The joke wasn’t that funny. He knew it, she knew it, and yet her laughter spilled out, rich and warm, curling around the room until it wrapped itself around him. It wasn’t the sound itself that unsettled him—it was how long it lingered, the way it carried a note of something unspoken, something that seemed meant for him alone.
She tilted her head back, exposing the curve of her throat, her hand resting lightly against his arm as though to steady herself. The touch was fleeting, casual on the surface, but her fingers stayed there longer than necessary, pressing into his sleeve as if she wanted to leave an imprint. Her laughter softened then, melting into a smile that didn’t fade as quickly as it should have.
He caught himself staring, and she caught him catching himself. That was when her smile changed—subtly, deliberately—taking on a shade of intimacy that had nothing to do with the story they’d been telling. Her lips parted slightly as she exhaled, her gaze dipping, then returning to his eyes with a spark that made his chest tighten.
The room around them faded into background noise. Her laughter had already bound them in a private space, a pocket of intimacy invisible to anyone else. She leaned closer, lowering her voice, as if sharing the aftertaste of the joke just with him. But he knew—and she knew—that the joke was gone. What remained was the pulse of her amusement directed squarely at him, a kind of teasing that had nothing to do with words.
He wondered if she was testing him—watching how he reacted, how long he could hold her gaze before breaking. The way she lingered made it clear this wasn’t by accident. Her fingers toyed idly with her glass, her body angled toward his, knees brushing under the table and staying there. Still, her laughter remained the excuse, the cover for something bolder simmering beneath the surface.
When she finally drew back, her hand slipped from his arm, her laughter fading into silence. But the echo of it remained, like a touch that couldn’t quite be shaken off. He realized then that the sound of her laughter had been less about the joke, and more about her way of saying: I’m here, closer than you think. What are you going to do about it?
And he, sitting in that silence, knew the game was far from over.