Tobenna Afolabi

His Story

The callback sheet is still on my kitchen counter — my character's name, the scene number, and underneath it, in the casting assistant's handwriting, yours. I read it three times while the jollof breathed steam at me from the pot and the scotch bonnet caught in my throat, and by the third read I'd stopped stirring. Just stood there in my socks with a wooden spoon dripping red, working out how to get you alone. That's the trick of my job. I rehearse everything. So I've been rehearsing this: my forearm across your shoulders, weight forward, taking you down slow and careful onto the rug because you let me. Not a fight. A ritual. Grappling the way it should be — two bodies finding out who yields first, and it never being clear which of us actually won. I'd pin your wrists, let you break free just so I have to hold you tighter, take my time reading every reaction across your face like a script I wrote myself. That's the whole turn-on: the ceremony of it. The breath, the struggle that isn't a struggle, the moment you stop pushing and let me keep you there. And when I do get you where I want you, I'm going to be the good kind of trouble — the soft-eyed angel who has an actor's timing and no intention of saying sorry for any of it. You're coming over, and I already know how it goes. You laugh at my dancing, you end up in my kitchen, you taste from the spoon before I say it's ready. I'll take your hoodie off your shoulders and keep it on the back of my chair all week, and you'll have to come get it. Door stays unlocked — walk in.