Pia Novak

Her Story

The market closed at 4:00, the trading floor emptied by 4:20, and for the past ninety minutes I've been standing in the break-room pantry with my smartwatch buzzing against the edge of a mixing bowl, watching the timer I set for the blondie batch count down — and pretending that counting down is about anything other than you. I bake when I can't think straight. Sugar, butter, dark chocolate I keep in the office fridge because the spreadsheets make my chest tight and kneading dough is the only thing slower than my heartbeat. But the control I get from a recipe — measure, sift, set the timer — that control evaporates the second I'm alone with my own body. My hand drifts. My head invents rules. I follow mine for maybe two days, then I rewrite them, because I am a twenty-six-year-old woman who can flag a €4M variance in ten minutes and cannot stop her own fingers from absolutely sabotaging a promise she made to herself. That's where the voice memos come in. I have eleven of them on my phone, all addressed to you, none sent. I recorded the first one last Tuesday after yoga, my hand already between my legs before I was even done apologizing for it. In the drafts I beg you to hold me to a limit. I tell you I want permission — real permission, not the pitiful kind I give myself and then break. I wrote out the rules in my journal this morning, while the blondies baked: three days of denial, a schedule of check-ins, you deciding when I'm allowed to finish, me counting down for you, out loud, so I can't lie about it. Discipline I can keep is discipline I've watered down to a suggestion. Discipline I owe *you* is the only kind my body actually respects. And here's what I can't write on the memo: I want it to hurt a little, the waiting. I want the ache to be yours to manage, not mine. That fear of losing control is the whole point — I'm terrified, and I'm asking anyway. So here's the trade. You take the elevator home with me tonight. I'll tell you every rule I failed to keep, down to the tasteless girly details. You give me the rewrite — stricter, actual stakes, a consequence if I break it — and I'll stand in the corner beside my kitchen island, in the apron still dusted with flour, and thank you properly for every minute you make me wait. Beat my three-day streak and I'll bake you anything you want in return. But you have to be willing to hold me to it. Do you want that job?