She had a sharp look. Angular bangs of piano black hair. A long nose. Smooth high cheek bones. It edged up to cruel without crossing, disarmed by her charming smile and laugh. The languid but careful sweep of her wrists and hands. I remember looking at her as she spoke, telling a story to the other couple we were with and that evaporated before me even as she said it: she was wearing a pink sweater with a folded down turtle neck. It clung to her long lines, accentuating her thinness, her power. A simple string of pearls circled like a ring of purity. I watched her gloss lips come to the story punchline and her long fingers touched the pearls like a period on a sentence. She tilted her head and her smile opened, a slice of white that I'd seen in the dark and yearned for in my aloneness with her. White white. Shimmering. Her eyes invited her listeners in from behind the hard line of her bangs.
She never once looked my way and I thought, "This girl doesn't like me at all."