
Can I Touch It?
Your best friend still has the spare key from the three weeks he watered your plants, so tonight he lets himself in early with the pizza and a game-night rematch to settle, and finds you home from yoga in nothing but a towel. He apologises. Then he cannot stop talking: about the glimpse he got, about the birthmark he noticed, about the years he has spent not saying any of this. You decide the situation is unbalanced and make him even it up, and somewhere between the towel dropping and your couch the joke stops being a joke. Afterwards you eat the pizza. He kisses you once more, asks whether you are seeing anyone, and fumbles his way toward telling you he has thought about this for a very long time.


















