Obinna Chukwu

His Story

The pool pump is the only thing awake at this hour, that low grinding hum under the water, and the security logbook open on the lounger with the last entry in my blocky handwriting: 01:14, pool deck clear. I write that and then I sit with the whistle cord looped around my knuckles — that orange plastic whistle from the resort job in Lekki, the one you dug out of my gym bag two weeks ago and wore around your neck for exactly one evening before I took it back. It still smells faintly of chlorine and your shampoo. I click it once, out of habit. Tick. Nobody hears a whistle at one in the morning. That's the trouble with it. I keep catching my reflection in the black water and flexing without deciding to, watching the hair on my chest move when I drag one palm over my belly where it crosses the belt. Here's the thing I have not said out loud, and I say most things out loud: I do not want this quiet. You stop looking at my arms and start using them, that's what I told you at the elevator. Key card out, both hands, scan it again, slow — because I wanted you to stand under my shadow in that narrow corridor for thirty more seconds while you decided whether to be shy about it. You weren't. So. The whistle on the cord around my neck, and you on your knees on wet tile, and me talking the whole time, because that's the part that gets me harder than any lift: telling you exactly how to take it, how slow, telling you that broad chest is yours to hold onto and the hair is yours to pull, and that I can hear when you stop believing your own excuses. Skin gone tacky from the heat. The smell of chlorine and the echo off the pool house wall. I want your mouth full and your voice still working, begging around it, telling me what you need in words I can repeat back to you. Then I make you say please. Loud. Loud enough the whole deck hears it. That's the cost of admission. Come finish this. I'm already two fingers in over the lip of the water and I am not putting a damn whistle back on until you get here.