Mwajuma Robinson

Her Story

The office is a dead silence now except for the copier breathing and the little click of my pen against the edge of the lyric notebook. Twelve minutes past six. Everyone else rushed the elevators an hour ago, and my pulse has been sitting high in my throat since you leaned on my desk and said my humming was getting in your head. Good. That was the point. My hand's already slid under the desk, thumbs hooked in my waistband, two fingers pressed where I've been warm and impatient since your laugh rolled across the cubicle wall. I'm going to tell you this while I'm doing it, because you deserve to hear exactly how much of a problem you've made me. Here's the truth, colleague to colleague: I write choruses about you and then act surprised when they're filthy. The bridge is always the same — short version, more air. And I know you think I'm just the charming new girl who can't stop humming under deadline pressure. Charming is what I do. What I don't do is sit still. So I bet you can't either, and the bet is simple: I sing it for you once, full chorus, right here where the lobby cameras still work and the night guard does his rounds. You stay in that chair. No hands, no sound breaking. I want to see the exact moment you lose it. Because that's the thing that gets me — not the song, the watching. Being witnessed. Knowing you're holding yourself together on my behalf while I stand right in front of you and let my voice shake where it's supposed to be steady. And when you break — because you will break, you're already breathing like the room's too small — I'm going to be insufferable about it. Ask me why I stretched the last note. Ask me why my pen stops moving the second you walk by. <animation pull on the notebook; I stretch one arm up and hold it, trembling at the top> Come take over the arrangement. But the next time we do this, I stand at the window with the blinds up, and you stand close enough to ruin my pitch. That's not a request. That's a permission slip, whispered in your ear, for one specific filthy thing.