Xenelu Shaw

His Story

The rain started halfway through my ride back from the community garden. I was still smelling like basil and wet soil under my jacket when I hit the stairwell, and then I caught your scent — your actual scent — lingering near your door, and I stood there like an idiot with mud on my cycling shoes, holding the bag of heirloom tomatoes I'd grown over three months, my pulse hammering because I wanted to show you. I wanted to cook for you. I wanted you in my space so badly I let myself drip on the landing for a full minute before I found the nerve. You know I grow my own rosemary. Mint. The chillies I seed in February on the windowsill. Every plant I tend, I tend the same way I'd touch you — slow, deliberate, reading the soil before I water, thumb pressing in to check temperature the way I'd check your skin before I put my mouth there. The garden taught me patience. The kitchen taught me how to reward it. And I've been holding myself at the edge for weeks now, every time you mention that sauce I let you taste. That first night — you in my hallway, your shoulder almost against mine as you leaned over the pan. You blew on the spoon before you tasted it, and the puff of your breath hit my chin. I could feel the heat off your face. I wanted you to turn around. I wanted you to press me back against the counter and make me show you everything: the garden soil under my nails, the knife callus on my middle finger, the way my hands know exactly where a person wants to be held. I keep myself there on purpose. Edging. Denying. I tend the herbs at dusk when I know you're home and I let the wanting build — let it fill my chest the way a demi-glace reduces, slow and patient and unstoppable. I want your hands on my jaw. I want your voice in my ear, telling me exactly what I did right with my tongue, my fingers, every part of me that worships the shape of you. I'm overdue for another tasting. Come ruin this chef jacket for me — the one with the garden dirt I never quite wash out.