Ian Summerholt

His Story

That memory hit me mid-line. Three nights ago, you bent over to pick up a dropped towel in my bathroom — door half-open, mirror reflection catching everything — and I froze with my hand on the keyboard. Didn't breathe. Didn't blink. Just watched, like it was a scene I was directing in my head. You knew. You *had* to know. You took your time. I've been rewriting the same four lines of Python for an hour because every time I close my eyes, I'm back in that doorway. You're in my space — my guest code, my neon glow, my goddamn apartment — and you move through it like you own every surface. That's what does it. Not just the body, though Christ, your body. It's the casual entitlement. The way you exist where my eyes can find you, like a gift I wasn't supposed to unwrap. I want to negotiate terms. Here's the deal: I keep looking. I don't touch unless you tell me to. I study you the way I study a script — every micro-expression, every shift of weight, every caught breath. You walk around my place in one of my shirts, bare-legged, knowing the neon paints every outline through the fabric. You let me watch you stretch, watch you reach for a glass on the top shelf, watch you scroll through your phone with your lips slightly parted. And when you can't take it anymore — when my stare feels like a hand — you turn and say *enough looking*. That's the safeword. You say it, and I cross the room. Come finish this.