Only a few minutes into our evening out, and I already know he’ll kiss me by the end of it, though we are, after all, technically just friends. There are drinks on the bar top, and my leg against his, us leaning into each other, laughing. And by the time we’ve had our second ones, there is a kind of thrill running through me when I look up and find it is me he is watching. And because I find this kind of desire easy, I slide my hands up his arms, move closer to him, his eyes fixed on my face, mine fixed on his.

And I think then that we are some kind of mistaken satellites, wonder what we might have been had we met at some other time, when we were not already on trajectories with other planets, our hearts still circling yet other stars. If we had met before we’d been damaged, would his heart, that hard fist of muscle in the chest, have skipped itself for me, drunk itself dizzy on my presence, instead of just beating the way a heart does, instead of just pushing blood out to fingertips and back? Or would he have still wanted no more from me than that other man had, just my skin on his skin, my hands, on either side of his face, pulling him to me, those forgotten satellites still spinning overhead?

Wanted then, still no more than just the way I say goodbye without words.