just breathless.

The first time he meets her, he’s sitting down at the dinner table. He’s at a “party” at his parents’ friend’s house. He sits at the far end of the table when he sees her. She’s all the way across the room, sitting on a couch, staring down at a book, occasionally glancing at her wrist. She smiles softly as she reads and holds back a giggle which makes him smile. He hadn’t seen her when he came in. It was as if she appeared out of thin air. He contemplates her being there already when he came in and himself just overlooking her, but she’s so…just… there that it doesn’t seem possible. And yet, completely possible. He wishes he could walk over to her and ask her what she’s reading.

She sees him as soon as he walks in the door. She’s sitting on the couch next to the shelf that separates the living room from the front door. She doesn’t notice when the doorbell is rung, but looks up when she hears footsteps and voices walking in. She looks up to see this boy. This teenage boy about her age. He’s wearing a shirt with the Sharpie logo on it. He turns into the kitchen and she looks back down at her book. When she looks back up, Sharpie shirt is sitting directly across the room, at the dining table, eating, happily. She sighs and looks back down at her book. She wishes she had the courage to go over there and make conversation with the other kids like he can.

Later that night, he goes up into the kitchen to grab himself a cup of soda, thinking about where that girl went. He found out her name from another kid there. Roxanne. She probably went home. But who does he see in the kitchen? Her. She’s sitting on the counter, head bent to avoid hitting the cabinet. This is when he really notices what she’s wearing. It’s merely a heather gray dress with a small many-sided shape necklace, along with a black scarf that goes so very well with her skin tone. She’s still reading her book and occasionally reaching down to grab a pretzel. His eyes reluctantly pull away from her intent expression and scan the room for cups, straying back to her every once in a while. Finally, he just asks her, “Do you know where the cups are?”

His question startles her. When he walked into the kitchen, she expected him to ignore her, or shoo her like the adults did when they moved into the living room, causing her to move into the kitchen. She looks up from her book, her hand near her mouth, delivering a pretzel. She takes the pretzel away, dropping it onto the book in her lap and licks her lips. And she just sits there. Like a deer in the headlights. His sharp, sapphire blue eyes stare at her, looking for any sort of movement. She opens her mouth to reply when one of the hosts walks in, asks him if he was looking for cups, and holds them out to him. He walks over, grabs one, pours his drink, and mumbles something incoherent. As he walks away, she says, “I’m Anne, by the way.”

He seems almost taken aback by her name, but he recovers in a few seconds. “Andrew,” he replies. She smiles at his name and thinks about it, as if she needed to absorb it. He spends the time staring at her smile. Her teeth are an off-white that look naturally white and not bleached white. The way her mouth curves up bringing these cute little dimples. Her smile is so short he wants to take a picture of it, but as soon as it appears, she realizes she's smiling and the grin disappears. He longs to see it again, to stare at it again. “Andrew,” she repeats, “I like it.” She smiles again and he can't help but smile back.

He grins back at her and its so dazzling and shiny she would go blind if she stared for it for a while. The way his teeth are so perfectly straight and so perfectly white and so perfectly fit in his mouth she wonders if his teeth were crafted by Michelangelo. And for some reason, times stands still. That tiny second of brightness seems to last forever. It’s a nice feeling.

That’s the last time he sees her that night. On the ride home, he spends his time thinking of her smile and how elegant yet simple it was. The few short seconds he got with it makes him want to see it again and again, but his brain doesn’t get the image quite right. Her smile is like a drug that he can’t afford. He sees it twice, but he’ll probably never see it again.

After that meeting, her mother walks into the kitchen telling her it’s time to go home. She gets up absent-mindedly, slipping her flats back on, and walking into the living room to say her good-byes. The whole time she’s thinking about his smile and how long it lasted. She wishes she had that beautiful smile. Her teeth are crooked and her child-like dimples do not help the baby face situation she has to deal with. She longs to see his smile, just one more time. And she does. Plenty more times. Just not in that night.