The Layover Dare

We have been sitting in the Dallas/Fort Worth lounge for about forty minutes when the board flips our flight from "Delayed" to "Delayed" with a later time, which is the airline's way of saying nothing at all while taking something from you. I am twenty-four years old and married to a man who is currently watching me watch the tarmac like the planes are going to apologize.

Carson is twenty-six, a software engineer, a man who debugs things for a living and therefore cannot leave anything alone, including me. He leans over the armrest of his leather chair, the big windows behind him full of gray sky and fuel trucks, and he says, in the casual voice he uses when he has been planning something, "So I have an idea for how to kill the afternoon."

"If it involves the moving walkway, I already did laps on it."

"It doesn't involve the moving walkway." He shifts so he's facing me, and I know that posture, that's his presentation posture. "It's a game. A dare game. You know how you always say you wish you were braver?"

I do say that. I say it about once a month, usually after some woman on TV does something bold and I mutter at the screen from my couch like a shut-in. I married Carson at twenty-two, two years ago, and he has heard the speech enough times that he could recite it, and apparently today he has decided to do something about it. "Define dare," I say.

"Small things. Escalating small things. I tap my watch, you do one little thing. Nothing that would get us thrown out, nothing anybody would even notice unless they were really looking. And you can call it off any time, no penalty, we just go back to reading our books." He says it all very reasonably, like he's proposing we split a pretzel. "That's the whole deal. You're in control the entire time."

A barista calls out a name two kiosks over, some poor guy named Philippe gets his oat milk whatever, and an announcement crackles about gate changes, and I sit there in my window seat in my travel blouse and my jeans and I feel this little pull in my stomach that I recognize, because it's the same pull I get on roller coasters right before the drop, the one that means yes even though my mouth is going to say let me think about it.

"The catch," I say, because there's always a catch.

"No catch. I want to watch you be brave. That's it. That's my whole sinister motive." He grins. "Also I'm bored out of my mind and I've read the same paragraph four times."

I look out at the tarmac. I look at the lounge, which is crowded the way DFW is always crowded, business travelers and families and a bachelor party that has already peaked and is now in its long decline. Nobody is looking at me. Nobody is going to look at me. And for some reason that is both the relief and, somewhere deep down, the disappointment, which is a thing I have never said out loud to anyone, including the man I married, who apparently knows it anyway.

"Okay," I say. "But I have veto power."

"Absolute veto power. Deal." He holds out his hand and I shake it, formal as a treaty, and he pushes his watch face toward me so I can see it and says, "Not yet. When I tap it, that's a dare."

We sit there for a few minutes and I pretend to read my book and I turn exactly zero pages, and Carson, I notice, has stopped pretending to read his entirely. Then his finger comes down on the watch face, one soft tap, and he leans toward me and murmurs, "Dare one. Top button, and let your hair down. That's it. That's the whole dare."

I look down at my blouse. The top button is buttoned, the way I buttoned it this morning in a hotel room in front of a mirror, the way I button it every morning, automatic as breathing. My hair is in a low ponytail because ponytails are for travel, ponytails are for women who do not make scenes in airport lounges. "Right here," I say, not really asking.

"Right here. Nobody's watching. And if anybody does, you're just a girl getting comfortable on a long layover, which is true, and boring, and forgettable in ten seconds."

My fingers go to the button and I'm surprised to find they're steady, because the rest of me is not, my heart has picked up this small quick trot and there's a warmth in my cheeks that has nothing to do with the lounge temperature. I work the button through its hole, one soft pop of thread I swear is louder in my head than it can possibly be in the world, and the collar falls open a half inch, just a half inch, a little V of skin below my throat that has been covered all day.

Then I pull the elastic from my hair and my hair comes down past my shoulders, and I shake it out a little, and God help me I even fluff it with my fingers like a woman in a movie, and Carson makes a small sound low in his throat that is not for public release.

"There," he says, quiet. "You did it. How does it feel?"

"Ridiculous. It's a button. Women unbutton buttons constantly, it's one of the top things women do." I'm babbling and I know it. But underneath the babble there is this fizzing thing, this little electric hum, because I did it in a room full of two hundred strangers and the sky did not fall and no one even glanced over, and some part of me that has been quiet my whole shy life just stretched like a cat in the sun.

"Now you know the trick," Carson says. "Nobody's watching. Nobody ever watches as close as you think. Which means the only audience that matters is sitting right here." He taps his own chest, insufferably pleased with himself, and I kick him lightly in the ankle.

We read, or pretend to, for maybe fifteen minutes. A luggage cart clatters past. Philippe at the kiosk orders a third drink, good for Philippe. And then the tap comes again, two soft clicks on the watch face, and Carson leans in close enough that I can smell the coffee on him and hear the smile in his voice.

