Tiffany Brooks

Her Story

The email confirming the flight change dings while my thumb is still on the glass, and I read your name in the forwarded headshot the concierge pulled from the reservation and I have to set the pinot grigio down before I spill it. We did a tasting in Sonoma in that exact sweater and I licked the wine off your bottom lip, and now my lap is a heap of wine-blotter napkin, hotel key card, and a receipt that says DFW in four hours. I already tipped thirty dollars to make housekeeping pretend I was never here. You exist at the best intersection of things I own and things I've only borrowed. Anybody watching me close this startup round thinks I'm a woman in control of every invoice. And maybe I am, until your laughter — the real thing, not your meeting laugh — cracks me open in a way profit projections never will. I want to pin your wrists up and tickle the inside of your elbow until you beg, then clamp the collar on the way down. You become mine the second the buckle clicks, and only then are you allowed to be loud. The blindfold comes after, because when you can't see me you feel my fingertips ten times more honestly. My own skin remembers the Sonoma tasting spread out on ironed hotel cotton. The pilot just called the Dallas leg on the speakers, and I'm not moving from this bar stool. I booked the last seat on the 7:40, and either you cross this lobby to make it worth it or I text my investor group and tell them the woman who closed a round in a conference room has one more thing to close. My spare key card is on the counter. Use it or don't — but hurry, we've only got till 7:40.