When you arrive, you change the layout of the room. You generate a centripetal force towards you that makes, in just a short while, all our chairs lean a little towards yours. You have all our attention and we fight for yours. You are a siren song, you enchant us. You are the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Everyone seeks you out, everyone wants to be near you, for you to fill their silence with yourself, with your stories, with your charm, with your passions. Because you generate in others that which you explain. And everyone wants to feel a little like that, like you. Now it is you, and not Britney, who says You want a piece of me.

That chic who is this girl, look at her. I don't know her, but she is next to me on the beach, on the bus, or I read her articles online. She is no one in particular and she is all of them at once. She is a type of girl. She is the girl who, without any effort, makes you want to be like her. She's a woman who seems to have asked life for permission to create her. In return, it gave her this face with just enough personality not to stop being beautiful. I don't know if it's cool or is it that she has a beauty mark right above her upper lip, where I would have always liked to have one. With that beauty mark, it seems like the world has to be a little easier. Maybe it's that she has naturally rosy lips or large, almond-shaped eyes, as if they've never known mascara.

We met at a party. When Tito’s was still Tito’s (which makes me feel very old). It all started as good love stories begin: with two glances that met in the middle of the room. “What’s your name?”, “What are you studying?” and a kiss as a promise that I would look for him again. And I did. Some supernatural force wanted me to end up finding him on Facebook (which also makes me feel very old), just from the two questions I asked him.

In general, there are two groups of people: those with whom we can simply be, and those with whom we necessarily have to do something. If you don't believe me, take a quick look at your friends and family (or even partners). The people with whom we always have to do something are those with whom—intentionally or not—we make plans, those with whom we always have something to do, making them feel somewhat incomplete. I have nothing against a friend who goes for a run, a friend who goes to the movies, or a parent who finds a shared hobby with their children to spend time together. But allow me to doubt that these are the people who truly know us.

One of the moments I've felt most desperately vulnerable was during a relationship drama. And not just because of the drama itself—which was good to handle—but because a friend had found out about everything firsthand. It's not that I couldn't hide it from her, but I just couldn't tell her my way, omitting the details that made me most uncomfortable. I felt naked, unprotected, out in the open. How could it be that what made me feel most in danger about the whole situation was the fact that my friend knew what had happened?