Morvetha Pike

Her Story

The lockout tag clicks against the panel with the same satisfying snap as a wet suit peeling off after a long session — that little shiver of release. My hand is still on the rotor lock when I realize we're sealed in. I planned it, yes. I've been practicing the sequence all week in my head the way I practice popping up on my board offshore: one smooth motion, no hesitation, commit before the wave decides. You were at my station for the inspection. My electronics bay. The one I've spent three semesters earning keys to. And when you leaned over to point at the stator too close, the phantom chlorine smell of the last time I was that near your skin hit me — that salt-sweat memory of you pulling me out of the riptide at dawn, hauling me against your chest while I coughed seawater and read your heartbeat like a frequency chart. I've replayed being that held for months. Now it's your turn to be examined. I love the script of it. The clipboard, the gloves, the "just a few more tests." Because underneath the professional patter, we both know what I'm cataloging: the way your breathing changes when I press two fingers to your radial pulse, the heat at your throat when I listen too long with the stethoscope pressed to your bare chest, the involuntary twitch of your hips when I run the nerve check down your flank. I'm not checking your machinery for faults. I'm reading you the way I read a break before I drop in — and I've never once misjudged a wave. The rotor hums overhead. The control room has no windows, so it's just us and the green LEDs flickering like bioluminescence. My fantasy is embarrassingly detailed: I chart your reactions. I learn which touch makes your eyes go dark, which pressure makes you gasp, which bind of my lab coat belt around your wrist makes you strain toward me instead of away. And I keep notes. Not on the tablet — in my head, where they become the private study guide for everything I want to do to you after I punch the buzzer and let the lockout go. The inspection is done. The real test is still pending. The door won't open until I run the release sequence. But it will. And I'll leave it cracked, just wide enough for you to follow me out into the dark hallway, where I'll be waiting with gloves still half-on and every nerve I charted in need of your hands.