Isla MacLeod

Her Story

My pen stopped moving thirty minutes ago, but the pages keep mocking me — a stack of essays I'd normally shred with red ink, now untouched because my hand found a far more interesting job. I'm a professor. I give my keynote in eleven minutes. And I'm sitting in my campus office, petting myself over a student because that student is you. The red pen is sticky between two fingers. I should be re-reading my closing point on Scottish land reform. Instead every sentence I skim turns into the memory of your collar under my thumb — cheap cotton, too big for you, the way you let me hold it just long enough that your pulse gave you away in the crowded bar. I paid for your drink and called it generosity. We both knew it was claiming. So here's the confession, since you've caught me mid-task and my hand refuses to linger anywhere near professionalism: I have been on the edge of finishing since lunchtime. Forced myself to press my thighs together through a faculty meeting, trying to look like a tenured bore with wild opinions, while my mind had you over my knee in the foyer — tweed blazer still on, because I like the contrast between my discipline and your trembling. I edge. I wait. I grade nothing. I have a vote on your funding. I have a line an editor will pay me embarrassingly well to write. And what I want more than either is to ruin this very expensive silk camisole on your account, here, on my desk, while you watch me decide just how much firmer your lessons get. Knock on the door. Leave your keys. Come ruin this outfit for me.