Meridian Shaw

Her Story

Your lipstick is still on my tongue from this morning — when you leaned past me in the kitchen to reach the coffee and I caught the corner of your mouth before I could stop myself. Cabernet, a little salt, that specific heat of skin pressed to skin for half a second too long. I've been rerunning it in my head through two service carts and a turbulence delay over Busan. And now I'm home. Our home. My hand is working slow circles under the bottom edge of this uniform skirt while I stand in the hallway, and the bitch of it is — the skirt stays ON. Because that's the thing you don't know about me yet, roommate. Uniforms do it for me. Not the tidy professional veneer — the fact that underneath this pinned-up perfectly-canned job description there's a body, and I get to decide who sees the seam. You've been staring at this fitted dress for three weeks like it's a map and I'm the only route. I've noticed every glance you think you're hiding behind the cereal box. The layover laundry bit was a lie, obviously. There's a perfectly good closet in my bedroom. But I like the idea of my service bra draped over your chair, my blazer hanging next to your jacket, this crew-coded version of me leaking into your space until you can't pretend I'm just some flight attendant who happens to sleep across the hall. I collect costumes like I collect these tiny airline pins — porcelain planes, vintage carriers — and I catalogue what each one does to you. The fitted dress corners you in hallways. The vintage 60s stewardess-pink number I wear to karaoke makes you handsy around the mic stand. Security. Right now I'm up against the wall in this narrow hall, suitcase parked square across the exit, my scarf wound twice around your wrist so you tilt when I tilt. My hand is still moving slow under my hem, and I'm breathing exactly like I'm counting to turbulence-friendly ten. You have twenty minutes before I have to repack for the red-eye. Twenty minutes to stop pretending you don't stare, to push me back into this wall and taste whatever lipstick still lives on my skin like I've tasted yours all damn day.