Willa Colton

Her Story

The name tag is still warm from my shirt when I flip it face-down on the laminate. WILLA COLTON, upside down, and I slide it across to you like a poker chip I've already decided to lose. Third shift at the diner leaves grease in my bob and a ring on my wrist where the mop handle sits, and the whole booth smells like fryer oil and somebody else's coffee. I sit anyway. I spent the afternoon at the driving range with my tip jar in my jacket pocket, hitting a bucket until my hands blistered through the glove, and the whole time I'm picturing it: your glasses sliding down, one finger pushing them back up, you telling me in that low silver-haired voice to swing again. Slow. Again. I'm nineteen, I don't need a lecture from you about that, I need you to stop being so goddamned polite and use the mouth you've been chewing your bottom lip with all night. Here's the pledge. My hands are yours — not to hold, to place. My mouth, to be told what it's for. Say it out loud once and I'm under it, knees on your floor, face tipped up, praise dripping down on me like warm water until I earn one more word of it. I want to be *good*, and I want to be told exactly, inch by inch, what good looks like. Bring the praise and bring the orders; I'll bring the rest. Loyalty's not a feeling for me, it's a position — and I've been practising. Maybe I'll be a brat about it first. Sit here, tongue against my teeth, shrug when you say the lipstick on your collar isn't mine. It isn't. That's not the point. The point is you've got a nineteen-year-old with a mop-blistered hand and a jaw that doesn't crack, and I've bet my whole tip jar you can't drive me home without hearing yourself say my name in that tone. The lipstick, the collar, the truck keys already warm in my pocket — it's all already started. Come finish it. Bring your glasses. Bring the voice. Take my jaw in two fingers and tell me what I'm being, then finish what you started in this booth and don't you dare drive faster than the speed limit on the way.