When She Stayed Still Enough to Let Me In
Sensory-centered sapphic romance for neurodivergent readers. Slow-burn intimacy, alexithymia pacing, and the language of touch every Sunday.
Welcome to Slow Like This
A neurodivergent sapphic fiction series about desire, consent, and the intimacy of being deeply noticed.
These are stories where I write from my neurodivergence—where pacing is shaped by alexithymia, sound by auditory processing, and desire by sensory attunement. Love isn’t rushed here. Intimacy is slow, textured, and built from the inside out. Every Sunday, with intention.
This is Part I: When She Stayed Still Enough to Let Me In
Slow Spaces, Queer Stillness: A Greenhouse Where Desire Learns to Breathe
This place is hard to describe without sounding enchanted. A greenhouse that forgot to stay purely botanical. Part plant shop, part tea house, part secondhand library, wrapped in the kind of quiet that lets your shoulders drop before you realize you were holding tension.
It’s the kind of space that doesn’t ask for silence but invites it. The kind where light falls like a caress across warm wood and velvet. Golden hour never really leaves here, it lingers in the glass, glows from beneath the teacups, pools in the hollow of your throat if you sit still long enough. It smells like lemon verbena and late rain. The kind of air that wraps around your skin and stays. Not heavy, just deliberate. Mugs are mismatched, yes…but each one feels chosen. Held. Polished.
There are silk cushions, deep jewel tones, stacked books with soft-spined covers and pages annotated by hands that loved too quietly to say it out loud. The courtyard past the glass doors is half-tamed. Vines climb like they’re listening in. Benches lean toward each other, expectant. Even the silence holds a posture lush, attentive, almost flirtatious.
People think they come for the herbs. The rare poetry. The promise of a curated stillness. But most of them are seeking permission. To exhale. To want slowly. To be wanted back without being asked to prove anything. It’s not a shop. It’s a threshold.
And I work here. Not just to water the plants or plant the sage. I arrange tension. I track the breath patterns of strangers. I notice who can’t meet my eyes and who stares too long, hoping I’ll teach them how to ask without words.
ADHD keeps me scanning. Autism keeps me listening. I move things, chairs, jars, energy until someone finds their way back to their body. Some come to be calmed. Some to be arranged. She came for the books. But stayed because something here touched back. Not her skin. Not at first. Just the part of her that wanted to be read the way I read the room.
Before the day she almost asked me to kiss her, let me tell you who we are. Not biographically. Sensually. Through the way heat pools in stillness. Through the kind of noticing that lingers like scent in your clothes after you leave.
When She Walked In: How Queer Attraction Begins in the Mind
She’s deliberate without trying. Femme the way sunlight is, warm without warning, unpredictable in its angles, touching everything except what begs for it.
She reads with her entire body: lips parted, brows tense, breath catching when a line brushes too close to something she hasn’t said aloud. She underlines the parts that bruise.
Her clothes drape like silk on a confession, never loud, but always speaking. A hem that flutters just slightly behind her. A collarbone exposed like punctuation. When she drinks tea, she closes her eyes, not out of politeness, but something nearer to devotion. As if taste deserves her full attention. As if pleasure, taken slowly, is its own kind of offering.
Her voice? Honeyed. Low. A little delayed, like she tastes words before choosing which ones deserve to be shared. Like she could read a weather report and make it sound like an invitation. Her eyes have lived a thousand quiet romances no one else noticed. Each blink a curtain drawn. Each glance something holy. She’s present without performing. And she smells like vanilla left too close to smoke.
Sweet, but altered.
Tethered to heat.
Autistic Noticing, Queer Longing: The Rituals of a Crush
I arrange. I notice before I speak. I regulate the air between people the way others adjust lighting with care, with ceremony, without needing to be seen doing it. I fall in love with patterns before people.
I remember how someone stirs honey into their tea long before I remember what they said while drinking it. The angle of a wrist. The way certain fingers pause on ceramic before letting go. I get quieter the closer I feel. Stillness is my tell. I don’t blush, I don’t lean in, I anchor. I freeze when I’m seen. Not from fear, but because being witnessed with care feels like undressing.
We’ve never touched. Not yet. But I know the exact second her pupils dilated. And I know what that meant. Not fantasy. Not fear. Recognition. The kind of signal that doesn’t need to be named to be obeyed. The kind of moment that makes a space warmer by a single degree. The kind of shift I was made to answer.
