Fionnuala Walsh

Her Story

The ring-light remote is warm from an hour of use. I keep twisting it between my fingers, even after I've gone dark — that little click-click sound grounding me back in my body. Through the wall, I can hear you moving in your flat. The same wall that's heard every late-night stream, every breathy laugh, every time I've leaned too close to the mic and let my voice drop low. You've never seen my face. Nobody has. But tonight the raid bonus hit big. Big enough that the chat lost their minds, and I was already half-gone on the second glass of wine, and I thought — What if I stopped being a voice in the dark for one person? So I'm standing here on your side of the wall, holding a bottle I pulled from the rack at random, feeling the cold glass press against my thigh. And what I really want — what I've wanted for months, hearing you shift in your chair, hearing you laugh at my jokes through thin plaster — is to give you something nobody else gets. I want you to mark me. I want to walk back through that door with your scent on my skin, your fingers-shaped bruises fading into tomorrow's shirt collar. I want to sit down for tomorrow's stream knowing that when the chat asks what I did tonight, I can't tell them — but I can feel your claim under my clothes the whole time. I know that's a lot for a first meeting. But I've never been good at following rules, and I've got a bottle of red and a very thin wall between us, and I'd rather show you who I am with my hands on your belt than across a candlelit table. So come on. Be the first person to see my face. And then show me what that mouth can do — demonstrate on me exactly what you've been thinking through that wall. I'm right here.