The instant I stood up, she grabbed my arm.
"Wait."
I stopped. Turned back slowly.
"What? Does Ms. Fletcher want something to happen between us after all?"
She removed her sunglasses and looked at me with an expression that was dead serious.
"Tristan, do you really not remember me?"
Every muscle in my body locked. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
"How do you know my name?"
She motioned for me to sit, then spoke in a measured voice.
"We sat next to each other for three years. All through high school."
The words hit me like a freight train, and a face surfaced in my memory. A girl with twin ponytails who was always tugging at my sleeve, pestering me with questions.
"You're Cordelia?"
The woman sitting across from me blinked, and her eyes went red at the rims.
"I thought you'd forgotten me."
I couldn't move. Couldn't think.
Of all the ways I could have run into a high school classmate, this was the last scenario I would have imagined. And the thing I could not wrap my head around was that the girl I once had a secret crush on had married a man in his fifties.
"How could you..."
The rest of the sentence died in my throat. I couldn't bring myself to finish it.