Alone

She dressed with care. Perfect makeup. White dress. Long hair flowing down her back like dark waves of silk. She fastened the straps of her favorite wedges around her ankles.

She didn't know why she bothered.

He picked her up at the appointed time, barely giving her more than a passing glance and a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Unshed tears burned her eyes as she wondered, not for the first time, what more she could possibly do. What else she needed to be. She shuddered as she took the thought further tonight - how else she could once again become the woman he wanted.

At first she had fallen into the usual female trap of thinking it was the way she looked. With a critical eye, she had analyzed each of her faults, trying to determine whether it was the one that caused such a shift in his feelings for her. She bought new clothes, new makeup, sexy lingerie. She worked out like a fiend, dieted almost to the point of starvation. But all along she knew. No matter how many calories she deprived herself of, how many hours she toiled in the gym or how she dressed, it wouldn't bring back what was lost.

At night she laid in bed, sometimes crying herself to sleep. Their bed was cold. Lonely. The distance between their bodies, between them, seemed insurmountable sometimes. She shook her head, trying to clear it of these unwanted thoughts, as he parked the car.

They circulated through the room full of his friends, his work colleagues. She smiled, subtly supplied all the names he managed to forget, charmed even the biggest curmudgeon in the room. They talked, ate and danced.

She continued to look happy, to play her part. It was expected of her and she filled the role well. But it was all an act, nothing more than an illusion she feared was becoming as transparent as glass.

Because when it came right down to it, in that crowded room, on his arm, she had never felt more alone.