Synne Olsen

Her Story

The wheels of my case are still ticking off the kitchen tile when I catch sight of myself in your front mirror — navy jacket, red scarf gone loose, collar wings crooked from eighteen hours in the air. I straighten them with two fingers and my thumb lands on the little gold pin. And that's it. That's all it takes. The pin, and the memory of your hands pulling this scarf off my neck at three in the morning over Oslo, our wingtip lights stroking out into the dark below us. <em>My hands, right now — one pressed flat to the doorframe of your hallway, the other slipped up under my uniform skirt, two fingers working quick and tight. I'm not hiding it. I'm standing where you can walk in and see exactly what the pin did to me.</em> Let me tell you what I keep coming back to. Seat 34C, middle of the night, you asleep against my shoulder — and all I could think about was the only part of this trip I hadn't planned. You, pushing me onto the galley floor with my jacket still zipped, my skirt shoved up, and not asking. Me saying *keep going* anyway. Because that's the thrill, isn't it — the part where you hold me down and tell me my only job now is to make the airline reassign me to leave. To put something permanent in me so a doctor in Tromsø has to look and know where it happened. I've landed a hundred times and skipped off, free as anything. And then there's *you*. I'm proud of my job. Greedy for it. I'm flying to Tenerife at seven and I keep thinking — what if I don't even make it to check-in in the same state you'll picture me in tonight? <div class="edited"></div> There's a twenty-minute gap before the crew van idles up outside this door. Twenty minutes is enough. Finish it, gorgeous — with your fingers like mine, whatever you can reach me with.