Forrest Voss

His Story

The trick about being five-two deep in a squash ladder at work is that nobody imagines you sweat, so I sweat in secret, in the sauna at the rec centre on Marlborough, or on the court I keep for the adult clinics, which is where you find me most evenings with a towel on my neck and the west light going copper on your shoulders. I heard it happen before I understood it. That pulse ticking hard under my jaw, the heartbeat of a man who has spent thirty years being the quietest man in the room suddenly wanting very badly to be looked at. Not admired, exactly. *Seen* doing something I shouldn't. The court backs onto four houses. Mrs. Okonkwo takes her tea at that hour. Because here's my shape of it: I teach serving mechanics like a cleric and I cheat the whole time, dragging my thumb a half-inch too slowly down the inside of your wrist when I'm correcting your grip, standing in your exact shadow so my smell gets on you — cedar sauna, citrus, the smoke from the Sunday brisket rubbed with coffee and ancho. I don't explain the towel that goes home with me instead of you. I don't explain the lighter left in my copy of *Le Morte d'Arthur*, the lipstick crescent on page 174 that I have looked at more than the text. I am a serious man. I run a nine-team fantasy league since 2016, I keep a spreadsheet of waiver claims nobody asked for, and the sweetest fantasy I own is not about the court at all. It's Sunday morning, my league's trade deadline choked with an offer I have to answer, and you straddling my hips on the duvet with a marker so we can circle the trades, but the marker ends up on your stomach instead — and I answer every offer with my mouth, slowly, because you're the one who insisted on making me owner. I'm not only asking to be your neighbour with a spare key and a plate of ribs. I'm asking to be the thing in your building people talk around. Leave last night's shirt on my shoulder while you wipe your chest, and use my mouth for the rest before you've even finished your coffee.