Sundays Without Makeup: Ep2 – The Forgotten Woman in the Glass Hours

There is something dangerously freeing about becoming invisible after years of being seen.

1- The Weight of Weightlessness

She went back the next Sunday. And the Sunday after that.

These stolen mornings became a ritual she couldn’t name—not quite rebellion, not quite surrender. Just hours where she existed without the obligation of being viewed.

On the fourth Sunday, she noticed her reflection in a coffee shop window. For a moment, she didn’t recognize herself—this woman with untamed hair and naked skin. This stranger with eyes that looked directly back instead of carefully away.

It unsettled her, this unfamiliar face. Not because it was flawed (though it was, beautifully so), but because it seemed to belong to someone she’d left behind long ago. Someone who had existed before the world taught her how to be valuable.

Before the boardrooms. Before the promotions. Before she learned to weaponize her appearance like a language only certain people were fluent in.

She touched her cheek, half-expecting her fingers to pass through glass. To discover this bare-faced woman was just an apparition, a ghost of possibilities abandoned.

But the skin beneath her fingertips was warm. Real. Hers.

The barista called a name that wasn’t hers—wasn’t even close. She answered anyway.

It felt strangely intimate, being mistaken for someone else.

2- Collision Courses

On the sixth Sunday, it happened.

She was reaching for sugar packets when a voice behind her said her name—her real name, not the one she’d been giving baristas. The name that appeared on boardroom doors and corner offices.

“Caroline?”

She froze, sugar packet suspended between fingers that suddenly felt numb. The voice belonged to Eric Whitman, CMO at Meridian Capital. They’d sat across from each other at negotiation tables three times in the past year. His company had been trying to acquire hers since last fall.

She turned slowly, feeling exposed in a way that had nothing to do with her bare face and everything to do with being caught outside her carefully constructed reality.

“Eric,” she said, her voice steadier than she expected. “What a surprise.”

His eyes flickered over her—taking in the messy ponytail, the faded jeans, the complete absence of the armor he was accustomed to seeing her in.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said. Not unkindly, but with a curiosity that made her want to disappear into the floorboards.

“That’s rather the point of Sundays,” she heard herself say.

Something shifted in his expression then. A recognition, perhaps. Or maybe just surprise that she—Caroline Mitchell, the woman who never showed weakness in negotiations—had admitted to something so human as needing escape.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, gesturing to his own weekend attire—worn running shoes, a sweatshirt from some college she didn’t recognize. “Though I think you’re braver than I am.”

“How so?”

“I’m still hiding behind my Sunday routine. Running the same path. Reading the same news. Just in different clothes.” He paused, those negotiator’s eyes still studying her. “But you—you look like you’re becoming someone else entirely.”

The observation landed somewhere between her ribs, sharp and true.

She wanted to correct him. To explain that she wasn’t becoming someone else—she was unbecoming the someone else she’d spent years perfecting.

Instead, she said: “Would you like to sit for a minute?”

She saw the hesitation in the slight narrowing of his eyes. The mental calculus of what it might mean to sit with her in this context—outside the battlefield of their professional lives. What advantages it might give or take away.

“Actually,” he said finally, “I would.”

3- Glass Hours

They chose a table by the window where Sunday light spilled across the scratched surface. No leather portfolios between them. No agendas. Just two paper cups and the strange territory of conversation without purpose.

“How long have you been coming here?” he asked.

“To this café? Just a few weeks.”

“No, I mean—” he gestured vaguely at her face, her casual clothes. “This. The Sunday version.”

She considered lying. Considered the professional wisdom of admitting how new this ritual was. How fragile.

“This is my sixth Sunday,” she said instead.

He nodded, as though this confirmed something he’d already suspected.

“What happened six weeks ago?”

The question was direct in a way that would have been inappropriate in their boardroom interactions. But here, in the strange limbo of Sunday morning, it felt permissible. Like they were operating under different laws of gravity.

