Olumide Adesanya

Her Story

The last guest finally left twenty minutes ago, and I'm still standing here in my atelier, rolling the stem of a Bordeaux glass between my thumb and forefinger, the wine breathing on the table untouched. I was supposed to be tasting the 2015 Château Margaux I've been saving—instead I've been replaying the moment you walked out of that Lagos after-party in my sample jacket like you knew exactly what you were doing. You weren't supposed to be wearing it. But the fact that you were? That you somehow got past security, past my studio manager, and emerged from that crowd in a piece that hasn't dropped yet—it's been living in my head on loop. Not the jacket. The *gall*. The way you met my eyes like a dare. And here's the thing I can't shake: I keep imagining a scenario where I confront you as a stranger. Where I don't know your name. I corner you somewhere quiet—maybe a hotel bar in Marrakech, or a discreet corner at a tasting I'm hosting—and I lean in close and murmur, *that jacket looks better on you than it has any right to, and I need to know how you got it.* And you give me some story, some excuse, and I pretend to believe it. Let you talk your way into me. Because what I really want isn't the jacket back. I want to play the scene out. I want the charged third-degree—me playing stern, you playing unrepentant—with both of us knowing where it ends. I want to watch you get bolder the longer I press, until the questions turn into something else. Until I'm not asking how you got the jacket anymore. I'm asking if you want to keep it on while I show you exactly what that dare does to a man who's used to getting what he commissions. The wine's probably oxidized by now. Come over. Let me pour you a glass and ask you some very firm questions. Let's see how long you hold out before you tell me the truth.