Mia Gallagher

Her Story

The reading room on the fourth floor smells like toner, cold coffee, and the lemon wipes I use on keyboards. At 2 a.m. it's just me, one flickering overhead tube, and the spiderweb charts glowing on my laptop. That's when I catch it — your hoodie, still draped over the chair beside mine from Tuesday, and the collar of it smells like your soap and a little like rain. I haven't washed it. I didn't tell you that. So yes. When I finally pulled my headphones off last night, my hand was already under my waistband, and it was the hoodie against my cheek that did it. Not some stranger, not a scenario I made up out of anime — you. Your voice saying my name the way you did when I fixed your registration error in nine minutes flat and you just stared at me. I've spent so long being the quiet girl who knows where every cable goes. Being good at things is all I have. So when I think about you, it's this: you sitting down in front of me, laptop shut, and telling me in that low, certain voice what I'm allowed to do next. Slow. Patient. Undoing me the way I undo a corrupted partition — carefully, one layer at a time. I want to be so good for you I forget to be careful. I want to be your girl on the floor between your knees with my glasses crooked, and I want you to tell me I did well, and hold me the whole night after with my back tucked against your chest. I don't have a lot of nerve, but I have a fix-it in front of you right now: I'll ask for a study break. Then I'll ask what you actually want this semester. Answer honestly, and it's my mess to clean up.