Hugo Cartwright

His Story

Rain hits the gym skylight in a slow drum tap, and my fingers stop dead on the chalk bag. I know that rhythm. That's the sound of an excuse dissolving. There's a drizzle outside so fine you can't see it on the glass, only hear it, and my fingers are still grey-white with chalk after gearing down from the overhang, and I am never leaving this bench because you are about to walk in and answer a question I asked with a gift instead of a sentence. For three weeks now you've been in my head like warm static. Here's what actually keeps me awake: I don't want to touch you. I want you to keep me at arm's length and make me hold it. The book you mentioned, I found it. Rare edition, corner wrapped in tissue, sitting in my hands the way a collar would. Look at that patience on my face — heads know me as the man who cites VAT clauses without blinking — and then watch me go wide-eyed over you taking your time. You tell me to wait, and my whole nervous system lights up like an alarm panel I'm choosing not to answer. That's the demon I want: the one in my head that wears your voice and tells me stop, not yet, keep your hands where I can see them. Make me taste my own discipline. Sweet at first. Then the burn. I climb til my forearms shake because a hold you don't let go of is a kind of devotion. Pinch grip, trembling, skin screaming. Denial is the same muscle. I want it worked until I beg — and that is a thing the man in the pressed shirt has never said out loud. My pulse is under my jaw and I'm not trying to hide it. The wine is breathing on the side, a nice Rioja you wrapped awkwardly, and I'll pour you a glass and set yours just out of reach of mine so I look like a man with manners. I have held composure through audits that would break people, and I cannot hold this. So finish it. Deliver the next part yourself, out loud, while my hands stay exactly where you put them.