The word “just” is the most overworked, underpaid, and blatantly dishonest word in the English language. It is a linguistic camouflage. We use it to minimise the gravity of things that are actually quite massive. I am “just” having one more drink. I “just” need five more minutes in bed. But the king of all lies, the absolute pinnacle of well-intentioned deception, is the phrase “let us just cuddle.” It is a verbal contract written in disappearing ink on a vibrating table. We say it with such conviction, too. We look each other in the eye with the solemnity of a high court judge and agree that for the next ninety minutes, we will simply be two human beings sharing a specific amount of thermal energy while a Netflix documentary about high-altitude baking plays in the background. We really believe it in the moment. That is the truly delusional part.
There is a very specific micro-truth to the way this begins. You prepare the environment as if you are setting up a non-threatening nursery. You keep your socks on. Keeping your socks on is the universal signal for “nothing of a biological nature is going to happen here tonight.” It is a signal to the universe that you are a person of hygiene and boundaries. You tuck the duvet under your chin like a Victorian orphan trying to stay warm in a workhouse, creating a literal fabric barrier between your intentions and your reality. You find that perfect angle where your arm is tucked under their neck, even though you know for a fact that in exactly seven minutes, that arm will lose all circulation and become a useless, tingling meat stick that no longer belongs to your body. You accept the coming paralysis because you are committed to the bit. You are the Cuddle Guy. You are safe. You are a soft place to land.
But then the physics of the room begin to shift in a way that defies every law of thermodynamics I learned in school. Humans are essentially just wet, warm engines, and when you put two of them together under a polyester blend, the temperature does not just rise, it evolves. You start to notice things that are far too specific for a platonic arrangement. You notice the exact rhythm of their breathing against your collarbone. You notice the way their hair smells like that one specific expensive shampoo that costs more than your monthly internet bill. The documentary about cakes in the Andes is still playing, but the narrator’s voice has become a distant, meaningless hum. Your brain starts to do this thing where it overthinks the geometry of your own limbs. Is my thumb moving too much? If I rest my hand here, am I implying a future that we specifically negotiated against three minutes ago?
This is where the overthinking becomes a sort of existential crisis. You start wondering if the “just cuddle” agreement is actually a sophisticated psychological test. If you stay completely still, are you being respectful or are you being boring? If you move an inch closer, are you a liar or are you just responding to the natural pull of gravity? You realise that the human body was never designed for “just” anything. We are messy, reactive, and incredibly bad at following our own rules. You start thinking about how strange it is that we have to pretend we do not want the thing we obviously want just so we can feel comfortable enough to eventually get it. It is a bizarre social dance where we have to audition for the role of a monk before we are allowed to be anything else.
Then comes the moment of controlled chaos where the silence in the room becomes so heavy it feels like it might actually crack the floorboards. Your heart starts doing this frantic percussion solo against your ribs and you are suddenly hyper aware of every single square centimetre of skin contact and you realise that if you do not say something or move something or do something you might actually spontaneously combust right there on the beige sofa while the documentary narrator explains the importance of yeast at high altitudes and your brain is screaming at you to just be cool but being cool is impossible when you are basically a human radiator with an identity crisis! And then, you reset. You take a breath. You adjust your position by a fraction of a millimetre.
The shift is usually silent. It is the moment the “just” evaporates. It is a hand that stays a second too long or a look that lingers past the point of casual observation. The “just a cuddle” guy is gone, replaced by the reality of two people who knew exactly where this was going from the second the socks were mentioned. We lie to ourselves because the truth is a bit too loud for a Tuesday night. We need the “just” to give us permission to be vulnerable. It is a soft lie that leads to a hard truth, and honestly, nobody actually wants to watch that documentary about baking anyway. We are all just pretending to be surprised by the ending of a story we have already written a thousand times before. In the end, the socks always come off. They have to. It is the only way to get the blood flowing back into that dead arm.
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