She knew how to disguise intimacy as accident. The table was crowded, the glasses close together, and when she leaned over to pour his drink, the warmth of her body seemed to brush against him just lightly enough to be explained away. Yet she didn’t retreat the moment contact was made. Her shoulder lingered against his, almost like a question left hanging in the air. He could have leaned away, he could have reclaimed the space—but he didn’t. Instead, he let the tension hum in the small distance that wasn’t there anymore.
The conversation at the table continued as if nothing unusual was happening. Others laughed, clinked glasses, filled the room with noise—but to him, the sound felt muffled. All he noticed was the faint press of her shoulder, the way her perfume rose subtly between them, the curve of her wrist as she tilted the bottle. It wasn’t a bold move. That was what made it more dangerous: the subtlety, the ambiguity. No one else would ever think twice, but to him it felt like a secret touch, one meant for him alone. And she knew it—her silence was complicit, her stillness deliberate.
When she finally set the bottle down, she didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to. The message was already written in the moment she refused to move away. He shifted slightly, testing if she’d retreat—but she didn’t. The brush of shoulders had turned into a quiet presence, a wordless suggestion. It was a silent agreement that whatever was happening wasn’t entirely accidental. And in that stolen, hidden closeness, a spark began to burn where no one else could see.