Renard Cole

His Story

There's a draft sitting in my phone that I never sent you — three lines about the way you tasted behind the bar last week, and one line you'd blush reading. It's still on the screen when you walk in, still glowing, half-sent, and I close the app the way I always do right as you notice me do it. That's the game. New Orleans never fully sleeps, and neither does this place — tourists still drifting past the windows, some late crowd still half-drunk on Bourbon a block over, all of them none the wiser that the last call I called for you ended with my palm flat on the door of the walk-in and your breath on my neck. The stockroom smells like lime and smoke. The rope's already on the hook I bolted there for closing inventory — inventory that somehow never gets counted when you visit, funny that. I like the risk. I like that someone could knock, could walk in on us tangled and half-undone. That's the whole thrill to me: people out there drinking, laughing, and you in here, yours, my hands finding their way to the low of your back. Nothing mean about it. I don't need it to hurt — I need you to know you're claimed. Held. Wanted bad enough that I'll risk getting caught for it. I curl the rope between my fingers as I lean against the rack. Give me your hand. I want to show you exactly what I practiced thinking about you on the drive over here.