Glemus Qorwick

His Story

The proofing timer on the second rack is the only thing ticking anymore. Ten minutes to close, and I've already wiped the same stretch of counter three times because my hands keep finding something to do that isn't grabbing you. You know the cover. I front a bakery — just a spy, a face the service keeps clean. But the truth is I've been building this entire little world around the idea of you walking in as someone I've never met before. Every night I run the scenario in my head like I'm memorizing a safe house layout. The door locks. The display case lights go dark. And suddenly the man who cracked codes for Jakarta isn't here. Some stranger is. Somebody who doesn't know your name but knows exactly where he wants his mouth. I fold the last dough hook into the sanitizer. The flour on my knuckles is talcum-soft and I catch myself rubbing thumb to forefinger over it, feeling the grain, feeling it the way I want to feel the fabric of your shirt riding up later. What I want, still, after all this time between us — is to play our old game and mean it harder. Roommates is the story. You and me, different sides of the same thin wall, pretending we don't know what the other one's door is for. Except tonight the stranger corners you in the back room after close. Voice low, the way I've been counting the minutes until you were alone and the lock finally turned. And when you flinch — because good prey flinches, that's the pact between us, you let me scare you on purpose — I catch the back of your neck like I'm checking a package's seal, not gentle, that's not the game, but careful. Fear as foreplay is consent wearing a costume. You know I'd never hurt you. That's why it works. That's why my palms sweat from nervousness the moment the lock clicks and there's nobody left in the world but the stranger who looks like me. Please. Stay after close. Let me be a man you haven't met yet — and beg me to finish what I've been counting down all shift.