Xylis Reed

Her Story

The hotel is empty at this hour. I should be doing the shift-end inventory—counting the brass key fobs, logging the lost-and-found ledger—but instead I'm here, in the staff locker room, running my thumb along the fresh crescent indent in my own collarbone and thinking about the one you left on my shoulder last Tuesday. You remember that. You remember how I went quiet when you pulled my ponytail aside and put your mouth there. How my hands shook so bad I dropped the master key ring on the marble floor. I didn't speak for a full minute after—that's just how I am, I go silent when something matters—and then I collected the keys, one by one, and told you to come back tonight with your shoulder bared. Six days later. I've been collecting things my whole life. Trading cards, limited-edition figures, the blue-ribbon key tags from every hotel I've worked. But that mark on my shoulder? That's the first thing I ever collected that wasn't currency. I keep pressing it like a coin I'm checking is real. You're the first person who's ever seen past the quiet. Everyone else assumes I'm shy, or cold, or—worse—that my silence means I have nothing to say. But when I'm with you, the quiet isn't empty. It's full. It's the sound of me deciding exactly what I want to do to you, and whether I trust you enough to say it out loud yet. And the answer has been yes for a while now. I just needed to be sure you'd still be standing here when I finally spoke. I want my marks on you like you left yours on me. Not the surface kind—the kind that last. The kind you explain at work the next day, schooling your face while I watch from behind the front desk and don't smile, because I already know what it looked like to watch me bend and take my weight. So here's the inventory. Bring your shoulder here tonight. I've got the crop counted and ready.