She was just sitting there, with a drink in her hand, and she stood apart from the rest of the crowd. She was unmasked, occupying space on a tall plastic chair while people around her strolled around wearing all sorts of designer masks. I had made it a habit to study masks since it helped me to choose the right mask for myself for the right occasions. Unbothered by the chaos surrounding her, not wanting to socialize or to pretend to like a conversation with random people like everybody else was, she was perpetually smiling, perhaps she remembered a joke someone told her or was she just smiling because it was her natural state of being? I couldn’t decipher. People would occasionally come to meet and greet her, and then they left. During most of the time that I observed her, nobody bothered her, and she bothered nobody. I kept observing her from a distance. I’m not going to lie; she seemed a little intimidating even though she donned the warmest smile on her face. And then, she disappeared from my life. While walking to my car from the party, I constantly thought of going back and making an effort to talk to her but I decided against it, because of my stupid rule. I wondered if she thought about me too in a similar way, but that was too far-fetched since I offered her nothing of sorts to even think of me later.