Yesterday, just across the street from a coffee shop near the town square, someone caught my attention. A girl, no more than sixteen, though perhaps younger, appeared on the sidewalk with her dog. She wore a beautiful sundress, the kind that sways gently in the late afternoon breeze. She was striking — mixed race, maybe a European father and a Filipina mother — and there was something about her aura, the way she moved, that reminded me of a ballerina from a Degas painting. For a moment, I couldn’t quite place what it was that drew my gaze. I’m forty-six, married, a father of two. It’s been years since the sight of a stranger has stopped me mid-step. But there she was, and I felt a quick, disorienting pull — not love, not even lust in the conventional sense, but something more confusing. She walked into a nearby pizzeria, her dog trotting obediently beside her. I followed — not out of any conscious decision, but more out of curiosity, the kind that makes us read the ending of a story ev...
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