There’s a kind of connection that doesn’t need to be spoken to be understood. Yours lives in the way I feel when you’re near me. I don’t know how to explain it clearly, but I notice things I don’t notice with anyone else. The way your voice changes when you’re tired. The way you sit quieter when something’s on your mind. I feel it in my chest before I can name it. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t think you do either, but we both feel the pull. That much is obvious.

You’re the reason I believe in timing and the reason it breaks my heart. Because it feels like something is always just a little off. A new job, the wrong city, healing that still needs time. Something always standing between us and whatever this almost is. And yet, we never let go of the thread. We keep showing up, quietly, like we’re both hoping something might shift without either of us having to ask for it.

I think maybe we’re scared. Or maybe we’re careful. Or maybe we’ve both lived through enough to know how quickly something beautiful can collapse under the weight of expectations. So we linger instead. In glances. In half-laughed stories. In the way our conversations always end slower than they need to. I tell myself I’m okay with that. That I’d rather have this than nothing. But sometimes when the room is quiet and my guard is down, I wonder what would happen if we stopped pretending it wasn’t real.

I wonder if you wonder too.