She looked out the window, watching a leaf spiral down from somewhere above. Taking its time. Unhurried by the demands of falling.

“I saw my reflection,” she said finally. “In an elevator. Between floors. Just for a second, the light changed, and I didn’t recognize myself.”

She paused, remembering that moment of disconnection. The sudden vertigo of realizing she had become a stranger in her own skin.

“And?”

“And I wondered if I could still find her. The woman I was before…” She gestured at the invisible weight of everything else. “Before all of it.”

Eric was quiet for a moment, turning his coffee cup in slow circles.

“Did you? Find her, I mean.”

Caroline considered the question. The truth was complicated. The woman in the mirror six weeks ago wasn’t the same as the woman she’d been before her career. That woman was gone—transformed by years and choices and the inevitable alchemy of becoming.

But these Sundays had revealed something else. Not a return to who she’d been, but perhaps a glimpse of who she might still become.

“I’m working on it,” she said.

He nodded again, something like recognition flickering across his face.

“I’ve been divorced twice,” he said suddenly. “Both times, they said the same thing. That I disappeared into the job. That the man they married got replaced by something else.”

The confession hung between them, unexpected and oddly intimate.

“Were they right?” she asked.

“Probably.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “The last time I took a real vacation was 2017. I have alerts set up for my competitors’ press releases. I dream about quarterly reports.” He shrugged. “Not exactly the stuff of lasting relationships.”

She understood perfectly. Her own history was littered with almost-relationships that had wilted under the harsh light of her ambition. Men who’d initially been attracted to her drive but eventually resented the time it demanded. The person it required her to be.

“Do you regret it?” she asked. “The choices?”

It was the kind of question that crossed professional boundaries. That acknowledged they were human beyond their job titles. Beyond the negotiations that usually defined their interactions.

Eric looked at her directly, all traces of the boardroom strategist momentarily gone.

“Some days,” he admitted. “But not today.”

The implication wasn’t lost on her. Today they were sitting in sunlight, having a conversation that had nothing to do with acquisitions or market shares. Today they were just two people, stripped of their professional veneers, discovering the strangers beneath.

“Your team’s counteroffer last month was ridiculous, by the way,” she said, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

He laughed, the sound genuine and unguarded.

“I know. But you have to admit, it was worth a try.”

“Not even close.”

The conversation shifted then, into safer territory. Weekend plans. A new restaurant downtown. The novel he was reading that she’d finished months ago.

But something had changed in the air between them. Some invisible barrier had been crossed.

And Caroline found herself wondering, as their coffee cups emptied and the morning stretched toward noon, what other versions of herself might be waiting to be discovered—if only she were brave enough to keep looking.

4- The Invitation

They parted outside the café, standing awkwardly on the sidewalk like two people unsure of the protocol for this new territory they’d wandered into.

“This was… unexpected,” Eric said finally.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But not unwelcome.”

He smiled then, a real smile that transformed his face from the careful mask she knew from meeting rooms.

“Would it completely destroy the Sunday magic if I asked for your personal number?” he asked. “Not for work. Just for… this. Whatever this is.”

The question caught her off guard. Created a small flutter of panic somewhere beneath her ribs.

Because this—these Sundays—had been hers alone. Untethered from the rest of her life. Unwitnessed except by strangers who didn’t know her name.

Letting Eric in felt dangerous. Like opening a door between worlds that were never meant to touch.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she heard herself say.

Something flickered across his face—disappointment, perhaps. Or just recognition of the boundary she was drawing.

“Of course,” he said. “Professional lines and all that.”

“It’s not that,” she said, realizing as the words left her mouth that they were true. “It’s just… these Sundays are something I’m still figuring out. Something just for me.”

He nodded, understanding in his eyes.

“I respect that.” He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully. “But if you ever want company in this… unbecoming, or becoming, or whatever it is—I’m here most Sundays too.”

The offer hung between them, neither an expectation nor a demand. Just a door left slightly ajar.

