Midway through, she realizes she is vulnerable and shuts down.
She smiled, and the loneliness behind it was a physical thing, a cold draft from an open door. “Everyone eventually doubts it.”
She let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for years. And for the first time that night, the lonely girl wasn't alone. Not because he had fixed her. But because he had agreed to be lonely with her for a while.
They’d talked for four hours. She told him she was a freelance illustrator. She told him she moved cities every few months, chasing light and silence. She told him she was profoundly, achingly lonely. “Not the sad kind,” she’d clarified, her smile thin. “The hollow kind. Like a bell that’s stopped ringing.”
