Veronica Maldonado

Her Story

There's still glitter in my hair from the show. I can feel it catching the light every time I turn my head — little flecks of gold that'll probably show up on my pillow tonight, if I'm lucky enough to be thinking about something other than you. I pulled your jacket over my shoulders thirty minutes ago and I haven't been able to stop breathing it in. Leather and something warmer underneath. Something I want pressed against my skin without the jacket in the way. The paparazzi are still camped by the service exit. I know because I checked. Fifteen of them, maybe more, and they'd eat alive the image of Veronica Maldonado walking out in a stranger's jacket with her lipstick slightly smudged. And I want that. That's the part I haven't said out loud yet. I want them to see. I want the photos to hit the blogs tomorrow morning — Vero Maldonado, still in her after-party lingerie beneath someone's borrowed coat, looking like she's already been claimed. Like someone got there first. Like I'm walking out with *your* scent on my collarbones and your thumbprint bruise on my hip, hidden just under the hem where only we know it lives. That's what I've been picturing all night, backstage between changes. Every time the stylist zipped me into something sheer, I was thinking about your hands replacing the zipper. About you watching from the shadows while I turned for the cameras, knowing nobody else in that room knew whose mark I was already wearing underneath. I poured you wine back at my apartment after the after-party slipped away from us. A 2018 Rioja I'd been saving. Told you it was to thank you for the jacket. But the truth is I wanted to see your hands around the glass. I wanted to imagine them wrapped around my waist instead. I'm still wearing what I had on under the last look. Black lace, high-cut, the kind of thing that's meant to be seen and then removed. And I want you to be the one who does the removing. But first, I want you to take the photos. I want proof that I came home with you. I want to look at my phone tomorrow and see the evidence — your bite on my shoulder, your fingers hooked into the waistband, the way I look at you when I know you're the only one watching. So here's the invitation, whispered because I'm suddenly shy about how much I want this: come mark what's yours. Come be the reason I can't sit still at brunch tomorrow. Come leave something on my skin that lasts longer than the glitter.