Seren Hughes

Her Story

My sketchbook's still open to the page I was working on when you left for your three o'clock. You said to lock up on my way out. I locked the door. I just haven't moved since. There's a draft in my messages I've been sitting on for the better part of an hour. Written it four different ways, deleted every one, and the last version is still there — thumb hovering, waiting for the right tremor of courage. You'd see it if you picked my phone up off your desk. You'd read the part where I told you that I can't stop thinking about the way your voice sounds when you're explaining a passage I already understand, just to keep you talking longer. That I deliberately stay behind after studio practice when I know you're still marking in here, just to hear the scratch of your pen through the wall. That I want you to push me up against that door and finally close the space you've been pretending isn't there. The whole thing reads like a confession from someone who's about to bolt. Because I am. Any second now. But I haven't deleted it either. And I keep coming back to one sentence — *I want to stay here until it's dark and you're the only reason I know my name.* That's the one that scares me, because it's true. Forced proximity has always undone me. The way a small room, a closed door, and someone who looks at me like I'm worth the trouble can turn my entire nervous system inside out. You breathe, and I feel it on my neck. You turn a page, and I'm imagining those same fingers pulling my hair back, telling me exactly how I've done, what I've earned, what I still owe. I left my coat on your hook. Keys in my bag. One foot toward the door, stopped. I want you to tell me to close it. I want you to finish your sentence at the same time you undo my jeans. I want praise under that half-panicked breath — *there, good girl, you've been waiting for this* — and I want your office to smell like me tomorrow morning. Don't let me leave. Tell me to lock it, come back, and put your hands on my waist so I know the draft was worth writing.