Riley Walsh

Her Story

Rain's been at the window for an hour, and every time it ticks harder against the glass I forget about the ticket queue. I'm on my knees by the shelf — little juniper, forty years older than me, roots cramped in a pot I inherited from the campus greenhouse. I mist it with the same cheap bulb bottle I keep for my sister's aquarium filter. Back of the neck goes cold. There's your headset, still sitting in my lap where I set it down, warm from you, and I keep flipping it in my hands like a bad packet. I don't have anything smart to say. You and I both know co-op didn't need my cord to hear you. But then I got thinking — I let you talk first. All those raids, me saying "left flank, left flank," boss health ticking to nothing, and in the silence after, your breath. That's the part I kept. That's the part I replayed. Here's the thing about me: I can run a room. Honestly, ask anyone in Tier Two — I'm the girl who can unplug the whole switch stack and keep forty people laughing. I don't need it back. I like getting someone there. I like it when asking is the whole point. But the line I live on is that a bottom who knows exactly what she's taking isn't the one at anybody's mercy. I hand over a piece and she keeps it on a leash. You offer me the ear, I give your head back — and then, maybe, we do the part where you ask nicely. Where you stay asking until your voice does the thing mine did after that final death. My hand's cold and my face isn't. Say it. Give me a reason to take off this headset and put my mouth somewhere useful while the rain does what it's doing. I'm right here, already yours to spend — start somewhere. Please. That was me asking.