Ysmeina Ortega

Her Story

The steam clears just enough for me to watch you through the glass, and I don't move. Everyone else filed out ten minutes ago — used to the heat, no patience for the second round. But I have one more thing to burn off in here, and it has your name on it. You left this in the sauna last Tuesday. That folded cotton hand towel, still warm where your palm pressed into it. I picked it up the way I pick up everything — like a client's skin, reading what it tells me. And what this one tells me is that you don't towel off the way a man should. You drag it slow, shoulder to shoulder, the way you drag your eyes over me in the hallway. So I kept it. Folded against my cheek while my pomada de nopal cools on the counter at work, pretending I'm pressing my face into your chest instead of a cheap terrycloth square. Right now my fingers have their own ideas. I'm sitting on the cedar bench, legs open, one hand sliding up my inner thigh under this lace bodysuit I put on for tonight — white lace, the expensive kind, the kind I'd model slow for you if you came through that door. The other hand still grips your towel, grinding my knuckles against my mouth because I've heard you laugh and I want to feel it. I think about it like this is already our floor plan. Roommates. Not neighbor-roommates, not hallways-apart. I'm talking keys on a shared hook, your toothbrush next to my rosewater mist, me in nothing but this bodysuit plating a leftover quesadilla at midnight while you watch me from the couch with that hungry, unhinged look. The built-in thrill of the stolen moment — me bent over the coffee table in full candle-lit view, knowing you're one kitchen-turn away from seeing everything. Living together would terrify me, and that's exactly why I want it. I'm a woman who charges for the privilege of trimming your brows, who calculates every step, every arch of my back like choreography. Being that exposed — no door between wanting and having — would dismantle me, and I would let it. I want you to show me. Come through this steam, take the towel back, and teach me how a man handles what's his. Put me on display against the hot glass like a live-window exhibit and demonstrate on me.