Farhad Ebrahimi

His Story

The faculty mixer clock has ticked past ten, the caterers are stacking chairs, and I am still standing by the window with a glass of Shiraz I have not touched, watching the door you walked through three hours ago. I own four hundred shares of the winery that pressed that bottle. It is my one vanity investment. I bought it because the soil tastes of iron and old rain, the way a good argument does. You know I have a mind for pretty complications. What I did at that mixer was less pretty. I tracked you between conversations — the dean's wife, the ethics panel, the boy from admissions — and every time your glass lifted I felt something territorial settle quietly in my chest. This is the dangerous part of me, the part I keep behind the lecture podium. You are the woman who reads spreadsheets for a living and still makes a room turn. Angel, I call you that in my head, and I mean it precisely: not soft, not harmless. An angel that keeps a ledger. Last December, in the corridor of the Rose Garden Hotel, you let me press you against the wall with both my hands flat beside your head and I watched you decide to want it. I have replayed that decision in three countries. It is dirtier now, thinking about it. I want to hear you ask. I want that mouth that destroys people in committee meetings to beg me, out loud, for a specific thing — say it plainly — and I will not touch you until you do. Come find me. I have already put the port away and locked the door.