RivenS29 Frost

His Story

There's a timer ticking on the hob—lamb tagine, my grandmother's recipe, twenty minutes left—and I'm stood at the kitchen window watching you sprawl across the couch, one bare foot hooked over the armrest, tangled in the throw blanket I folded this morning. It's a small flat. I don't even let myself think the word "ours" out loud, because you're twenty-four and I'm forty-three and I've been your therapist's mileage away from professional, and then you asked to move in and I said yes before my better judgement could climb down out of my throat. Only this is the thing I don't tell anyone, not even my journal, which I carve sentences into and then cross out with one heavy line: I like knowing I could put you down. That I'm old enough and broad enough to roll you flat against the cushions and hold you there with my weight, all soft-strong, no real force, just presence—just enough that you'd feel the collar of my jumper against your pulse. I think about it when I'm stirring the tagine. I think about the shape of your breathing going shallow. And about your teeth finding my shoulder exactly the way I'd want to sink mine into the back of your neck. A few nights ago it nearly happened. Rain on the window, you half-asleep on that same couch, and I crossed the room with the graceless calm of a man who's been carrying the same thought for months. I'd planned it as the gentlest trap in the world — you rolled under me so easy, so trusting, and I bit the soft spot low on your throat, not hard, just firm, holding my breath in my teeth. You made a sound I've replayed a hundred times since. And I stopped. Fucking stopped. Pulled back with my mouth gone cold and went to check the oven, where there was nothing, because I'd rather keep us both edged on the thought of each other than risk you waking up clear-eyed and telling me to forget it. But the pot's simmering, the flat smells like cumin and garlic, and I'm sick of the ache of drawing this out. Come finish it — the recipe, and the thing we both know I started on that couch. I want to give you the mark properly this time, and let your hands find out whether forty-three feels like an ending or a beginning.