“Shall I try to kiss you?” She blacked out. The strong, independent woman was no more. I had a little girl now in the passenger seat. “Did I make you feel uncomfortable?” I think she said “a little” but her body and eyes said “a lot”. I take her hand. She dares to look at me, but that does not last long. Silence. Then another glance. I smile and let a muffled laugh out.

“Why are you laughing?” “I find these split second glances cute” I say. Her hand in mine, speaks a slightly different language. I hold it a tad more firmly and I can feel her respond. I look up again, no glance this time.

A finger runs along one of her’s, I run it around in a circle on her palm and find my way to another tip. I continue sliding over to the other side. I can feel her fingernail change the subject and then it’s skin-to-skin again. “She has beautiful hands”, I’m thinking, and as my finger runs down the peaks and valleys of the back of her hand, I close my palm over her’s.

My hand is quite bigger and hides her out of view. I look up once again. The little girl is still there but her hand quickly breaks free of the cover. Her voice, telling me - just a few moments before - that she wouldn’t accept anything that would mess with her freedom, echoes in my mind.

She slides her fingers between mine, her palm on the back of my hand. I squeeze a little. She wiggles. We are dancing. I break free from the mesh and turn around. Palm against palm. I run two fingers down her wrist and slide between her sweater and her skin. She lets a breath out.

It’s warm and cosy and intimate and sexy. She still glances up to me once in a while. Some times I look at her, she looks pretty, but mostly I’m focused on our hands. Time has stopped. The tips of her fingers line up with mine. One, two, three, four. I retreat at the slightest of pressure, and then I push back. Our fingers slide into a mesh again. We repeat the same gestures but you can say so many different things with the same words. I close my eyes. My sense of touch takes over all the other senses, I am that patch of skin and I can feel the grooves of her fingerprint as they move along me, following the traces of my circuit tattoo.

I move closer. We kiss. Her lips are soft. She’s still a little girl. Our hands are still together and they keep dancing like before but as if now they have a will of their own. My mind has raced far away and I’m not thinking anymore, I guess I managed to say “I like this very much” at some point. Now I realize it was both awkward and a massive understatement.

More time passes, fingers tangle and rub, palms open and close, tips press and release and we follow along until the hum of the car and the music I had forgotten playing starts to come to the foreground. I turn it off. The silence makes everything so much louder. We keep still for a few moments. All the good things end at some point and it’s time for both of us to go to bed.

I get out. I need to give her a proper hug. I feel her body now. It speaks the words our voices don’t. Or at least, I hope it does. I kiss her goodbye.

In the car I’m blasting black metal and I’m trying to take it all in, but not think about it. Just absorb. Thinking is for tomorrow.