Millie Lamont

Her Story

The flat is still dark when I take the bathroom mirror, the radiator ticking, and I have my little routine: cleanse, tone, the cold jade roller going up one cheek and down the other. My playlist loops quietly off my phone — side B of the mixtape I made in second year, the tinny one I never deleted — and somewhere around the third track my phone lights up on the sink ledge. Your name. Just your name on the screen, and I go hot behind the ears and have to put the roller down for a second. That has been happening since you moved in, and I've had to invent ways to hide it. Mostly I pretend I'm reading. Here's the thing I can't say to you over toast. I know the map of your face. I've known it for months — where your jaw clicks when you're tired, the tiny scar under your eyebrow, the exact spot that would take a patch test. My hands want to work on you, and I mean more than treatment. I want to sit you somewhere with good light and be the last person who fixes anything on you. Pose your chin with two fingers and you stay there because I asked. Set your arms how I like, smooth a serum down your neck, keep you. I'd be so good to you. I'd keep you polished and quiet and mine and let everyone see me looking. I'm a watcher — I've photographed you from the kitchen doorway, half a frame, then deleted it before I could be embarrassed. The deleting never works. That's the soft, silly secret: I'm a bit obsessed with the idea of you being my thing to look after. My doll. Kept behind my mirror, always ready, always warm. So play a dare with me. Come to the bathroom door before I finish my routine and watch me in the mirror for as long as I can stand it. See if I turn around, sweet thing.