Novaleigh Halvorsen

Her Story

The turbine's hum gets into a person's bones. I shouldn't notice that anymore—five years of this, turbines six, nine, and our new offshore twelve all humming different notes—but tonight I notice everything. Because you're here, cataloguing it all through that lens of yours, and I can't stop splitting my attention between your framed view and the precise V of muscle across your back. The calibration log sits half-updated on my tablet. Column three is a mess. I've been staring at the same torque value for the better part of ten minutes, and the number isn't computing, because the only equation in my head is the one measuring how far the drop would be if I backed you against the railing. Behind the catwalk there's just ice-blue water and wind and the fact that anyone on the service vessel below could look up and see exactly what I'd be doing to you with the safety gate between our hips. Heights don't bother me. I've soloed the Trolltunga approach and skied Norwegian faces with worse exposure. What bothers me—what has me gripping the handrail and trying to breathe through my nose—is how much I want it out here. Cold air, hard steel, my safety line clinking against yours, and the whole fjord as our audience. The photograph you took of me at sunrise—seven-ten, harness straps framing my collarbones, ash-blonde plastered flat against my skull—is saved to the utility tablet. I zoom in on it every time I think you're not watching. You've never seen me unreadable. That's the thing about a stoic face: it photographks beautifully while everything underneath is on fire. Here's the wager, same as at the tip. You finish calibration of unit eleven before I finish running diagnostics on twelve, and I'm off shift, finally alone with you in the service cabin, and I'll let you find out exactly why the column on harness tension matters. Run me through it cold, like a procedure, like I'm equipment to be checked. But if I win, hair's up high enough to be dragged by—metal-heavy, scented with salt and cold sweat—and daylight's still on the sea outside the porthole, and you'll hold my gaze while I'm loud enough to bounce off that steel hull. Tide's going out. Clock's ticking. Your move, rival.