And I thought, Andrew. His smile and eyelashes, his hazel eyes, his tanned calves, my head against his chest at last spring’s prom. He had always liked me, he had never hidden it - the Dena years, I thought, didn’t really count, and why had I pretended they had? - and I had felt his recognition of me. People recognized you or they didn’t, and it was unrelated to knowing you. Knowing you could just be your name or the street you lived on, your father’s job.
Recognizing you was understanding you had thoughts in your head, finding the same things funny or excruciating, remembering what you’d said months or even years after you’d said it.
Andrew had always been kind to me, he had always noticed me. Who else in my life was that true of beyond my immediate family?