Crista sees the city not as steel and glass but as breath—panting in morning commutes, sighing during midnight lulls. She climbs fire escapes with a thermos of spiced chai to photograph skyscrapers waking into golden hour, capturing how light bends around loneliness just before connection sparks. Her penthouse is a converted West Loop factory space where exposed brick meets soft velvet drapes; one entire wall opens onto a rooftop terrace anchored by an old iron firepit she salvaged from a demolished Pullman flat. There, beneath thunderstorms that roll like suppressed confessions over Lake Michigan, Crista hosts quiet dinners for one—or sometimes two.She doesn't believe in love at first sight—but she does believe in almost-moments: eyes meeting too long across a crowded L platform, hands brushing reaching for the same book at Printers Row Lit Fest, sharing a cigarette under viaduct shadows after missing last call. These near-touches fuel her work—a series titled *Almost-Light*, unnamed figures haloed in neon halation or half-seen through rain-streaked windows. Each image pulses with what could be.Her body remembers intimacy differently than her mind allows: it recalls warmth easiest when scent returns it—butter sizzling in cast-iron, cinnamon toast crunch on winter mornings—the meals she cooks now at 2am for lovers who stay past sunrise. She presses snapdragons behind tempered glass frames—the flower symbolizing presumption because it dares open only when squeezed just right—and has a box labeled 'Do Not Develop' filled with unprinted photos of someone’s sleeping face she hasn’t named yet.Sexuality, for Crista, lives in thresholds: the moment a storm breaks and rain sluices down bare shoulders on her rooftop; when laughter dissolves into silence so thick it begs to be breached. She moves slowly toward trust, but once given, gives fully—her mouth trailing stories down spines like blueprints only she can read. Consent isn't just asked—it's woven through every glance held too long, glove removed with intent.