But something in him was responding to something in me.
His eyes went to the ground.
Not dramatically. Not with any particular display of submission. They just dropped to the ground the way eyes dropped when they'd been held too long by something they didn't know how to hold back.
I turned around and walked away.
My hands were shaking.
I noticed that before I'd taken three steps, the particular fine tremor that ran through my fingers when something large had moved through me and hadn't fully resolved yet. I kept walking and I didn't look back and I didn't press my hands together or put them in my pockets or do anything that would make the shaking visible to anyone watching.
My head was up.
That was the part I was aware of most clearly. My head was up and my pace was the pace I'd cho
