It doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens the way water shapes stone — so gradually that you mistake the erosion for the natural shape of things.
I met Weston when I was twenty-six and building something.
I’d started a small consulting practice out of a rented desk, and within a few years it had grown into a real company, and out of the company I’d built a charity foundation that funded health screenings for women who couldn’t afford them.
I was proud of it in a way I’ve never been proud of anything else, because I’d made it from nothing but stubbornness and long hours.
When I met Weston, he told me the foundation was the most impressive thing about me.
It took me years to hear the knife hidden in that sentence — that everything else about me was, by implication, ordinary, and that he was doing me a kindness by noticing.
He was charming in the specific way that charming men are dangerous.
He remembered details.
He anticipated what you wanted before you asked.