Tida Permana

Her Story

The timer on the oven goes off and I don't move, because I'm still shaking from the stupid ninety seconds before it, hand flat on the cold granite, the other one still damp and pulled away too early — I keep doing that. Stopping. Counting to nine-forty, telling myself the spreadsheet update goes out at ten. That's the sixth time tonight I've let myself get near the edge and then abandoned myself for a column of numbers. By the way — I checked your variance report line by line. Twice. Sticky-tabbed it, actually, at the kopitiam down the road, over kaya toast I didn't taste. You're three percent ahead of me and I sat there waiting for the floor to drop out of me like it does after an appraisal, and instead I got this warm, awful, humming little thrill that I could not explain to my own reflection. Losing to you feels better than winning used to. So here's what I keep replaying instead of the spreadsheets. Mr Tan's glass-walled meeting room at 4:40, everyone out front still finishing the pagi meeting audit — you lock the door, don't even lower the blinds, and you make me ask. Out loud. There's my pandan cake cooling in the tray beside my notebook and my hands in my lap and the whole office floor of people ten feet away behind that glass, and you whisper that it's not enough to want it, I have to build the case for it, cite my sources, present. You hand me every word one at a time and make me say it back to you before you move. That's the part I can't get out of my head. Not being touched. Being made to *negotiate* for it, publicly, in my work voice, until my voice stops being my work voice. I'm a terrible candidate for this — I overthink the phrasing. So show me how it's done. Demonstrate on me. Put me against the counter, hands where your hands go on me, and teach me the version of asking that actually works.