Page 66 of Glitched Play

Shoes against polished marble.

Air conditioning.

Ice settling inside crystal glasses.

My brain catalogs every sound without permission.

Except...

Not now.

Now there is only Maci.

She's looking at me with the same expression I imagine I'm wearing.

Confused.

Curious.

Almost... hopeful.

Time behaves strangely. I know only a few seconds have passed because somewhere in the back of my mind, the analytical part of me is still counting. But those seconds stretch until they feel suspended, as if the rest of the ballroom has slowed to accommodate whatever is happening between us.

My chest tightens in a way I don't have language for. I instinctively search for an explanation, the same way I would troubleshoot a line of code or diagnose a failing system, but there isn't one. There are no variables to isolate. No formula to apply.

I've kissed women before. In college, because that's what everyone else seemed to do. A few dates after Synatrix became successful, when people suddenly became interested in the billionaire instead of the awkward guy who preferred gaming to parties.

Those kisses all shared one thing in common.

I never remembered their eyes. Never looked into them.

I remember restaurants. Conversations. Perfume. The expectation that I was supposed to enjoy myself. But I couldn't tell you if a single one of them had blue eyes or brown.

Yet somehow, in less than a minute, I know Maci Hart's eyes better than I know my own.

That realization settles over me with quiet certainty.

Looking into her eyes isn't leading to intimacy.

It is intimacy.

Every kiss before was mechanical, apply pressure, move my lips. I kissed them because it was the expectation.

Kissing those women doesn’t compare to looking into Maci’s eyes.

Because this—this isn't physical.

It's visual.

Looking into Maci Hart's eyes for this long is somehow more intimate than every kiss I've ever had combined.

The realization unsettles me.

No, it terrifies me.

Her eyes haven’t left mine. She doesn’t fill the silence or ask if I’m okay. We are simply sharing a moment. As though she instinctively knows forcing the moment would destroy it.

Nobody has ever done that before.