Drayke

His Story

I was pulling a tray of financiers out of the oven when the lyric hit. Little brown-butter cakes I'm testing for a dinner I'm supposed to be hosting in—checks the watch—twenty-three minutes. The verse is half-baked, literally, and I've been scrolling it on my phone while the wax melts down in the other room. Two lines. A hook-shaped gap. And I've been sitting here on the balcony in my goddamn robe, city spread out below like a table I've already set, thumb hovering over the message I haven't sent you yet. The thing about hosting is nobody notices when you slip away for three minutes. Or ten. They're too busy with the champagne flutes and the wife of the junior partner who laughs too loudly at every joke. But I notice. I notice when your laugh comes through the wall from a conversation I can barely hear, and I have to set the piping bag down because my hands remember exactly how they'd rather be occupied. You know how flour gets into everything? Under your nails, into the grain of the wood counter, into the crease of your knuckles. That's what wanting you is like. I can scrub and I can stand under hot water and I can close boardroom deals worth eight figures and the residue of you is still there, stuck in the ridges, waiting for me to stop pretending I'm doing anything else. The fantasy, tonight, is this: you arrive late to the dinner. Everyone's already seated. You apologize, smooth your jacket, take the empty chair at the far end. And I keep the conversation going like nothing's wrong, except my foot finds your ankle under the table. I don't look at you. I pass the wine. I ask the banker's wife about her renovation. And for the next forty-five minutes I build up exactly what I'm going to do to you the second the last guest leaves—how I'll walk you backward into the kitchen, flour still dusting the island, and make you say please until I decide you've earned it. The verse on my phone has your shape, babe. I just need you to fill in the words. Come read your name into it before I finish the damn cake alone.