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When we were nineteen, you owed me a dance. You held out your hand to me in someone else's badly decorated high school gym, and that's what you said.

I watch the scattered shards of city light through the windshield. They float towards us and wash over us in a silent wave of nighttime neon as you drive me back to my dorm. I smooth a hand on my knee, the yellow of my dress pallid in the dim interior.

The radio had been playing on the way to the school. We had talked above it, a symphony in the car; the singer singing something about forever, you joking, me trying to give directions from the scrap of Harley's writing, the flutter of your hope and the nervous staccato gnaw inside me keeping tempo beneath it all.

We pass under a stoplight as it changes to amber. I steal a glance at you. You're watching the road but the air between us seems to flinch and I know you saw it. I look away. The radio isn't on and the car is thick with quiet as I look out through the windshield again.

We are nineteen and we danced, back there in the gym.

Those hands that grasp the steering wheel now as we make a right turn, they were holding me close half an hour ago. They were warm and sure, even as I felt your breath falter, and for half a song we danced. I guess that means we're square now. No debt, no gnawing hesitation, just the wretched weight of certainty in our silence.

You could love me again and this could be it, really it. But it isn't.

You stop outside my dorm. I unfasten my seatbelt and gather my purse. I want to say something but I don't know what and I don't know how. You sit there, still for a moment, cloaked in a sadness I tore.

Then you turn your head slightly and you look at me with a wrecked smile in your eyes.

"Jo?"

And you ask me if I remember the stories we used to tell each other.

Sometimes they were short, as we walked down an aisle in Molley's Market or ate lunch in the cafeteria. Other times they wound long into the night, trading low, lilting whimsy over the phone, at the edge of my dock, or curled on the sofa at the house you shared with Gretchen. Great sprawling sagas, banal anecdotes. Stories about how our lives would be. I was good with details and you, you liked to end yours with a monster devouring us, or burning down our perfect house with its fiery breath, just to make me smack you, to make me laugh.

I hold my purse, my heart unfastened.

"Yeah." I smile across at you in the seat beside me and the ache of it echoes in the small space. "I remember them, Pace."

You don't say anything more. You know that when I step out of the car I am not going to my room. You know I'm going somewhere else, to find someone else and your question hadn't been to change my mind. But rather, to say goodbye.

And when I got out of the car that night, yellow dress and no tempo, I knew, in that awful bittersweet way of growing up, I couldn't ask you to take it back.

It's another night now when I push open the door of the Boston convenience store and step inside. It's a humid evening, summer come early or spring dressing up in shoes too big and a coat that hangs down to its knees. The kind of weather that makes me think the inventor of air conditioning ought to have been sainted. I slide a hand under my hair, letting the chill of the store sneak over my neck like a delicious outlaw and I move past the candy bars to the fridge.

There's a small girl with her nose pressed up against the frosted glass of one of the doors. She's examining the ice cream selection inside with a critical eye and doesn't pay any mind to me as I open the next door and retrieve a diet Coke.

I'm not nineteen anymore. I miss it. It's only been a few years but I miss it in the way that when I was nineteen I longed to be fourteen, or seven. Fondly, foolishly, with relief that it's behind me, and- some days- desperately. There's an apartment that I call home and I work in a nice office on the twelfth floor of a building. My hair is longer, darker, my nose seems narrower. When I walk my steps have purpose even if I don't. Caffeine and city hustle course through my veins now in place of that halcyon hubris.

I let the fridge door fall closed and glance at the small girl. She's got blond hair caught up in a clasp and the glass is foggy from her breath. Then a woman calls from the front of the store and she's gone, skittering by the candy bars.

It's eight o'clock on a Tuesday night.

I turn towards the counter as I look down, checking to be sure my purse is tucked into my bag. I'm in Boston for two days and a quarter moon is smudged bright on the sky outside. There are people walking by, sitting at tables at the café around the corner, there's a good movie on AMC in an hour. I want to take a shower and watch the day swirl down the drain. There's a crumpled dry cleaning receipt in my pocket, the muffled horn of a car on the street. On this warm Tuesday night, I came in to get a diet Coke and found you.

"Jo?"

I'm looking down into my bag for my purse, but I know it's you.

The knowledge reverberates through me to the tips of my fingers and down to my feet in a single, simple rush. Looking up is merely a formality, the pinch when I'm already awake.

I look up. A smile has knocked itself out in startled wonder across my lips.

"Pacey."

And you grin. You stand there in the lonely light of the convenience store with a cherry Slurpee in hand and you grin like you've been waiting all this time to hear me say your name again.

I've thought of you in sepia. Slightly out of focus with sunlight shining behind you in a hazy squint. I know things about you. Things like how you're managing a restaurant here in Boston, and that you're thinking about moving back to Capeside, of fixing up the old Icehouse. We've talked on the phone from time to time and made distant plans that fell through more often than not. I know blurry pieces of you.

But I didn't know you still wear that grey t-shirt, or that you hadn't shaved today, the line of your jaw rough. You're bathed in sharp technicolor detail and my smile is punch-drunk. I didn't know you would look so real, standing here in front of me in this chance encounter.

