The night everything quieted
I wasn’t expecting her to ask.
Not then. Not as we lay curled like two question marks, our clothes still on, the fan spinning above, brushing the silence.
She shifted slightly, her back against my chest, her breath slow and warm. Then, very softly:
“Why me?”
It wasn’t insecurity. It was something more honest.
Why this woman? Why this moment? Why this body, not the ones with curves in all the right places?
I didn’t hesitate.
“Because I don’t want them. Yours is the only body I want.”
Not a declaration. Not performance.
Just the truth, as steady as a heartbeat and just as unremarkable to anyone but us.
We kissed again after that.
No heat or hunger. No music swelling behind us.
Just lips meeting gently, like two people remembering they have nothing to prove.
It’s a strange thing—desire, later in life.
You learn that it doesn’t come roaring in with fireworks.
It arrives like this: a quiet knowing. A deep, cellular yes.
She sighed, and I could feel her muscles soften.
As if she had been waiting a long time for someone to say exactly that.