It was a Friday night. The kind of night when Charleston feels alive, the humidity pressing on you like the world itself is sweating. I’d had a couple beers—not enough to be sloppy, just enough to feel bold. She was sitting at a corner table in some dive off King Street, sipping a vodka soda and laughing at something her friend said. I was with my crew, loud and obnoxious like we always were, but my eyes kept drifting back to her.

I don’t even remember how I started talking to her. Probably some lame excuse, like asking about her drink or the music. But she didn’t brush me off. She smiled—this sly, knowing smile—and before I knew it, we were out on the patio, away from the noise, just talking. She had this way of making you feel like you were the only person in the room, even when you knew she was ten steps ahead of you in her head.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to shift. Flirting turned into lingering looks, which turned into her hand brushing against mine. By the time we left, it was clear where the night was headed.

Back in my room, the Citadel felt different. The regimented order, the strictness—it all disappeared. It was just her and me, wrapped up in something that felt bigger than it had any right to be. She wasn’t the Nancy Mace people see now, the congresswoman, the name in the headlines. She was just Nancy, sharp-tongued and unapologetic, but soft in ways you wouldn’t expect.

The next morning, she was gone before reveille. Left a note on my desk—two sentences that I read a hundred times but never kept. It wasn’t a goodbye, but it wasn’t a promise, either. Just a moment in time, something we both knew would stay there.

I don’t think about it much, except when I see her on TV now, talking politics or grilling someone in Congress. She still has that sharpness, that edge. And sometimes, when the cameras catch her at just the right angle, I swear I see that sly smile again, like she knows a secret no one else does. Maybe she does. Maybe I’m part of it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5668275&forum_id=2#48579719)