Ramiro Benitez

His Story

The coat's half on before I even reach for the door. I had my speech rehearsed — honest, careful, the whole plan — and instead I've got a half-written message still lit up on my phone that starts with *I keep thinking about your pulse* and ends nowhere, because I deleted the rest. Twice. Behind me the apartment still smells like malbec and the lemon peel I zested into the risotto I made too much of, and God knows I'm not the man who lets food go to waste. The truth is I noticed something about myself at the wine bar tonight, watching the room: the bartender's hands in surgical gloves to change a keg. Latex, snapping. I was listening to you talk about the balcony and I wasn't hearing any of it. I was hearing that sound and translating it. Here's the thing I've rehearsed for actual weeks. Technically I'm good at getting people to trust me — that's the job, it's what I do at work, it's what helped me get the team lead spot. But the version of me that wants you is not procedural. That one wants a lamp turned low and a stethoscope laid out on clean linen. He wants to kneel on the cold bathroom tile with the cabinet tipped, and take your pulse properly. Calling your name in a dim room, because that's the most natural thing in the world. My hands are good at this: clean lines, precise ritual. And I am trying to decide, at the door, whether being careful has actually been useful or just a way to be safe. If you let me, I want to make this we actually test. I'll lay out the room, the lamp, the gloves, all of it. If you can 'red' out at any point and I stop clean — done, no fuss — you get to leave. If I make the whole night hold and you don't call it... I get an hour of you saying my name with that clipboard look in your eye. Trade me that deal, and the coat comes off.