ALOIS
Three months ago, I would’ve taken the room apart without thinking.
I would’ve found something in it that didn’t sit right—something small, something no one else would’ve clocked—and leaned into it until it shifted. Until the balance of the space adjusted around me. Until I knew exactly where the edges were and how far I could push them before something gave.
A noise. A movement. Someone watching too closely.
My body still caught it now—out of habit more than intent. The scrape of a chair leg that dragged half a beat too long. A heel tapping in uneven intervals. A glance that lingered just enough to register before it dropped away again.
I tracked all of it.
I didn’t follow through.
That was the difference.
Three months ago, I would have let it build under my skin until it became something I needed to act on. I would have shifted in my seat, tested the space, pressed just enough to make the room respond so I could feel the control settle backinto my hands. I would have needed that confirmation—that I could still move things, still bend them, still decide how they landed.
Now, I let it exist.
I sat still and let the noise remain noise. I let the movement pass without assigning it meaning. I let the room breathe without forcing it to adjust around me.
My hand moved instead.
Lower. Closer. Settling against her.
She dropped into the chair beside me without breaking her stride. Her coat came off in one clean motion, folded without looking, her hands moving with the kind of practiced efficiency that used to come from control. Her bag tucked close to her hip. Her phone turned over, screen down, shut out before it had a chance to pull her somewhere else.
The rhythm was the same.
But it didn’t feel tight.
That was the difference.
I tracked it without meaning to—the small things she never noticed. The way her shoulders didn’t lock after she sat. The way she didn’t immediately recheck what she’d already done. No second pass. No adjustment. No quiet correction to make sure everything sat exactly where it should.
She let it be.
My hand settled on her before I thought about it, low against her thigh, my thumb dragging once across the fabric.
Habit. Anchor. Something I didn’t question anymore.
She didn’t break stride.
She didn’t glance down. She didn’t pause to register it.
She just shifted closer—subtle, automatic—her shoulder finding mine like it had done it a hundred times before and finally stopped asking permission.
Three months ago, she would have caught it. She would have recalibrated the space, moved half an inch away, made it make sense again so nothing sat too close, too heavy, too real for too long.
Now, she leaned.
She let it settle where it landed.
Her hand slid down a second later, slow and unplanned, resting low against her stomach.
She didn’t look at it. She didn’t make it a moment. She didn’t turn it into something that needed to be acknowledged or managed.
She just kept breathing, her fingers spreading slightly, pressing in without thinking, like something in her had already decided where it belonged.