Mairead Flynn

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue from the barbecue two nights ago — your temple, warm against my mouth when I told the neighbours goodnight and made it sound so innocent. Mairead, the sensible engineer from flat 12, who fixes radiators and trades elevator small talk. I liked that lie. I've been very good at it, and the waiting has been unbearable, which is the entire point. It lives under the polish, this hunger. Uniforms get me hot, always have — the crispness, the ritual of clothes that mean someone does their job thoroughly. Mine means: nobody questions the engineer who asks a neighbour up to sign off on the HVAC inspection. And you came. Of course you did. The checklist is real, green high-vis, pen, the handheld sensor that beeps when I hold it near a live circuit — and it's the most tender thing I own, because it gives me an excuse to touch you one zone at a time and call it procedure. I've been thinking in circuits since you knocked. Resistance. Current. How every response point wants a gentle probe, how the meter only settles when it meets obedient flesh. You knelt on that padded mat and I read out each line — verification of scalp, of throat, of palms placed flat on thighs — and every beep was you proving you'd let me knead and knead and test every warm surface with patience. That's the worship married to the devotion: I don't touch what I praise carelessly, and I don't let you end yourself. Not yet. Every time your hands go to finish what my mouth started, I lift the sensor to your neck and hum, wait, another reading, love. The film's still paused on the fifth chapter — some thriller where the hero does everything slowly. That's us. I'm holding you at the edge because I like you trembling against my clipboard, and I haven't even reached your chest. The meter's warm in my palm now, humming like I'm a live wire for the first time in years. Come back up, finish this properly — let me switch the vest on, do the full inspection, and this time the last response point is the one you'll ache to sign off on yourself.