The first time I noticed her, she was reading in the courtyard just past the greenhouse, legs crossed, head bowed, tea cooling beside her like she’d forgotten the world had temperature. She wasn’t skimming. She was inside the page, as if it owed her something intimate and hadn’t delivered yet.
The wind moved through her tight curls, but she didn’t reach for them. She let them rest against her skin, rich brown, sun-warmed, the kind of softness that doesn’t ask to be tamed.
That skin… brown like rhythm, not hue. Brown like memory pressed into earth. Brown so grounded it made everything around her feel realer.
She gave my reality colour when she walked into the greenhouse and ordered her special blend of tea. Sunlight touched her shoulder like it had permission. Like it had done this before. Then she found her book and sat down. And her brow furrowed, not in confusion, but recognition. Like the sentence had found her first. Like something in the ink was flirting with her memory.
She always looked like she was solving a puzzle she didn’t want to explain aloud, not yet, not until it made her ache in the right place. I didn’t interrupt. I never do. I just set the rosemary cuttings out by the gate and stayed in the shade, pretending to check the soil pH. That’s what I do. I tend. I observe. I regulate my longing by turning it into ritual. She came back the next week. Same hour. Different book. This time, when I passed with a tray of repotted lavender, she looked up. No smile. Just a gaze that held. I nodded, quiet. She returned it like it was a custom she already knew. That’s when I knew, she noticed, too.
I’m not a flirt. I’m a calibrator. I don’t initiate. I attune. Autistic, yes…but not in the way people expect. My intimacy is a slow, sacred filing system. I archive. I cross-reference. I match the angles of her stillness to the shadows on the stone floor. Touch overwhelms me. So I offer other things: timing, rhythm, care. It’s my way of asking: Are you safe? And, if I inch closer…Will I be? She passed the first scan.
So I studied her, not for answers but for resonance. How she touches books: thumb pressing the edge like she’s sealing something in. How she reads the acknowledgments first. How she buys secondhand copies because she wants to know who held them before her. How she sips tea, not for heat, but for slowness.
She’s not tactile. Not in the ways people expect. But her stillness is a form of contact. She lingers in conversation like she’s pressing her palm into the words to see if they hold. So I respond in kind. I water the rosemary in a spiral. I adjust the cushions so nothing scratches bare skin. I pre-warm the teapot on colder days, not because she asks—but because she arrives with red fingertips and won’t mention it. I catalogue her like I do the mint and lemon balm. And when she speaks, I prune my answers the way I prune the citrus, not to cut her back, but to let her grow toward the sun.
Alexithymia Love: When Feeling Comes Before Knowing
She starts arriving earlier. I don’t ask why. I just adjust. The lamp on the side table used to cast a heavy shadow across the left-hand page. I move it three inches south. She doesn’t mention the difference. She never has to.
I switch the teapot out, the old one whistled too sharply when the water hit boil. She only flinched once. But once is enough. I line the windowsill with lemon balm. It lowers heart rate. Smells like calm if you breathe slowly enough.
The clink of her mug against the saucer was never loud, but she always winced, just slightly when she set it down. So I lay fabric across the table. Muted the sound. Muted the jolt. She doesn’t comment. But the wince stops. She likely thinks these things were always this way. And maybe they were. For her.
None of this is flirtation. It’s information. It’s regulation. It’s knowing her body before I know her story. I think I liked her weeks before I realized it. That’s how it is sometimes. Feeling gets caught in the filter. My feelings have no name…Alexithymia. By the time it clears, the moment has already passed or hasn’t yet arrived.
It waits. She reads. I repot. She sighs. I refill. That’s the choreography. A dance without music. But with rhythm just the same.
Between Yes and Stillness: The Tension That Holds Us
She stays later than usual. The teapot’s been emptied twice. The steam’s long gone, but neither of us moves to reheat it. The air smells like basil and bergamot. I’ve stopped pretending to tidy. I’m just… near her now. She leans forward slow, deliberate elbows resting on her thighs, mug cradled in both palms like a secret being warmed. Her fingertips circle the rim in quiet loops. Her voice, when it comes, is lower. Less small talk. More ache.
“Do you always know what people need before they say it?”
I blink. My pulse stutters. It’s not flirtation. Not yet. It’s heavier than that, a thought that’s been pacing the perimeter, finally asking to be let in.
