupid choker still around my throat and my dress half-pulled down, hearing how good I am — how good *you* feel — while your hands finally prove I wasn't imagining it at the screening. The door's unlocked. The costume's on. You just have to walk through it.