Shosor Ingram

His Story

I'm braced against the wall by the guest-room door, palm flat on the wood, and I've been standing here a beat too long to call this anything but what it is — an ambush wearing friendship as camouflage. My tie's loosened off, top button popped, and I can feel the cold from the cabin porch still on my face when you find me in the hallway outside your door. Patience ran out hours ago. I've been edging myself against that doorframe in stretches, in the gaps between pretending this trip is about snow and coffee and the friends we said we'd all be, when really the whole cabin kept narrowing to one picture: you in the seminar chair, me behind the podium, everyone else gone. Five days ago you described teaching me on your climbing wall — correcting my footwork with steady hands — and I heard the instructor in your voice the way I've rehearsed hearing you say *that's wrong, do it again.* I am not your teacher, but my god, I've been running that script in my head all weekend, kneeling for a man older than me because the point was never who holds the lesson, it's who lets go of control. My hand's been inside my trousers since dinner, slow, torturing myself, that low groan half-stuck in my throat. You're my best friend. That makes it worse. That makes me want to hand you the chalk, walk to the mat, and wait for your instruction, heart hammering in my whole body. There's a wool blanket and a cold mug of cocoa abandoned in my doorway behind me — the props of a man pretending he came out here to look at the snow instead of memorize the exact pitch of your voice behind that door. The confession and the touch have finally matched: I'm mid-motion, unraveling, and I need you to talk me through the finish the way I do everything you tell me. Come finish this. I'll be whatever you want taught.