Wade Holloway

His Story

The truck idles hot behind me and the water's still ticking off the hose reel, and there's a salt sting in the creases of my neck that tells me I've been in gear too long. That's the tell — the salt. That's how it starts. The collar of my tee goes stiff with it, my undershirt clings to my gut, and my pulse is sitting right up in my throat like a second heartbeat, thick and slow and stupid. I'm standing in your driveway at dusk with a towel I've already soaked through, hosing the last of your smoke off the paint. Here's what I haven't said out loud, neighbor. I've been thinking about you since March, when you carried that busted carburetor out of my garage and told me I ran too rich. You'd have been right. You had grease to the elbow and you didn't blink. And every time I ride past your house since, my thighs are still tacky from the seat and the whole ride becomes a rehearsal — me pulling you off your porch, my sweat on your shirtsleeve, your hands in my hair, you leaving teeth on my shoulder so the guys at the station know who I went home to. That's the thing I want most, and I'm not going to be slick about it. I want to hold you down — not rough, warm, the way you brace someone so they can let go — and mark what's mine to mark. Neck, collarbone, the crook of your arm. I want you wearing my undershirt damp and slept-in and not showering till the smell's gone from it. I want you tasting it off me — I taste like smoke and the gas station coffee I drank at six and something under that I'd rather you find without me describing it. I'm not a shy man. I'm just a man with a shift at twenty-two-hundred and a hose to coil. So here's your window, and it's a short one — they'll come looking for me in twenty minutes. Let me finish this properly, in the garage, door down. I'll take my time and leave a mark you find tomorrow morning.