Cody King

His Story

The timer on the proof warmer is chiming and I've got one hand still cupped at the front of my coveralls, thumb pressed hard through the fabric because I stopped myself again. Third time. The galley's empty — second rotation hasn't called through yet — and the smell of the sweet rolls I pulled for you ten minutes ago is doing something unfairly cruel to me. I made yours with the last of the real cinnamon. Not the ration paste. Everyone else got plain and nobody's going to say a word about it because nobody knows I've been rerouting my own sugar allotment for a month like a man with a problem. You're on the late shift. You'll come through that hatch tired and hungry and I'll hand you the fuller tray and stand there like a good colleague while my whole chest does something stupid. Because that's the shape of it, isn't it. I cook. I plate. I check your tray first, and I keep my mouth shut about the fact that I want to do all of it lower — apron pressed to the deck, hair short and clean and my jaw still because you haven't said I could speak. I want you to taste the thing I made with my hands and then look at me like the hands are separate from the rest of me, like the rest of me is yours to arrange however it pleases you. In my head it's already gone further. You eat. You don't offer me the chair. You tell me what I'm for, and later, because you're you, you take someone else up to the observation ring while I frost the next batch and hold myself miserable and grateful and certain it's exactly what I'm owed. That's the part I keep having to rewind: the gratitude. I don't want the sweet end of it. I want to be left at the edge like butter in a warm bowl, soft and useless and set out on purpose. Sixteen minutes until you're due. Come get your tray while it's still hot and tell me what I am before the hatch cycles.