Lena had sewn eleven wedding gowns this year, and not one bride had thought to ask if Lena herself might want to marry. She knelt on the shop floor, pins in her mouth, fitting a satin hem around the newest bride. The girl chattered about her sweetheart's proposal. Lena nodded and smiled. She wore her plain grey coat, the one patched with scraps of every gown she had finished. Each patch was someone else's happy day. None of them were hers. That was the plan she made when the bride left. She would stop being only the seamstress. If no one saw her, she would make them see. But she did not know how to be looked at. She knew fabric, not dancing, not laughing across a crowded room. She had never once been courted. So she pinned a note to her chest in her head: learn to be chosen. The tavern held a dance every month. Lena went that night, coat and all, and stood by the door. Candlelight warmed the weathered wood. Couples turned across the floor. She watched, and no one watched her back. Her feet would not move. She had never learned the steps. "You're standing on my music," a voice said. Lena turned. A lean young man leaned against the wall behind her, muddy boots crossed, a green vest dusted with orchard dirt. A bruise darkened his jaw. She knew him. Everyone knew him. Nolan Greer, whose family had not spoken to their neighbors in twenty years. People stepped wide around him, the way they stepped around a dropped needle. "I don't dance," Lena said. "Neither does anyone worth talking to." He nodded at her coat. "That's a lot of weddings." Her face went hot. "They're not mine." "I figured." He studied her, not the coat. That was the strange part. No one studied her. "You want to learn the steps? I'm bad at them too. We can be bad together." She should have said no. His name brought trouble into every room. But he had looked at her, plainly, and asked. That had never happened. So she set her hand in his. They stumbled through a turn. He counted wrong. She stepped on his boot. Around them, the couples slowed, and heads turned. Lena felt every eye land. For the first time, they were landing on her. "They're staring," she whispered. "Let them," Nolan said. When the song ended, the room had not warmed to the sight. A woman near the fire whispered to another. The bride from that morning stared, mouth open. Lena had wanted to be seen. Now she was seen dancing with the one man the whole village avoided. Nolan walked her to the door. "Same time next month?" Lena looked at the whispering faces, then back at him. "Yes," she said. She was no longer only the seamstress. She was the seamstress who had chosen the wrong man to be seen with.