Moments in Time: Edge

He got up from his chair and began to pace. She knew he always thought better on his feet and she watched him carefully, listening to both what he said and what he didn’t say. Fielding some of his ideas, tossing others back for something better, pinning the results into bullet points.

He stopped by her, brow furrowed, looking out the window, thinking out loud. He spoke, rejected, tried again. She suggested. He took part of it, tried attaching it to something else. His hand stretched, reaching for the words. He ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed the back of his neck. Then his hand lowered, not to his side, but to rest on the edge of her laptop screen.

Her consciousness divided like a zygote, splitting neatly into two functioning parts. One part listened and typed. The other merely focused on his hand. The important matters of the universe dwindled down to just his thumb and index fingertip, sliding thoughtfully along the screen’s edge. Forward, back. Moving in cadence with his words for he’d found the groove again, was looking out the window again, thinking out loud.

She listened, she typed, but most of all she watched his fingers sliding along. Level with her eyes. Gently touching what belonged to her. And slowly her own thoughtful mind transformed the edge of her screen into the edge of her shoulder blade.

For a full five seconds she stopped hearing him, her fingers stayed still on the keyboard, and her complete attention was given over to wondering what it would feel like to be under his fingertips. And wondering, not for the first time, what kind of lover he was.

His hand fell away then, breaking contact. “Got all that?” he asked

“Got it,” she said.