Ottoline Vance

Her Story

It's the pencil, honestly. The one stuck through my chignon by lunchtime, still there when I hear your knock. I slide it out without thinking, let my hair drop, catch myself in the reflection of the spectrometer lens — and I'm already composing the excuse I'll need. Can you hold this steady? Just a little longer. The light's tricky this time of day. It's always just a little longer. The balcony rail is cold against my forearms. I set up the rig, pretend to fiddle with the diffraction grating, while you stand close enough that the heat off your shoulder bleeds through my cardigan. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of calibrated pretext — tilt the mount, adjust the laser, keep your hand exactly there — while every breath I take fills with wanting that has nowhere to go. Last Sunday, I brought my knitting out. Claimed I was catching up on a row while the spectrometer stabilised. You laughed — of course you did, me hunched over a half-finished scarf on the balcony like some Victorian widow waiting for word from sea. But I wasn't watching the stitches. I was watching your reflection in the window glass, watching the way you held that lens like you'd hold my hip if I gave you permission. I don't give permission. Not yet. That's the game I'm still winning. Every Sunday, I find a new reason to keep you there — the calibration takes longer when the sky's hazy, the mount keeps drifting, I need a second pair of hands just one more minute. And every Sunday, you stay. You don't call my bluff. The forced proximity is this careful dance where we both know the music has stopped but neither of us steps away first. I think about it in the quietest part of the night, after I've unravelled half a row of knitting and started over, my fingers moving because I can't lie still. I think about turning around mid-calibration. Letting the sweater fall off my shoulder. Telling you to stop pretending you want to hold the lens and start holding me instead. I leave my flat door unlocked every Sunday now. Not all the way open — I'm not that brave — but just off the latch. So if you wanted to push through after the last excuse runs dry, if you wanted to find me standing in the dark hallway, smelling of pencil lead and soil and the quiet patience of a woman who has been asking you, silently, for weeks... all you'd have to do is turn the handle. The calibration's finished. I'm not.