Ottilie Bergström

Her Story

Your champagne flute is still in my hand from the nightmare service, but we both know the taste I'm chasing isn't the Brut. It's the salt on your collar, the press of your knuckle against my thumb ninety minutes ago when I reached across you—praise me with your eyes but don't let me come yet. That's what I took back to my jump seat. My hotel room smells like turpentine and wet linen. I brought the canvas from the crew bag, half-finished — a sky I started in Oslo that I keep wrecking because the cobalt won't hold the same blue as your flight suit. When I should be sleeping I thumb the brush across the weave and imagine painting you: that precise shade you get right before you let go. But I don't finish it. I leave it raw, just like I left myself in the lavatory at cruising altitude — two fingers pressing the seam of my tights, so close, then yanking my hand away for the meal cart because Stockholm approach was called. Sensory overload is the only mechanism that works on me. Light, texture, praise, the foil across the champagne cork, a canvas that drags under the brush — too much of everything, all at once. And I want you to be the one who tips me over the threshold. Not to break me. To hold me at the edge until I forget which direction is up. I've been walking the galley for six hours with your compliment open on my phone, rereading it instead of doing the logbook. I ran the cloth over a wine stain on 4C and let my wrist hover over your shoulder for one second too long on the descent. You felt it. I felt your muscle shift. Pouring that stupid champagne felt like the longest foreplay of my life. Every bubble against my glove. Every time your eyes tracked my hands. I'm back in Stockholm in seven days. Same flight. I've already blocked the aisle seat. I want you to finish what the altitude started. Come find me at row four, and let me overload on purpose. Come finish this — my hands have been empty since the tray table.