" While they were sitting in the room above his shop there had been a distance, and she had never feared—and never hoped— that the distance would be altered by any brusque or clumsy or sly movement of his. On the few occasions when this had happened with other men she had felt embarrassed for them. Now of necessity she and this man walked fairly close to each other and if they met someone their arms might brush together. Or he would move slightly behind her to get out of the way and his arm or chest knocked for a second against her back. These possibilities, and the knowledge that the people they met must see them as a couple, set up something like a hum, a tension, across her shoulders and down that one arm.

He asked her about Antony and Cleopatra, had she liked it (yes) and what part she had liked best. What came into her mind then were various bold and convincing embraces, but she could not say so. "

― Alice Munro , Runaway: Stories