I kept replaying the night. Her hand on my shoulder during the dances. The way she said she was tired of being invisible. Those eyes under the string lights. It felt like a dream. One I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake from. But by the time I got home, logic kicked in. She was Brandon’s mom. This was nothing. A fleeting moment that would fade by morning. That night, I tossed on the couch, staring at the ceiling fan spinning endlessly.
Sleep didn’t come easy. The next few days, I tried to bury it under work, debugging code, answering emails, fixing a crash server for a client who didn’t know the difference between restart and reboot. But everything felt flat. I’d check my phone absent-mindedly, half expecting what? A message from a woman I just met. Ridiculous. Of course, there was nothing. She was probably back to her life, whatever that entailed. and I was just some guy she danced with out of boredom.
A week later, my phone buzzed while I was microwaving dinner. It was a notification from Instagram, an app I barely used, mostly for scrolling through memes or checking in on old friends. A direct message from an account I didn’t recognize, dalia.mread. The profile picture stopped me cold. It was her, hair down, standing in front of a bookshelf, no makeup, but those eyes still sharp and pulling you in. The message read, “I hate social media, but I like finding the guy who danced with me without asking my age.” My heart dropped, then surged.
She found me. That meant the night wasn’t just in my head. It had lingered for her, too. I stared at the screen, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, sweat prickling my palms. “How do you respond to that?” I typed and deleted a few times before settling on something light. and I like the woman who made me forget how to think straight for a few songs. She replied almost immediately, “Good, because I still remember those songs.” We messaged back and forth over the next few days.
Nothing overt about us. No flirting that crossed lines, at least not yet. It started simple, questions about work, hobbies, how we spent our days. Dalia told me she worked as a communications consultant, had been a journalist years ago before life pulled her in other directions. She talked about raising Brandon mostly on her own, the constant pressure to be strong, to hold everything together. It’s exhausting sometimes, she wrote once, always being the one who has it figured out.
I opened up more than I usually do. I told her about my IT job, how I liked the solitude of fixing problems behind a screen, but how it also kept me isolated. I live in my head a lot, I admitted. Not great at putting feelings into words. Her response came quick. I could tell, but when you do say something, it’s real. The conversations felt easy, natural, like we’d skipped the awkward getting to know you phase. She shared a playlist of jazz tracks from the wedding, and I sent back a photo of my coffee maker, Midsputter, with the caption, “My morning nemesis.” Dalia laughed.
Well, texted, “Hey,” and said, “Sounds like it needs a consultant, too.” Then one evening, she messaged, “There’s a bookstore downtown called The Quiet Page. Saturday at 3. If you’re free, stop by. If not, no worries.” It was an invitation without pressure, but it hit me like a challenge. Meeting her in daylight, no music, no wine, no wedding as an excuse. My stomach twisted. What if it was awkward? What if she saw me as just some kid? But I couldn’t say no.
Not after those dances. Not after her words in the garden. Saturday came and I stood in front of the mirror longer than usual, swapping shirts twice before settling on a simple button-down in jeans. I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard. I arrived at the bookstore early, the bell above the door jingling as I stepped in. The place smelled like old paper and fresh coffee with soft jazz playing in the background. fitting somehow. Shelves lined the walls stacked with everything from classics to obscure poetry.
She was already there, sitting in a corner by the window, a book open in front of her, and a black coffee steaming beside it. Dalia looked up as I approached, her eyes locking onto mine, just like at the wedding. “Liam,” she said, her voice soft but warm. “You came?” I sat down across from her. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten. She smiled faintly, closing the book. We talked like we’d been doing this for weeks. Books we’d read, places we’d traveled or wanted to, little frustrations from work.
Dalia opened up about her divorce. Not in a dramatic way, but matter of fact. It wasn’t some big explosion, just a slow fade. I woke up one day and realized I wasn’t being seen anymore. Not really. I get that, I said, surprising myself with how honest it felt. I feel like that too sometimes, like I’m just going through motions invisible in my own life. She nodded, her gaze steady. Exactly. I don’t lack people around me. I lack someone who looks at me for real.
