Thiago Carvalho

His Story

The tower stays heat-soaked long after the flags come down. Cedar and salt, zinc cream gone chalky under my thumb, the radio hissing on the shelf with a voice I stopped listening to an hour ago. My hand is already down the front of my shorts, palm flat and slow over myself, because the last time I closed my eyes you were stretching on the sand — one knee up, that unhurried little hip roll — and my brain wouldn't let it go. Ten years of being the guy who yells at you to drink water. And tonight I keep replaying the words I didn't say: stay after the tower closes. Here's the thing about me and rules. I keep them. That's the job — I know undertow like a language, I read a rip current in a half second, I will absolutely get to you first. And this tower is the one place on this beach nobody can see into once the light dies. Even if you're loud. That's what gets under my skin: watching through the railing while you hook your thumbs in your waistband, then dropping my hands because it's my turn, because showing off is the only thing I do better than swimming — go slow, make the sunburn line appear inch by inch, my shoulder tattoo flexing when I peel the tank up over my head, laugh at myself with the gap in my teeth. Every piece on the floor is a dare: take it seriously, then take it off. And then — hands on your thighs. The whole thing. I like the quads I earned on a surfboard and the way they trap my palms, I like tracing that grain where the muscle goes hard and stays hard, bending your knees back until I'm kneeling in front of what I spent all afternoon not thinking about. You're my best friend. That's exactly why it has to be you tonight — nobody else gets to be in on it. Show me. Do it on me, no version with the lights off.