“The least little thing,” says Anna, fingertips against her forehead, pushing aside a wing of russet hair, “sets it off.” On the table between her elbows a round white cup full of steamed milk marbled with coffee and cocoa. “And I’m right back there, that moment, the moment she asked. Time stopped, you know? And everything about her that I’d noticed, without noticing, her smile, the way she holds herself, those– eyes,” her own hand dropping, gripping her upper arm, glasses flashing as she looks up, a wan smile for Gloria sitting across from her. “The smell of sunlight, in her hair. It all came crashing down, and I know, I knew,” she looks back down, shaking her head. “There was no other answer, there was nothing else to say. There will never be another.”

Wrapped in Gloria’s hands a pale green mug of red tea, steaming. “It was,” she says. Behind her rows of shelves neatly lined with books. Romance, says a sign at the end of a shelf. Paranormal Romance. Humor. “It wasn’t anything like that,” says Gloria. She sips. “I never met her before. But the lights, and the music, everybody, I just, it was an impulse. I said yes. And, and it was like, everything,” she looks away, she licks her lips. Another mouthful of tea. “I can’t get her out of my head.”

“The,” says Anna, “the taste of her.”

“We, I, ah, we never,” says Gloria quickly.

“Your pardon,” says Anna, sitting back. Adjusting the drape of her houndstooth skirt over her crossed legs. “It’s not easy, talking about it. I, um, it’s–”

“I paint,” says Gloria. “It’s what I do, with the money. Most of it. Paints. Canvases. I keep, doing the same one? Over and over. I, I can’t,” setting her mug down, looking away.

“Does it help?”