“Do you?”

Whenever he asked a question like that, he seemed to want to know more. A man with a genuine interest in what she had to say was something Annie was unfamiliar with. Perhaps it was just that she found it hard to believe a man when he was looking at her. “Maybe not like you,” she said. “I mean, maybe it’s not the same, but I’ve spent my whole life being the beautiful one, and it’s just as hard as being unattractive. At least, you know, by society’s standards, or whatever…” Her voice trailed off and she wondered how that had sounded out loud.

“So I shouldn’t hate you because you’re beautiful?” She laughed, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have made that comparison. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but maybe I am, a little. Maybe you can’t help it when everyone looks at you a certain way.”

“So, how is it the same?” Again, there was that interest.

Annie glanced once more at his hands. She loved a man’s hands-large, strong, yet capable of being so soft, so caring. His long legs were stretched out beyond the table’s edge, and she could see he was wearing boots. Darkness was funny. The way your mind used shapes and lines to fill in the blanks, how you could see some things and not others.

“Well,” she began, “it doesn’t matter, attractive or unattractive, really. At either end of the spectrum, people still judge you. They make assumptions about you based on how you look. They treat you differently. Do you know what I mean?” She found herself eager for him to understand. Her heart raced with the wanting.

Relief flooded her chest when he said, “Yeah, I do.” His fingers brushed hers in the darkness. “You have beautiful hands, Annie. So delicate.” She flushed at the compliment, but didn’t respond, wondering if he had been looking at her hands with the same ulterior motive. Compliments often felt more like sharp barbs to her than anything else, but this particular arrow landed softly, with precision.