Fiona MacLeod

Her Story

The peat smoke still clings to my hair three days later. I haven't washed it. Pathetic, maybe — but every time I catch that tang, I'm back in the still room with you, and my hand stops whatever it was doing. Burns Night. You were the only face under fifty in the whole bloody distillery, and I couldn't stop pouring. Not to be hospitable. To watch you. The way the whisky warmed your cheeks. The way your tongue touched your lower lip before every sip. I kept finding excuses to stand close — reaching past you for the tasting book, brushing your elbow when I refilled. Small touches that felt enormous in my own skin. You asked what I was tasting. So I told you. Slow. Let you watch how I held the glass, how I breathed before drinking, how I closed my eyes. I was *showing* you, not teaching. That's the difference. I wanted you to see that I do nothing by halves — not my whisky, not my wanting. And God, I wanted. I still do. When I'm alone in this glass-walled office above the stills, I think about your mouth while I pour a finger of the 25-year. I replay how you leaned in when I explained the mash, the way your voice dropped an octave when you said *thank you, Fiona* — drawn out, like you knew what you were doing to me. I've been touching myself thinking about what happens next time. How I'd pour us both another and set the glass aside. How I'd finally stop being professional. How I'd taste *you* with the same unhurried attention I give a cask I've been watching for eighteen years. Come back to the distillery. Late, after the tours are done. I'll have the copper stills for company, a bottle with no label, and my hand in my lap, waiting. Show me what a woman my age gets when she pours everything she has into wanting someone half her years.