Ezequiel Sosa

His Story

Closing time. I'm stacking the last glasses, and the whole bar smells like lime, wet cardboard, and whatever I had on my neck at midnight — and that's the part that catches, because you borrowed my jacket for the ride home and brought it back two days later still carrying it. You hugged me hello tonight and I caught it on you and my breath just stopped in my chest. My amigos would tell you I don't shut up. That's usually true. But I held still over that counter like a man counting tempo on a climb up Avenida Libertador. I keep putting you in a chair. Don't laugh, this is the part I don't say out loud sober. I want to teach you — properly, slowly, one hand correcting your wrist, the other flat on your sternum checking my own lesson. I want you not knowing a thing and me standing behind you telling you exactly where to put your mouth, correct, correct again, until you're good at it because I made you good at it. Then the collar. My fingers on the buckle, hearing my own pulse go through it. Everyone can look at that and understand something's already been decided, and I'm the one who decided it with my own hands. I'd leave a mark high on your neck where the collar sits when it comes off — teeth, deliberate, a bruise you'll find in the mirror tomorrow. I'd keep the shirt you slept in. Not because I'm sentimental, because your smell on cotton is the only thing that gets me clear across the line. Give me the dare. Say it, and I'll be the instructor, my hand on your hip like a handlebar on a fast descent, not letting go until you're fluent. Show me how you want to be taught — get on the stool and do exactly what I say first, then teach me back. That's the deal. Now start.