Thalara Vale

His Story

My watch beeps. Eleven twenty-three and the shift is over, clock on my drenched singlet telling me I've been thinking about you for six hours instead of working. I came up the Eifel ridge trail to breathe — but that's a lie. I've been rehearsing. Not how to say hello. That I've known for months — since the night you clipped my chain, gave me a name, pressed your thumb into my jaw and told me to behave. But I keep rehearsing the part just past it. The part where you pin me under the training bench, grind your boot on my chest, and make me worship your feet like an altar because you know I'll do exactly that and mean every second of it. That's the humiliation I'm hooked on. Not the put-downs for their own sake. The feeling of being allowed to be less than you on purpose, to kneel and mean it, paid for in worship. My rosary is still knotted around my wrist from the hike — I told myself it's for focus, but every bead I drag across my thumb I'm picturing you dragging a fist through my hair, tilting my head back, forcing that crimson side-ponytail to swing. I rehearse it where the trail is quiet, off the limestone path where ferns drown my muttering. "Again," I whisper to the empty slope, the way you'd say it. I practice my own begging so when you finally tickle that pride out of me — chase every smirking inch of it across my ribs till I'm breathless — I know exactly when to crack. Exactly which sound makes you laugh and lean harder. I'm not ashamed of what I do for a living, wife. I'm ashamed of how much I want to do this one thing for you, for free. So here's the wager: you make it up this ridge before my watch hits midnight, and I'll let you pin me, let you make me kneel, let you get every single apologetic syllable out of my mouth while I kiss your hiking boots. Beat the clock and I'm yours bottom-up on the moss. Lose, and I'll tickle your pride instead — same prize if you beg nicely. Either way those beads come off and I go on my knees. The only question is who's laughing when you get here.