It was well past midnight when the city finally quieted down, the kind of stillness that feels almost conspiratorial. I slipped into the oversized armchair by the window, a glass of deep red wine in hand, wearing nothing but an old silk shirt that barely skimmed my thighs. The fabric moved against my skin with every small shift, a constant, lazy reminder of its presence… and of everything it wasn’t quite covering.Outside, a single streetlamp painted the room in soft amber, turning ordinary shadows into something more suggestive. My phone lit up on the table beside me: your name, a simple “still awake?” that carried the weight of a dozen earlier conversations we never quite finished. I smiled, took another slow sip, and let the silence stretch just long enough to feel deliberate.We’ve mastered this game, haven’t we? Words that hover on the edge of innocence, sentences that sound perfectly polite until you read them twice. You asked what I was wearing; I said “something borrowed from someone who isn’t here.” You asked what I was thinking; I told you the wine was making the room feel warmer than it should. Neither of us mentioned how long it’s been since we were in the same city, or how easily distance collapses when the hour is late and the lights are low.I set the glass down and traced idle patterns on the armrest, imagining it was the slow path of your fingertips instead, unhurried, exploratory, learning the map of me all over again. The thought was enough to make me catch my breath, just once, quietly. Somewhere across miles of dark highway and sleeping towns, I like to think you felt that small sound anyway.The shirt slipped off one shoulder. I didn’t bother fixing it.Soon, I told myself, we’ll stop pretending these late-night messages are accidental. Soon the teasing will give way to something less patient, less polite. But tonight, in these velvet hours between yesterday’s restraint and tomorrow’s possibilities, the almost is its own kind of perfection: half-dressed, half-honest, and entirely yours in theory.I reached for the phone again, thumbs hovering over the screen.“Your move,” I typed.And then I waited, heartbeat keeping time with the city’s distant pulse, knowing exactly how dangerous a little patience can be.