She wore the green sweater. The one her father said made her look easy. She thought it made her look sexy and a little less ordinary. She finished her makeup and combed her long brown hair. “Nothing to write home about,” wasn’t that what she heard her father say about her to her Aunt Penelope when they were discussing why she was still unmarried and living at home?

Where did that expression come from, anyway? She Googled it. “Ordinary and unremarkable – not worthy of being included in a letter to loved ones back home.” So, that was what her father believed. Perhaps that’s how he felt about himself… why her father had settled for Jessica. Why would he want the same for his daughter?

She stepped outside the house and began her walk to the bar on 7th Street. Judy and Carla would already be there flirting with the bartender and waiting for a table. They’d walk home together later. No DUIs. Safety in numbers.

She thought about her mother and wondered where she was. Was she a waitress in a greasy diner or a world globetrotter? Had she left to live a life less ordinary? Would her mother consider her “nothing to write home about?” Is that why she left? The memories of a three-year-old were dodgy at best, but she knew her mother was beautiful. Was she still beautiful? In the few photos remaining of her, her mother sparkled. Auburn hair, bright blue eyes, and the tiniest of waists. Always wearing a shade of green. In their photos, her father looked out of place. Happy to be with this beautiful creature, but desperate to blend into the background.

Her eyes were brown like her father’s. The color of mud in an old creek bed not the rich brown of freshly tilled soil or blue like her mother’s. Since his marriage to Jessica, her father seemed happy enough, but the house and even his wardrobe had become a wash of beige and dull brown. In photos, her father and Jessica seemed to blur together. There was no spark. No sign of life.

The young men Jessica was constantly trying to fix her up with were the same beige and brown. More focused on finding someone who would cook and clean for them than someone to love and be loved by.

She didn’t want that. She wanted romance and excitement. She wanted to be the vision in green. Why did she hold onto this image of a woman who clearly didn’t want her? Still, she wanted to be her mother for just one night. To dance and turn heads. To sparkle. To have fun. But she would remember to go home at the end of the night, and she would not disappear from the lives of the people who loved and needed her.

She caught her reflection in one of the store windows bathed in the light of the full moon and the soft glow of the streetlights. The green sweater hugged her curves and accentuated the swell of her breasts. Was that a sparkle she saw in her muddy brown eyes? Just for that moment, she didn’t feel ordinary. She didn’t care that she was pushing thirty and unmarried. Still living at home, saving to get her own place while struggling to pay off her student loans. Away from the beige and brown house and its beige and brown inhabitants, she felt beautiful… maybe for the first time in her life. And if only tonight, she wanted to enjoy it with no regrets.