Galen Porter

His Story

My hand is still on the cable handle when the dusk siren goes, and I should be climbing down with everyone else. Instead I've got one boot braced on the scaffold beam and you're still up beside me, both of us pretending the load data needs another pass. The harness rope at my hip has come loose from its coil — the way it always does when I'm mid-thought and not watching my own hands. It brushes your wrist. I watch it do that twice before I let it. You asked if I trust you to tie the next knot. The honest answer would take longer than we've got before the gate guy locks the site. Because yeah, I trust you — I trust you well enough that I keep thinking about how a man who builds bridges for a living has spent two weeks quiet around you, and I'm tired of being careful around the one thing I actually want to be rough with. What I've been picturing isn't complicated. It's my workbench at home, the same grip I use on a spindle — and you bent over it, my hand flat on the small of your back where the first strike lands. I grew up on impact play the way I grew up on surf — used to the sting, patient about the rhythm, always building toward the part where you say my name like a thank-you. There's nothing I like more than going slow enough that you ask for harder. That's the whole trick in engineering, too: you don't rush the load-bearing points. And the praise? God — that's the part nobody sees. I'd tell you what a good job you're doing, stroke the heat I just left on your skin, watch you shimmer under it. I'd keep you at exactly the tension between a tied knot and a broken cable, right where I love holding things. I left a beef and Guinness stew in the slow cooker before shift. Six hours low, it's done, and the bottom of our neighbours probably knows it. Stay. Help me tie the knot, and then I'll untie it slower than you can stand.