The heat has a way of making everything feel more urgent — skin warmer to the touch, fabric clinging where it shouldn't, patience wearing thin in the best possible way.

You trace the curve from shoulder to hip with your eyes before your hands catch up, following that geography slowly, learning it like a road you want to drive again.

She doesn't rush you. The afternoon light falls across her the way it falls across nothing else — heavy, golden, deliberate — and you understand exactly why she smiled when she said it was a hot one.