The low amber glow of the restaurant lounge had begun to feel less like soft lighting and more like a cage of polite judgment. Amelia sat perched on the edge of a velvet armchair, her spine perfectly straight from a lifetime of practiced posture, while her fingers traced the chilled stem of her third martini glass in a rhythm that betrayed her restraint.

Two remaining olives gazed up at her from the bottom of the glass with their peppercorn pupils, full of silent sympathy. She picked up the toothpick between her nails and popped them into her mouth, breaking the humiliating staring contest with the inanimate objects. The evening was starting to feel more and more like a ritual of humiliation.

Amelia had always considered herself attractive and interesting, and few things in her life had ever made her feel otherwise. That was precisely why she had always placed her love second to everything else — it appeared to be something that could always be found if she wished to. With that calm, reassuring confidence — the kind that told her she would always be loved by someone, desired by someone — she had arrived at this moment: sitting alone in the waiting area of a restaurant, nervously turning the slender stem of a martini glass between her fingers.

It was absurd — she was genuinely nervous before a date. She had redone her eyeliner three times, convinced each time that the result looked too bold. She had darted between several dresses before settling on the most modest one — a black sheath dress, just below the knee, with a single sleeve. For nearly three minutes she had stood before the mirror, silently trying to understand whether she looked foolish in something asymmetrical.

The place had been chosen by her date. The restaurant was unfamiliar to her, and that only deepened her discomfort — arriving somewhere new for the first time, then waiting who knew how long in the lounge, because it was considered improper at the establishment of this level to seat a woman alone at a table. On the other hand, would it have been any better if they had met somewhere she was known? How would people look at her afterward? How would she feel, returning to a place where she had once endured the quiet, public confirmation of being unwanted?

Amelia had been watching the hostess between nervous glances at the door each time someone entered from the street and small, self-soothing sips of her martini. She watched how the woman greeted guests, how she conversed with them, how she gave instructions to the staff. The way her fingers brushed along the spine of a menu each time she reached for one, graceful and precise, seemed to hold Amelia’s attention as much as the drink in her hand.

Every now and then, she caught the hostess’s eyes on her — accidental, perhaps, or intentional? God, surely the woman thought her pathetic. Amelia certainly thought so herself.

The first fifteen minutes of waiting, her heart still trembled — not from any feelings toward her date, but from the unfamiliarity of romantic encounters in general, which she had neither sought nor welcomed for many years. When those fifteen minutes passed, she stayed, partly because she was only a third of the way through her first martini. The background music was pleasant, the lighting soft, and her thoughts kept circling excuses for her supposed companion.

Of course, by the time half an hour had passed, Amelia understood that no one was coming. The realization pricked both her heart and her pride. Rejection was not something she encountered often in her personal life, and perhaps that made each instance cut more deeply. Yet something held her in place — a sensation almost like humiliation, the bitter feeling that her date's absence had been planned deliberately, that someone had wanted her to sit here and feel small, foolish, and forgotten.

At some point she stopped checking the time altogether and sat steeped in her own thoughts, as though chained to the velvet armchair in the waiting area. To stand up, she felt, would be to accept defeat in a battle she hadn’t even consented to be fighting.

She only came back to herself when she noticed the sound of the restaurant had faded. The large, beautiful dining hall — the one she had never actually entered — now held only a few occupied tables, their guests quietly finishing their meals. The lights were still bright enough not to seem dismissive, but the staff had grown more relaxed, their movements quicker, lighter, their laughter hinting at the approaching end of the shift.

A sharp flush rose to Amelia’s cheeks as she tightened her grip on the stem of her glass. God. She had sat here for over an hour, and no one had even asked her to leave. She glanced at the hostess and narrowed her eyes slightly to read the name tag pinned to her chest. The witness to her humiliation tonight, and tactful — or perhaps simply busy — enough not to remind Amelia of how long she had been sitting there, or to throw her a condescending glance.

The hostess seemed to be finishing her shift as well. Amelia knew it was time to step out of this small bubble of denial and face the unpleasant, slippery reality of what she had become tonight — a woman who had waited like an abandoned dog in the foyer for more than an hour.

She carefully set down the half-finished martini and rose, smoothing the skirt of her dress. Humbled by her own position, Amelia walked to the hostess stand and pressed her lips into an awkward, apologetic smile in her direction.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,”she began, her voice soft and melodic, threaded with fragile shame.“It appears my... my date isn’t coming. I’d like to settle my bill.”Amelia hesitated for a moment, her gaze dropping toward the floor.“And to thank you,”she added quietly, gesturing vaguely behind her, her cheeks flushing again — a warmth that felt more like scalding than color.“I know it’s near closing, and you’ve all been so patient.”

After a wordless pause in which she felt like something ugly turned in her abdomen, she added in a voice even more humble and brittle:"You must be thinking I'm..."She shook her head, unable to squeeze out the word 'pathetic'."I apologize,"Amelia murmured instead.