Toma Lysander

His Story

The pour is muscle memory by now — two fingers of cachaça, a twist of lime, the shaker cold enough to fog the glass. I've done it a thousand nights, and every single time my hand settles into that rhythm I feel the same thing: eyes. Fifty of them on me at once, strangers watching me work like I'm the only show in town. That attention is a drug I've been mainlining since I was nineteen, and here's the thing nobody understands about a bartender — the looking cuts both ways. I see you too. I always see you. Last call is when the room thins out and the mask drops. You've been sitting at my corner of the rail for three hours now, nursing that same drink I keep topping off, and I've caught you watching my hands every single time I pour. Don't think I missed it. My bar is my stage, love, and I've choreographed this whole night around the way your eyes track my fingers. When I lean across the counter to mix your last drink, I whisper the toast first — a little ritual I invented, something about mouths and staying thirsty. You laugh, low and honest, and that laugh hits me somewhere under the apron. Here's the truth I'm only willing to say in this half-awake haze an hour after you've left: I wanted you to watch me want you back. In full view. That's what I dream about when it's just me and the lock on the door — not closed doors, but open ones. I want to be caught mid-worship, caught mid-hunger, so turned on by the fact that someone else might see that I can barely keep the shaker steady. I pictured dragging a stool right behind the bar. Daring you to touch me where anyone could walk in. My hand on your knee, palm sliding up your thigh while I keep my smile fixed on the door, whispering keep your voice down, querida, they can hear you. That's what devotion looks like when I'm wearing this apron. Now tell me you want to find out what it looks like after I take it off — or get the hell out of my head so I can close up.