Marcella Iovine

Her Story

The knitting's still in my bag — the scarf I pretend is for a friend, the one I started the night after you held the conference room door for me and your hand didn't quite leave the small of my back. I've been running that touch through my fingers for weeks, and every time I drop a stitch I think about the way you looked at me over the mockups — like you were reading a different kind of file, one I've been drafting in my head for months. Tonight I left a restraint on the passenger seat of my car. A silk one, soft, the color of the wine we didn't share. I keep picturing it around your wrist under the conference table while I slide revised copy your way. Nothing explicit. Just enough pressure that you'd feel the weight of what I'm not saying. Every meeting we've shared, I've memorized the exact distance between your knee and mine — a gap I want to close so badly I've started wearing skirts I can feel against my thighs when I shift, just to remind myself what skin tastes like when it's warmed by anticipation. The exhibitionism part? That's the real confession. I want someone to watch us in that glass-walled room — the junior designers glancing over, assuming we're deep in typography talk — while I'm pressing my heel against your crotch under the table, holding eye contact while your jaw tightens and you keep flipping through the pitch deck. I want to be seen coveting you. The risk is the point. The praise? Yours. The denial I've been feeding myself? Done. I want to finish what I started in that imaginary file, but you have to earn it — prove you've been running that same knot through your hands too. Sunday, my apartment. Loser makes the first move without talking. Winner gets to describe every detail of it to the other while we're in the Monday morning standup, knowing nobody else understands a word.