A section of my book i'd completely forgotten i'd written. Its a bit different:

Lila

She catches ever amber light on her way home, and instead of speeding through them she stops and pauses in the blank intersections. For once the radio is off, because distractions are unnecessary. She looks at her eyes in the rearvision mirror and smiles at how the dark smudges make them stand out again the pale of her face. For but a second in the empty night, in anonymity she is beautiful, because she feels she is. Just for a second. There is a certain resonance in the empty streets, smattered with moon shadows from the trees that dance slightly in the wind and the eerie glow from windows illuminated by lives of other people. Her sprawling hair smells of musty cigarettes and beer and the car’s air is stagnant with hot breath. She opens the window and enhales her own self confidence in long dragging breaths. She consumes the hollow night.

It’s interesting how much people can stir the elements of you that have been dormant for so long. That it takes the right person, out of the thousands of people you encounter in your life to make you see certain things about yourself. This guy, this one person had for a second, made her feel beautiful and just a little bit radiant. He’d made her inspired and passionate, confident in a way she’d never been. In his absence her self criticism returns, her lack of self esteem overshadows his tender words and she is again just a girl in the world of greatness. Still, her mouth creases upwards in a smile that she tries not to allow herself. Muscles contract and she finds herself grinning at the crescent moon, unable to quash the shudders of happiness that make her skin tremble.

To see him again would give him another opportunity to observe her, this time the light may fall differently, her words may slip and she’ll be revealed as the meaningless being she is. Yes, she’d given him a number. It just wasn’t hers.

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