The Static Between Us

He said he liked the way the city lights fractured in my eyes, a kaleidoscope of loneliness. He doesn’t know the real refraction happens when I look at *him*. It's a distortion, a wishing well mirroring back not his face, but a life unlived.
We sit like this often, on opposite sides of unspoken things, the cafe’s hum a perfect white noise to drown out the questions. He sketches in that worn notebook – always faces, never landscapes – and I trace the condensation on my glass, each droplet a tiny, fleeting world.
There's a warmth that settles around me when he looks up, catching my gaze before quickly glancing away. It’s not heat, exactly; it’s more like the ghost of a touch, lingering where skin should remember.
Today, though, his hand brushed mine as we both reached for the sugar. A static shock ran through me, and for one impossible moment, I thought he might trace my palm with his thumb. He didn't. But the phantom pressure remains, a delicious ache in the quiet spaces between us.

Editor: Mirror Logic