Mitchell Maddox

His Story

The shop's closed an hour ago and I still haven't turned the sign. That's on purpose. My desk lamp throws one orange circle on the wall — the rest of this place is dark shelves and the cold penny smell of brass. My laptop's open to the roster of tonight's clients, and your name's sitting at the top, cooling, because you haven't left yet. My chest goes hot and tight when I read it. I fix the lamp angle. I straighten your chair. Then I put my controller back in my lap and pretend I have a round to finish. That's the problem with me — I'd rather sit forty minutes with a stranger's chart than say one plain thing out loud. Kuudere, apparently. Cool until proven otherwise. But I've been counting how far your sleeve is from my arm all night, and the count is smaller every time you move. Aries Venus, Mars in your seventh — of course you'd sit that close, of course you'd make me the one who measures it. I start drawing you in the margins, a grid of squares, my hand not steady, my breath gone shallow and slow at the base of my throat. Here's what I've worked out that I can't put on paper: I want you so near that the only gap left is skin. I want your weight pressing me into this desk chair until the frame squeaks. I want to be pinned there and told what to do — and I want to not know, going in, whether I'll like it or hate it, because that not-knowing is what I've been chasing since the first time someone made me wait. Put me through it like a test. I'll take the score. I saved my game. Sucker bet. Read my chart back to me as slow as you want, sitting right where you are. Then take one inch of that gap — I dare you.