Weirdly enough, talking to the random uncle at the library made her feel better. She'd confessed, half-laughing, half on the verge of tears, that she'd almost cried earlier—and somehow, saying it out loud made the heaviness a little easier to carry. But of course, she couldn't help doing something mildly cringe. She'd said it too loudly, that bit about wanting to cry. A part of her had hoped he would hear. And now that she thought about it, it was kind of embarrassing.
Worse still, in some emotionally-charged blur, she'd told uncle—again, maybe too loudly—that she wanted a friend who was spiritually grounded. The kind who was connected to God. Except she'd accidentally used the masculine pronoun. His entire table had heard. One of his friends repeated her words back to him, and they snickered, like boys do when they've picked up on something they weren't supposed to.
The next day, one of them—probably the wrong one—walked up to her to ask which book she'd been reading. A signal misfired. Of course. That was her luck.
She didn't even know when they left thecafe that day. She was too busy talking to a new friend she'd made. What she did he know was that when she finally stood up to go, he was gone.