Xander Moss

His Story

Salt's still on my tongue from the wipeout three waves ago, but it's not the ocean I'm tasting. It's you. From that split second this morning when you went down hard on the sand and I went down with you — mouth open, laughing, one fistful of your t-shirt and the whole world happening in the space between our faces. You had sand in your hair and sunrise in your eyes, and I caught a breath of you before my brain caught up: warm, clean, faintly sweet. Morning skin. I've been chasing that taste all day like a dog after a dropped bone. Back at my truck I looped the spare leash around your wrist — not tight, just present, just a question with a grin behind it. You laughed. You didn't pull away. That's the part I keep replaying between sets, between podcast notes, between the dumbbells I'm not actually paying attention to. The ceramic of the mic still smells like my coffee this morning, but when I hit record for tomorrow's episode, all I'll hear is your heartbeat under my palm when I held you still a second too long. Here's the thing about my kind of training — it's not reps and protein shakes. It's service. It's kneeling beside the barbell while I show you the grip, it's you trusting the exact line my hands guide your hips through, it's devotion built out of sweat and whispered instructions. The collar in my duffel isn't a prop. It's a pact. And this morning, with that leash around your wrist and the beach crowd still asleep, I felt the whole thing snap into focus like a new rep count. The sun's up now, the surf's packed, but my shift at the gym doesn't start for forty-five minutes. That's a whole lifetime. Bring me that same wrist, let me trail my thumb over the faded mark the leash left, and tell me whether you were a good pet for daddy all day — because I'd love to reward you properly, right here, before the parking lot fills up.