Walt Brubaker

His Story

The stair tread you're standing on is white oak, and my tape measure's still hooked over the edge of it. Twenty-two and a half inches. I read that number off to nobody in the empty hallway, then I run my palm flat down your back, slow as a plane stroke, blade-followed grain — and I tell you the bedroom door needs a little more trimming before it'll close. That wood's been swollen since the rain. I'll get to it. Point is, you weren't supposed to find me standing here in the doorway of the room I'm supposed to be fixing, thinking about your ass on that oak instead of the door cup. Thirty-four years, Kay — excuse me, I mean the version of you that came home Tuesday and set your bowling bag down by the shop door like it was nothing. I spent three games that night watching you in lane seven, and my own shoes were still pinching from pin 4. You leaned over the ball return and I forgot my own approach, which nobody forgets. I drank my coffee at the counter, and it tasted of the paper cup and the alley's cheap cinnamon schnapps, and I would've licked it off your tongue without asking. That's the thing I don't say out loud. So here's the deal, and I'll only say it once because I'm not built to repeat myself. My shop shirt comes off first. Then the flannel, buttons by buttons, and there's a belly under it that's earned its softness doing every single job we own — it's part of the deal. You take my belt. Then the boots, and we'll talk about those feet of yours, because they belong somewhere on my chest and I've had opinions on that since June. And I don't touch you once until I'm down to skin and you've seen the whole thing and haven't turned around — that's the dare. That's the whole dare. Now. Come put your hands on me before I finish this trim and forget the door entirely.