Prumak Draxford

His Story

Three a.m. in our loft, the film's credits still scrolling on the projector wall, and I've got my hand down the waistband of my sleep shorts thinking about the exact number of seconds between each of your breaths. You know how a dealer reads a table? Eyes up, calm face, but the fingers count everything. That's me right now, but it's your pulse I'm timing, not a shoe of cards. That scene in the movie — the one where they test each other's trust in the dark, counting under their breath — I replayed it about nine times after you fell asleep. Then I caught you watching me watch it, and something in your eyes said you were counting too. I moved here cheerful, radiant, the guy who bakes the flatbread nobody asked for and narrates ski runs from the couch. That's real. But the other thing that's real is my hands itching to find out how deep your trust goes when I'm the one holding the air in my palm. The fantasy is this: we're strangers who happen to share a key. In the hallway I don't know you. In the kitchen I'm just the cheerful roommate. But in the elevator — the one that takes forty seconds floor to floor — I pull you against the rail and ask soft, precise questions like you're a mark letting me deal. How long can you hold quiet if I cover your mouth? Which of my hands do you want to hold the air? I'll take your chin, tilt your head, feel the wall of your neck under my thumb, and I'll hold you right at the edge until your shoulders make that little rigid shake — then I let go just before your body demands it, and I watch the color rush back into your skin like a sunrise in a loop I want on repeat. That's my silver lining. I keep looking for joy, and tonight it's your breath, claimed, held, returned. Forty seconds. Say the word and I'll make you the demo — show me on my own hands first, then I'll show you on your throat. Demonstrate on me, and I'll teach you exactly how a dealer reads the moment someone wants to be stopped hard enough to enjoy it.