"Dare two. Watch and bracelet come off, and then you tuck your blouse in. Loose, like it's nothing. Just enough that there's a little sliver of skin at your waist when you move."

"That's it? That's dare two? That's barely a dare."

"It's a warm-up. I'm easing you in. I've got hours of material." He settles back, the picture of a man with no agenda whatsoever.

I unclasp my watch first, the plain one from Carson's mother, and lay it in my lap, and then the bracelet, the little silver chain I've worn so long I forget it's there until it's gone, and my wrist looks strange and naked to me, which is funny, because it's my wrist. Then the blouse. I gather the hem and tuck it into my waistband, and I do it slowly, not because the dare says slow but because my hands have decided on their own that they want to take their time, smoothing the fabric over my hips, adjusting, and the hem sits higher now, and when I shift in the chair and reach down for my water bottle the blouse rides up and there it is, an inch of my stomach, pale in the lounge light, out in public for the first time since who knows when.

An inch. It's an inch of skin between a tucked blouse and a jeans waistband, the kind of thing a thousand people in this terminal are showing right now without a thought. But it's not their inch. It's mine, and I put it out there on purpose, and a man three seats down does glance over, one flick of the eyes, gone again, and I feel that flick somewhere low in my body as if a match had been struck.

Carson is watching me sideways, careful, giving me room, and he says softly, "Color?"

"Green," I say, before I even think about it. "Very green. Suspiciously green."

"Good." He looks out at the tarmac, patient as a fisherman, and his thumb hovers over the watch face, and I catch myself sitting up a little straighter, waiting, and isn't that something.

Tap. Two soft clicks, and this time I don't even pretend to be surprised, I just close my book on my finger and turn my head, and Carson is wearing the face of a man ordering a sandwich, nothing more.

"Dare three," he says. "Lean back and fix your skirt. Or your jeans, in your case. Pull the hem up, casually, like it's riding up on its own and you're just dealing with it. Let it sit high on your thigh. An inch is all I'm asking."

"I'm in jeans, you knew that when you wrote the dare."

"So pull the leg of the jeans up. Same principle. Adjust, and leave it adjusted."

"Carson, that's my actual leg. That's a whole thigh, that's not an inch of stomach between button and waistband, that's a landscape."

"It's your knee and a couple inches above it," he says. "Cheyenne. You have veto power. You have always had veto power. I want you to have veto power. But if you're green, all you're doing is sitting like a person whose jeans are a little short, in an airport, where everybody is wearing something a little short."

He's got me and he knows he's got me, because the fizzing thing from the last dare never fully went away, it's been sitting in my chest this whole fifteen minutes like a low radio station, and the truth is I've been waiting for the tap. I've been waiting for the tap and pretending I was reading.

"Fine," I say. "But if a flight attendant comes by and thinks I'm having some kind of episode, you're handling the explanation."

"Deal."

I lean back into the leather, and I let my knees part a little, and I hook two fingers into the hem of my left jean leg where it's ridden down, and I tug it up, slow, the way you'd fix anything, an absent little fidget, and I let it stay, and the denim settles a couple of inches up my thigh and there's all this skin, my own skin, which I have seen every day of my twenty-four years but which has apparently been classified information to the general public until right now. My heart is doing the quick trot again. I keep my eyes on my book. I read the same paragraph four times.

A woman walking toward the kiosk glances down as she passes. Not a stare. A flick. But this time I catch it happening in real time, I watch it land, and the match strikes again, low, and I have to press my lips together to keep my face neutral, because my face wants to do something smug and ruined.

"Color?" Carson murmurs.

"Green. You were right, it's nothing. It's a leg. I have two."

"You do. Nice ones, for the record."

"You can't say for the record, that's not, we're not in court."

He grins at the tarmac, and I sit there with my thigh out like it's a normal Tuesday, because it is a normal Tuesday, and that is the whole strange point of it.

The tap comes about twenty minutes later, when the bachelor party has declined into a solemn debate about whether the Bachelor's flight to Vegas leaves from C or D, and I'm actually absorbed in my book now, which feels as though I am betraying the game in a small way.

"Dare four," Carson says. "Stand up and stretch. A real stretch, arms up, back arched. The blouse will pull tight on its own. That's it. That's the whole dare."

"That's it?"

"That's it. You've been sitting for an hour and a half. Your spine is begging you. I'm just adding an audience."

"Adding an audience," I repeat. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

"Clumsily, yes."

I set my book down and I stand, and honestly the stretch is not a hard sell, my lower back has been filing quiet