The sky had just begun its evening fade, soft hues of lavender and tangerine brushing against rooftops. I remember sitting at the far end of the courtyard, nursing a cheap soda and a bitter mood. Life had worn me thin - a blur of work shifts, unanswered messages, and routines too quiet to feel alive. And then, she appeared.
She wasn't the kind of beautiful that made you stare. She was the kind that made you pause, like you'd just walked into a story mid-sentence. Her laughter floated over before I saw her, light and layered like music from another room. She was talking to someone, but her eyes wandered, playful, searching. That's when our eyes met. And she smiled.
Not the practiced smile people give to be polite. This one was unfiltered, soft, spontaneous, almost surprised to have landed on me. It was warm in a way that made the world seem less complicated.
I found myself smiling back before I knew I was allowed to.
Later that evening, she passed by and said something about how dead the party felt. I joked that it probably heard her coming. She laughed - the same laugh I'd heard earlier, and that was it. We started talking.
There was no pretense in our conversation. She told me about her grandma's garden and how she still didn't know how to swim. I told her I'd once gotten fired for being too honest. "Isn't that just… being right?" she asked. And for the first time in a long while, I felt seen.
We didn't dance. We didn't kiss. We just talked. But I went home that night knowing something had shifted. I didn't know her name until the end, and even that felt like a secret she gave away reluctantly. But her smile? That stayed with me, like a bookmark in a story I hadn't realized I was in.