“I notice patterns,” I say. “Changes in breath. The way people reach for things when they’re overstimulated. How they self-soothe. I just… notice.”
She watches me. Unblinking. Unsure on purpose. Her gaze holds me still.
“And what did you notice about me?”
Her voice doesn’t tremble. Mine almost does. I meet her eyes. Steady. Careful. Anchored.
“That you linger. That you wait for the invitation. That you want to be asked before you ask.”
She doesn’t respond. Not with words. She just sets the mug down, gently. Like the moment might break if handled too roughly. The quiet between us doesn’t stretch. It concentrates. Thickens. Like humidity before a storm. She turns toward me. Fully. Chin lifted. Breath held not in fear, but in readiness. Like she’s balancing right on the edge of leaning in.
I step forward. I could say something safe. Something that would defuse this shift make it funny, distant, mine to control. But I don’t. Because my brain is doing what it always does: cataloguing.
Her smile isn’t fast. It starts in her eyes one brow lifting, just slightly, like she’s heard my question before I asked it. The corners of her mouth follow. Slow. Full. Measured. Like she’s letting the smile arrive on its own terms. She doesn’t blink. Her chin isn’t tilted in challenge, but in openness. Invitation. Her hands rest loosely in her lap, but her right thumb keeps circling a soothing motion, steady as a heartbeat. Her breathing’s changed. Shallower. Controlled. Not nervous. Tuned. She smells like cedar, vanilla, and steam. Every cue says yes. But not loud. Not performative. Just clear.
So I don’t deflect. I don’t retreat behind humor. I ask low, certain, with just enough teasing to leave space for refusal:
“You trying to kiss me or something?”
And then it happens. The smile finishes arriving. Slow. Precise. Like she’s offering it to me and watching what I do with it.
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
Closing the Gap: A Neurodivergent First Kiss
I don’t lunge. That’s not how I move. Especially not when I feel this much. Which is to say, I think I do. I just haven’t found the language yet. My body is speaking before I can translate. She’s watching me. Not like she’s waiting for a move. Like she’s watching to see if I’m still regulated enough to make one. Like she knows what overstimulation can do to precision.
Then her hand hovers near my knee. Not touching. Just near. And something in my skin prepares. Like it remembers something I haven’t yet lived through. I reach slowly for the small of her waist. Not to claim. To draw. She lets me. Not passive, present. She stays upright. Grounded. She doesn’t close her eyes. She watches me anchored, alert as if she’s documenting the moment from the inside out. Her pupils are dilated. Her gaze doesn’t flicker. Like her nervous system is already ahead of her body, tracking every shift in mine.
Her lips part. Barely. Not for the kiss. For the awareness of it. She’s not leaning in. She’s letting me close the space. Watching if I will. The air between us smells like lemon balm and heat. Her mug sits between us, still warm enough to fog the glass. But beneath that—there’s her. Unmistakable. The scent of skin warmed by want.
I pause. Not from doubt. But because if I don’t register this moment, I’ll miss it entirely. That’s how my nervous system works: pattern first, feeling second. She’s breathing differently now. Shallow. Precise. Still choosing. Her hand hasn’t moved. That’s the cue. She’s still with me. So I lean in. Not performative. Not seductive. Just… close enough to be felt.
Slow Consent, Soft Yes: How Sapphic Desire Speaks Without Words
I feel her breath first. Warm. Bracing. Like standing too close to something you prayed for and finally being allowed to touch it. Her lips part not coyly, not unsure. Just open. Waiting. Ready. So I kiss her. Not tentative. Not performative. Just slow and real and on purpose.
Her mouth meets mine,
soft at first. A press. A pulse.
The wet heat of parted lips
that answer without hesitation.
She exhales into it a sound low in her throat, throaty and unguarded, like I’ve just unlocked something she didn’t mean to give away yet. And then she deepens it. Not with hunger with certainty. Her tongue touches mine, slow and exploratory, and the taste of her makes me ache tea, yes, but also something saltier, flesh-warm and human. A taste like wanting. Like permission.
Her hand grips my wrist, not for grounding, but for anchor. Her fingers tighten. My breath catches. I adjust the angle just slightly and she moans. Quiet, but not delicate. A sound made only for me.
Was it my name she moaned?
My auditory processing stalled.
I kiss her like I’m cataloguing every part of her mouth: the curve of her lower lip, the way her top teeth skim mine when she sighs again, the soft drag of tongue against tongue.