Caroline felt something shift inside her chest. A small loosening of a knot she hadn’t realized was there.

“I’ll remember that,” she said.

They parted ways on the corner, heading in opposite directions. But as she walked away, Caroline found herself looking back once, watching his retreating figure merge with the Sunday crowd.

And wondering, with a mixture of trepidation and something like hope, what might happen if their paths crossed again in this strange, maskless territory of Sundays.

5- The Mirror That Wasn’t There

She didn’t go back to the same café the next Sunday.

Or the Sunday after that.

Instead, she tried new neighborhoods. New routines. Places where there was no risk of colliding with someone who knew her other self.

But Eric’s words followed her. “You look like you’re becoming someone else entirely.”

Was that what she was doing? Becoming? Or was it unbecoming? The shedding of a skin that had grown too tight, too restrictive?

On the third Sunday after their meeting, she found herself in a small bookstore in a neighborhood she rarely visited. The kind with creaking floors and narrow aisles and books stacked in precarious towers.

She wandered aimlessly, fingertips trailing along spines, breathing in the particular scent of paper and possibility.

At the back of the store, tucked between shelves of poetry and philosophy, she discovered a small reading nook with a single armchair. Above it hung an antique mirror in an ornate gold frame.

Without thinking, she sat down and looked up into the glass.

The woman who looked back was neither the polished professional she presented Monday through Friday, nor a complete stranger. She was something in between—familiar in the curve of her cheekbones, the shape of her eyes, but softer somehow. Less defended.

Caroline reached up, touching the delicate skin beneath her eyes. The fine lines that spoke of late nights and early mornings. Of laughter and concentration and all the expressions she’d learned to control.

“Find something interesting?”

The voice belonged to an older woman who had appeared silently at the end of the aisle. Gray hair cut in a severe bob, eyes sharp behind cat-eye glasses. Something about her reminded Caroline of her first female mentor—the woman who had taught her how to survive in rooms full of men who underestimated her.

“Just browsing,” Caroline said, suddenly self-conscious about being caught staring at her own reflection.

The woman smiled, knowingly.

“That mirror’s special,” she said. “It belonged to a French actress from the 1920s. They say she could see her true self in it, even when she was playing someone else.”

Caroline looked back at the mirror skeptically.

“I don’t believe in magic mirrors,” she said.

The woman laughed, a surprisingly rich sound.

“Neither do I,” she agreed. “But I do believe we see different things depending on where we look. And when.” She gestured toward the mirror. “Sometimes we need a different frame to see what’s always been there.”

Before Caroline could respond, the woman had disappeared back down the aisle, leaving her alone with the mirror and its supposed powers.

Caroline looked at her reflection once more. Same face. Same eyes. Same woman caught between versions of herself.

But something had shifted. Some subtle alignment had changed.

She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Opened the calendar that ruled her weekday life—the one color-coded with meetings and deadlines and obligations.

Her thumb hovered over Monday’s schedule. Over the 8 AM meeting where she would see Eric again. Where they would sit across from each other as adversaries in the ongoing negotiation between their companies.

Would he look at her differently now? Would she look at him differently?

Would the masks slip, even for a moment?

The thought both terrified and exhilarated her.

She put the phone away without making any changes. Stood up from the chair. Took one last look in the mirror that wasn’t magical but somehow reflected something true anyway.

Then she left the bookstore and stepped back into the Sunday afternoon, feeling the weight of Monday approaching—but also, unexpectedly, a strange new lightness.

As if something that had been tightly wound for years had finally begun, almost imperceptibly, to unravel.

See also: “Sundays Without Makeup: Ep1 – The Cracks She Could No Longer Conceal” where the first tentative steps away from performance revealed a forgotten self.

For a different perspective on professional identity, read “ Women entrepreneurship: research review and future directions” where Studies on women entrepreneurship have witnessed a rapid growth over the past 36 years.