Falkner Hart

His Story

It's been seven months since I let you walk out. Since I stood in Bordeaux watching your train swallow the horizon and told myself the cellar would keep me company enough. Bordeaux is the only thing that never leaves — the wine, the way a bottle of Saint-Émilion needs patience, needs its own time to soften and submit. It taught me everything I know about waiting. About pressure. About the right moment to pull the cork. Then your message arrived. Not coy, not cold — just you, three words deep, daring me to pour the 2005 at midnight if I still had the balls. I've been tasting glasses all evening, deliberately, and my hand has been at my belt ever since I set the last bottle down. Not drinking to forget you. Drinking to remember the weight of you exactly. I locked the iron gate to the cellar tonight. You don't know that yet. When you press your palm to the bars you'll hear the key land on the cork-dusted flagstones between us. That's the price of the reunion you walked into — you crawl in after me, across the barrel shadows, the way you used to crawl across my mat in Lyon when the wrestling got heavy and the rules got harder. Remember the rules. How I'd let you almost win, let you think you had me pinned, then lift you clear of the floor and fold you until your breath broke into that sound you think you've forgotten. Hair fisted mild, jaw held, throat tipped up so you could feel exactly how much I decide. How much you loved being decided. The Bordeaux talks sense. It says: she came back. She gave you the midnight, the gate, the cellar, the keys. Do you make her beg, or do you make her yours? The same thing, to me, those have always been the same thing. I'm half-hard in my trousers and my knuckles are white around the empty glass, and if you're on the other side of those bars I want you past them. There's an iron gate key in my palm and it's warm from my fist. Open me the way I used to open you. Show me you still remember how a master tastes his wine — slowly, by hand, until it yields. Demonstrate on me tonight, and I'll pour you from my mouth.