And when I pull back just enough to feel her breath stutter against my skin, her lips are kiss-bitten, glossy, open. “I needed that,” she whispers, voice thick. I don’t answer right away. I just press my mouth to the edge of her jaw—once, then again, lower. A kiss meant to stay. A kiss that doesn’t ask for more, but promises everything if she wants it.
I pull back an inch. Just enough to still feel her breath on my cheek. “I kissed you because I needed to know what this felt like,” I whisper, my voice lower than usual. She exhales steady now. And says, “I was hoping you’d stop pruning things and start touching me like one of your plants.”
We laugh. But something settles. Like soil after a gentle storm.
Aftercare Without Words: What Stays After the First Kiss
There’s no big shift. No cinematic swell. Just presence. She stays. I rinse the teacup she left behind, still faintly warm where her fingers held it. Not for long, just enough to leave a trace. She stacks her books slower than usual. No rush. No performative neatness. Just muscle memory softened by comfort.
Neither of us says much. But something has settled. Not spoken. Felt. She reaches toward a leaf I forgot to trim. Her beautifully manicured fingers pause two of them cut shorter, a detail I’d already noticed. Her fingertip lingers at the edge of the leaf, thoughtful. I hand her the shears without needing to speak. She snips it herself. She knew how to handle delicate plants.
It’s not symbolic.
It’s not flirtation. (It’s not not, either. Given the nails.)
It’s just shared rhythm.
A knowing without narration. I don’t need to explain.
She doesn’t need to thank me.
The quiet isn’t withholding. It’s held.
She stretches out across the bench, back sinking into the cushions I’d fluffed earlier without knowing why. I sit beside her—not close enough to touch, but close enough to be felt. The space between us hums. Not with tension. With trust. After a moment, she reaches across the distance and finds my hand. She doesn’t grip it. Just threads her fingers through mine like it’s always been an option. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Then she exhales. Deep. The kind of exhale your body saves for when it finally believes it’s safe. I don’t move. She doesn’t either. Later, when she rises, she doesn’t ask where I’ll be tomorrow. And I don’t ask if she’ll come back. We already know. Routine established.
Next Saturday
Next Sunday, we shift perspectives.
You’ll meet her, funny, slightly chaotic, hyperaware.
The girl who doesn’t yet know if she’s being desired or simply seen
a little too clearly. And isn’t sure which one feels more dangerous.
Her Version: AuDHD Crush POV
Okay, so—I did not mean to stay that long. Or say that much. Or—dear God—thread my fingers into hers like I was writing the ending of a romance novel with my body. But she didn’t flinch. And I didn’t dissociate. So… something’s working.
Also, her hand? Warm. Precise. Like a weighted blanket if it asked first. I think I’m in trouble. The good kind. I just hope she doesn’t know how loud my heart was. Or that I nearly spilled tea on her shoes when she leaned in. (Okay, I definitely did.) But she didn’t say anything. She just… kept noticing.
I think I’d let her rearrange me. If she wanted to. Carefully. On purpose. Next time, I might even ask her to.
If this story found something in you, a memory, a breath, a way you’ve wanted to be touched you’re already part of this rhythm.
Until then, thank you for reading Slow Like This. For letting slowness feel like safety. And for knowing that eroticism doesn’t begin with touch. It begins with attention.
By the way all images are from Bergianska trädgården where i spend my Audhd time in the summer and winter reading, gardening and people watching. Proof below.
You can find more of my essays exploring:
Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman
Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity
Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes
Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice
Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.
If This Resonates
You’ll find more of my essays on breaking intergenerational cycles, holding boundaries and reclaiming voice.
Who is Lovette Jallow?
Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:
Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion
Structural policy reform
Anti-racism education and systemic change
As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.
Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.
Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.
Stay Connected
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Your voice + being seen = 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
lovette, as a queer gambian neurodivergent woman, i am in awe by all of your written media, but this one in particular 🧎🔥
you’re mind is incredible. i sometime think we don’t deserve access to such levels of brilliance. there’s truly no one doing it like you.
i have a long list of sapphic media j consume, but truthfully none of them have the level of depth as what ive just read. i will keep rereading this piece until its practically memorized— this is a work of art ✨
im a respectfully asking for more, name your price and i will pay how ever much to get a snippet of the lovette sapphic experience!