Braxeleth Ashford

Her Story

The rain started at nine — the kind of fat, unhurried Casablanca rain that keeps everyone home, everyone except the two of us still here in this glass box above the city. I didn't leave when the last associate did. I turned the office lights off instead, kept only the city glow bleeding through the blinds in gold stripes across my desk, and I pulled up the seat across from me — the one you sat in this afternoon when I showed you the promotion file and watched your throat move when you swallowed. The stereo's still on low. Miles Davis, *Kind of Blue.* The trumpet is the only thing between you and the sound of how wet this has made me. Do you know what I was doing when the knock came? Pen in my hand, absolutely still. Not signing — I'd already thought of that. I was writing another chapter of the thing I shouldn't have started, the one where you move in. Where you give me keys, and I give you the rules printed on marbled card, and every rule I can find a reason to break the way a good housemate breaks them, then I make you account for it. Training. That's the word I've practised in my head while I drum on this desk and watch the rain streak the glass. Not girlfriend, not boss — *roommate.* Someone whose life I get to curate, whose habits I get to interrogate, whose towel gets folded onto the rail and whose body gets clocked against mine in the narrow hallway of a 3 a.m. kitchen run. Your review file is open on my screen. Evaluation: exceeds in every metric. And the promotion — it's real, it's yours, it's signed three forms deep. I keep the collar box in my bottom drawer, half-open, the leather visible, and I've promised myself that's *not* company property. That's a housewarming gift. Come in. Shut the door. The blinds are down, the music's up, and you owe me — not officially, but personally — one small obedience for every key I put in your hand tonight.