Years ago, one of his college friends had told him that he had the Midas touch, but in reverse: he touched gold and it turned to shit. Imagine just bumping into her like that. And then botching it up. He hadn’t wanted her to see him with the wheelchair. Standing, even with a cane, would have been better. And he hadn’t planned on seeing her from within a burrito. He should have just let that kid pick it up. So there he was with two strikes against him when she walked in. Not only was he an invalid, he was also a slob.

Why did he care? It’s not like he wanted to get back together with her. He’d like to be friends again, of course, if he moved back up here. Certainly in the span of minutes that they had been in the restaurant together he had wondered whether he could get her in bed, and he had imagined being with her again, but that didn’t necessarily mean much. He wasn’t sure whether she was far enough in his past that these thoughts were the same ones that accompanied introduction to any new girl, or whether they were something residual, left over from the time before.

He was driving south on I-5 now, heading home, replaying the scene in his mind. All day as he had been looking at apartments he had been imagining different ways in which they might happen to cross paths. He’d be stopped at a red light, would randomly turn his head and see her in the car beside him and she’d jump out and smother him with kisses. Or he’d see her down the street as he was looking at an apartment and would call out to her. She’d recognize him and come running over. And smother him with kisses.

He hadn’t really expected it to happen, and especially not as it had. He hadn’t even been sure that she still lived in town. Then, seeing all the familiar places in Bellingham had resurrected thoughts. Today she had haunted him like a poltergeist, knocking memories from their shelves and thumping noisily up old staircases in his brain.

But when he heard her voice he had forgotten all the clever things he thought he would say and spent most of the conversation smiling like an idiot and saying nothing. Two years was a long time. Where do you start?