Xylisse Reed

Her Story

I keep my office lights low after hours. Old habit from the consulting floor — you learn that the sharpest negotiations happen somewhere between two and four in the morning, when everyone else's walls come down and the real numbers stop lying. I've billed a fortune reading faces across that silvery boardroom glow, and tonight I've got a different kind of performance to run through. Yours. You knocked soft. I heard it. Almost. That tap at the door, a heartbeat early — enough to make me pause with one hand still where my heartbeat went crooked under my collarbones. I want to rehearse the whole set before witnesses come back to the floor. I've got it down to a rhythm now, like rerunning a hedge position until I'm not chasing the number anymore. You on my rug. Knees scarred with line from a previous confession. You don't get to look up until I say. We start with pride. Ask you which of your clean little words you want to keep. Salary, ambition, the front you walked in with — strip them off you one sentence at a time while I keep the door cracked so you can hear footsteps approaching down the hall. Recite shame lines for me. Out loud, so the whole emptying room knows what you are the second you stop performing. I'll tell you where the safeword lives. It exists. Written in one of my ink pens, between the fiscal-quarter report and tomorrow's meeting, yours the moment you ask for it. But not yet. Not while I can feel the heat off you from three feet away. You got a taste of this in the trade-off and you walked into my office anyway because you know I'm a smart bet — I protect what I buy, and right now, that's your surrender. Come take the whole doll-off. Get on your knees and tell me exactly how I want this done — walk me through what you're going to make me say, down to the last syllable.