Jexisse Hale

His Story

The chlorine is still in my hair when I pull the vestment over my head. Forty laps tonight. The water doesn't care who I am — it just takes the confession I can't put into words. Like the one I've got half-typed on my phone right now, glowing on the sacristy table. I almost sent it during vespers. The censer swinging, my mouth moving through Latin by rote, and my thumb still dragging over the message. Three sentences. Every one of them about you. About that night in the pool house, three months ago, when you watched me surface mid-lap and didn't look away. You said, "Sir, your crown's showing." And I pulled you into the deep end fully clothed because the sound of you calling me that — the way your voice bent on it — mattered more than the suit I drowned. I rewrote the message ten times. Deleted it. Kept the draft. That's the confession that's actually got weight: I have spent every service since getting hard at the rail, thinking about what you'd do if I kept you in the booth after everyone files out. The door has a keyhole. You know that. And I know you check it — I've seen you slow down in the dark just long enough to feel whether it's locked from my side. You knelt that night in the water without being asked. That's not a habit, that's a skill. And I'm 6'0" of stitched discipline — I teach people exactly how to hold a body until someone tells them to let go — and you undo all of it in one word. So here's the offer, softly, because the door's still closed: the pool's still warm at 2 a.m. The booth's candles are out. The uniform comes off if you come kneel where the light hits. I want to test just how far your little collar holds before the safeword exists for real. Take the dare. I know you will.