"Jen said you might be in town this week."

"She did?"

You lift the large cup like a nod. "Yeah, the girl keeps tabs."

"Apparently so do you," I note.

"But I'm not as blond and buxom."

I feel myself shrug. "Shame, really."

You're cheerily mournful, your gaze fixed on me. "I cry a little every day," you admit.

I didn't know that laughing at something you said could still make your eyes flash with gentle delight.

I lean back against the fridge door then, the cool press of the glass behind me like a ghost. I remember those stories we used to tell. And in this raw glimpse, there is a swift, silent keen inside me for all the things we did while we weren't looking.

"It's been awhile, Potter," you say to me.

I smile back, an honest-to-God smile as a few feet away someone's purchases are rung up at the register with a clang. "Yeah, it has."

We were fry cooks at a diner in St. Augustine.

I wore my hair up in a sweaty ponytail, your apron was always stained with grease and our feet ached at the mere sight of the blackened grill. We lived in an apartment that had flimsy green curtains instead of dividing walls and a bed that screeched indignation every time it was forced to accommodate more than rumpled sheets. You wrecked dinners in the microwave, drumming your hands on the kitchen counter and singing strings of nonsense while chicken kiev went nuclear. I killed visiting roaches with your old sneaker.

We said maybe we'd move, but the rent was cheap and at night the moon hung white gold just outside our window. On our days off, we would drive out to the beach and soak our dreams in the blue blue sea, my bathing suit old, your feet disappearing last under a wave. Behind the grill at the diner I called you 'Bubba' because it made you look across at me a certain way.

We could never get the smell of grease out of our hair, but after a while we didn't even

notice.

"So are you staying long?"

Over at the counter the clerk is whistling to himself off-key as I shake my head. "Just 'til tomorrow."

You take a sip of the syrupy ice, deflecting something. "Jet-setter," you accuse proudly.

I roll my eyes. "Train," I correct wryly and I want to hug you for hello but I missed the moment.

Your chuckle is loose. "The indignity of it all," you say and I grin.

You came to Paris with me.

You sat next to me on the plane, held my hand as we took off and fell asleep on my shoulder somewhere over the sapphire Atlantic. We stayed in a crowded hostel where the hot water ran out by seven in the morning and the woman at the front desk hated us for no particular reason. We wore the same clothes for days on end and I yelled at you for getting us lost in all les rues and les boulevardes. You yelled right back and threw the map in a trashcan.

We swore we would never go home, but knew we had to anyway. One night we got drunk in a seedy bar with a group of English tourists, another we blew the budget on a hotel room that had pink monogrammed towels. In a café we tried to speak only in French, but you just knew dirty words and I couldn't stop laughing.

When we stood under the Eiffel Tower you grabbed me in a giddy hug because you knew what it meant to be there.

I push away from the fridge, still smiling. "What about you? Are you working at the same restaurant?"

"Yup." You take my cue or maybe it's me taking yours; either way we start toward the cashier. "I'm supposed to be there now."

We walk together past the low shelves and a pleased confusion drifts through me at the easy ordinariness of our matching stride.

"The manager has Slurpee breaks?"

"It's medicinal," you tell me.

We stop in front of the counter, the clerk stirring from his tuneless reverie just enough to notice us, and I glance at your cup with a dubious eye. "They put Ritalin in those now?"

An overhead light buzzes as you click your tongue. "Don't be such a hater, Josephine."

I'm not sure why my laugh stings my throat then. But I recognize the slippery feel of borrowed time. Chance, coincidence, serendipity, they're all thieves stealing moments and I know that this one is ours. A convenience store on a Tuesday night for a few fleeting minutes.

You pay for your drink and mine too, passing faded bills over before I find my purse. I thank you and it sounds shy, a blush in the words, and turning from the clerk, you let your gaze settle on me lightly.

For that split second, your eyes are rimmed with a wistful shadow.

I can't tell you how I've missed you. How, God, I've missed you. I'm afraid I'll put too much emphasis on the wrong syllable, or forget to buy a vowel, and it will mean something else and maybe you know this.

So you do it for me, standing there as the clerk counts out coins.

"It's good to see you, Jo." And you say it just right.

We took the bus to Atlantic City one evening on a whim.

The sidewalks were melting in the city, the air rank with restlessness and when I finished work you were waiting there for me with a bag packed. We slouched in our seats and ate stale yellow Doritos, making faces at the kid across the aisle as the bus bumped. We watched the darkening sky rush like quicksilver past the windows and you teased me for bringing along a puzzle book. When we pulled into the bus station I had found every word in the jumbo Find-A-Word except one.

We joked that we would make our fortune there, but we lost ten bucks on the slot machines and bought fifty cent burgers instead. Along the boardwalk you gave me a piggyback ride, my mauve blouse crushed in wrinkles against your back, you dumping me to my feet after twenty paces. We were going to stay someplace but we decided to just sleep on the way back instead.

