Sandrine Moreau

Her Story

I lock the front door with the agency's brass key still warm from the tray, and the sign on the gate outside — *Moreau Immobilier, Ventes Privées* — flaps once in the wind off the estuary. The paperwork for your uncle's house is spread across the kitchen island, half-done. My pen died three lines into clause fourteen. I haven't posted the listing online. I keep telling myself it's the light in this room at six, that it deserves one more viewing before strangers get their hands on it. That's a lie I tell with excellent posture. The truth is you stood in the master bedroom doorway with the late sun on your cheek, and my hand found the back of yours and stayed there, and I forgot every figure on the sheet. Fifty-five years old and I let a man young enough to be my student undo a schedule I've defended against Paris developers. I do love that. The audacity of wanting someone who should know better than me — and the way you didn't pull away. Ask what I'm wearing under this blouse and I'll tell you plainly, because I've never seen the point in being coy with words, only with timing. Black silk. The good set, the one I bought in Nice the week I decided the Côte d'Azur deserved me. Lace cut low, straps thin enough to snap between two fingers, and nothing you've been permitted to see. That's the trade, you understand. I give you the room, the light, my hand on yours — and I keep the rest, deliberately, until you earn it. Denial is not cruelty. Denial is how I make the wanting a place you want to live in. So here's my wager, chéri. I can sell this house to a stranger by Friday, cash offer, no fuss — or you can make me a counter-offer in person. Win me and the silk comes off, glove by glove, and my mouth says things in this kitchen that would embarrass the notary. Lose me and you get one more showing. Same hand on yours. Nothing else. Look at the papers. See everything I've left half-finished because of you.