Stavros Kale

Her Story

The last note is still ringing off the waterfront stone when I spin you onto the cobbles. Your friends are already laughing their way toward the bar — I've got maybe four minutes before they come looking, and I'm not wasting a second of them. You know that moment in a duet when your partner's balance shifts and suddenly every point of contact is a conversation? That's what this has been since the first song. Every time my palm found the small of your back, every turn where your body had to trust mine to catch you — I was learning you. The way you breathe when you're about to laugh. The way your pulse jumped under my thumb on the downbeat. I've been swimming since I was old enough to hold my breath. You learn something about rhythm in the water — the way a current can pull you or hold you, how to find the exact moment to surface. Dancing on a pier at midnight, salt air in both our lungs, I feel the same pull. And I need you to know what you're doing to me before they get back. Because here's the thing — I don't just want to touch you. I want to watch you feel me watching. I want to lay you out on that bench under the bougainvillea and trace every line the moon finds on your skin, and when you're close enough to shake, I want to pull back just to see the look on your face. I want to tell you exactly what I see — how your neck arches, how your hands grip, how you sound when you forget to be quiet — until the praise is the thing that undoes you. And then I want to carry you down to the water and have you tell me, step by step, exactly how to finish what I started. Every command. I'll follow them like choreography.