As the sun came up, rolling along the Garden State Parkway, we made out in a tired, content tangle on the backseat of the bus.

The clerk dumps the change in your hand. Your gaze flicks over it, perfunctory.

And I say, "You too, Pace."

You glance back to me. Then you give me a grin that belongs on a little boy, one who just stole his first kiss on a cheek or is about to get smacked for some other misbehavior.

It fits you. It always will.

My smile is just sweet debris.

I wait as you shove the money into your pocket. Together we walk to the door and push it open onto the night.

We went to fancy parties in New York.

I wore purple silk dresses with no underwear, your eyes always found mine across the room and our breath was the second thing discarded when we returned home. We lived in an apartment that had cream carpet and unguarded moments framed in black and white on the walls. I ate Chinese takeout on the living room floor, my back against the sofa and my legs stretched out in front as I told the news of my day. You killed time in the bathtub with a bottle of wine and me.

We promised to do the dishes, but we would go out to see a movie and remember days later when there were no glasses to be found. On the weekends we would lie in the park and lose small talk in the green green grass, my jeans old, your fingers tracing patterns on my arm. Out on the fire escape under twilight skies you painted my toenails crimson.

If we had finished the wine you would paint yours too, just to hear me laugh.

The door makes a swoosh sound behind us as we step down from the low stoop to the pavement. Light from the store window spills wan over the sidewalk and we hesitate on the fringes of it. We look at each other.

The evening air is affectionate, pressing warm, and we pause there together but it already feels separate.

"So…" I bite my lip lightly. "Which way are you headed?" and I edge a little to the left.

You lift a hand. "Toward Tremont." You shift on the spot.

We're drifting further, invisible inches with each word. I tip my head as I absently transfer my weight to my right foot. "I'm in the other direction."

Our eyes are shadow-boxing for a moment while the streetlife winds around and past us, oblivious. Then you take a breath and you shift again. "Well…" And I meet your gaze in a simple comprehension of what we lost.

Because, just now, it had almost felt like we were dancing.

We rode camels through Egypt, dove to the bottom of the ocean, and lay on our backs in the driveway of Graceland. We paid our respects to the largest ball of twine, got married and messed up the vows in our nerves. We went sailing again, crashed bicycles into a ditch, made angels naked in the snow, we fought, broke plates, had a family, and a garden, and kept our memories in albums on a shelf.

"I'd better get back to work," you say, and I shrug a shoulder understanding.

"Yeah, I've got some reading I have to finish up."

When you hug me there outside the convenience store, you hold me tight. And I close my eyes.

I was lying with you in your bed at the beach house. We had school the next day but right then I was stretched on my side, facing you, my leg slung across yours, and you asked me to tell you about one of our adventures.

I had been wearing a t-shirt and a pair of your old flannel pajama pants and your hand was warm on my skin in between the two. Your eyes had been closed, too tired to keep open, but you were listening as I told you the short tale.

Of how one warm June afternoon, when the sun was almost lost for the day, we would walk into the office of the dealer out on Markham Road and you, in that ugly orange Hawaiian shirt of yours, would ask to test drive the shiny Cadillac at the end of the lot. The dealer would be in the middle of an important call and we would promise to go just around the block as we took the keys from him. We'd ease out of the lot onto the highway, the top down. I would have old shoes on my feet that I'd kick off, let them lay on the floor of the car. You would turn to me there beside you, my hair blowing back in the breeze. And you would wonder with a grin "Define 'block'" as we drove past the old garage, past the Welcome to Capeside sign, and out of town.

We would never get caught. We would never come back. We'd just drive away, just you and me, to nowhere, to anywhere.

Your eyes had been closed, your breath even, and your mouth had curved gently. I like that you had said, your voice barely a rough murmur. I had inhaled deep, into the soft fabric of your t-shirt that was rumpled over your chest. Yeah.

And when your faint, drowsy whisper snuck back out in the dark of the bedroom, No monsters though, huh? I had known, in that awful bittersweet way of love, that I was happy.

I open my eyes slowly as we draw apart. It's a Tuesday night. There are people at the café around the corner, cars honking and it's not eight o'clock anymore. Our moment is up.

You look at me. "You behave in the big city, Potter."

I smile.

I smile so big it might break me in two, my stupid heart and confused head forever rent. But only a fraction of it surfaces on my lips.

"And you go easy on your staff," I say. "Hire a waitress with a bad attitude and tomboy tendencies or something."

"Who will bitch about cleaning the coffee machine."

"And fall for guys in Hawaiian shirts."

You hold my gaze for a moment more. And there they are, those stories of ours strung quietly in the familiar sweep of your grin for all and nobody but me to see.

"Okay," you agree.

We don't say goodbye.

I walk down the street, past the dry cleaners and the real estate office.

You walk the other way, past the art gallery, towards Tremont Street.

But really, we're still standing there in the secondhand light outside the store.

I've got a Coke, you're holding a cherry Slurpee, and a stolen Cadillac is parked at the curb. The night air is sticky, the traffic a passing lullaby.

And we're kissing.

Of all the adventures we never had, this is my favorite.