There's a painting in the living room that her mother has owned since before she was even born. They had it even in the old house, even before. She sees sunlight sheen against the glass in the frame; she pays more attention to the prisms than the paint. After living with it for so long, you'd think she would know every line and stroke, but. One day, while she's reading on the couch, she looks up and realizes for the first time what she's actually seeing. Whereas before, there were only portions, blues and long swatches of foamy green, now she sees the ocean, the cliché skyline and indigo undertones. She sees it all and it doesn't surprise her, but.

It's like that with them, at the party, when suddenly, after three years of friendship, she looks and there they are, like. She sees for the first time that they've worn into each other, sea to sand, and that this thing, whatever it is she's always seen but never really seen at all, blooms and swells, something like. She's never really seen them before, she guesses, even though she kept them in her eyes, under passive watch, for such a long while now.

No one sees her, not even when their eyes meet hers from across the crowded room over a debris field of tipped plastic cups in rainbow hue and game boards spread over low coffee tables. No one really sees them, either. They look at her like they've never seen her before, too. They haven't seen her. When she catches the image of herself in the mirror over the sofa, she doesn't pause for the stranger. She should feel startled and lonely, maybe, but.

They drive her home.