I thought about that Michael Crichton book I read at the diner as I got ready for the basketball game. Maybe time travel was possible, after all. I was getting ready for a high school basketball game in my hometown, and I was attending the game with my high school sweetheart. Twenty years disappeared in the blink of an eye. I kept waiting for a nasty zit to announce its presence in the middle of my forehead.

At least my hair was better than it was back then. No poodle perm. I curled it into soft waves that hung down long enough to almost cover my breasts. I’d always thought my hair was my best feature, though men usually felt my breasts were the best thing I had going on. Knowing that Dawson had been checking me out in that sweater I wore a few nights back was gratifying. It was a far cry from my professional life, when I felt like I had to cover up from throat to knees to be taken seriously by my colleagues. It was still a man’s world out there.

He was right at the diner, naturally, and I was willing to admit it to him and myself. We were adults. We didn’t have to play games anymore. He was the most handsome, sexiest man I had ever known. Like a barely dormant volcano, he could blow at any moment. Everything was bubbling just under the surface. And that was extremely hot, the thought that I might be there when he blew.

I chewed my bottom lip at the thought, then gave my reflection a wicked smile.

One important thing had changed in the last few days—no, two things. First, I had made out with Dawson. Talk about time travel. The second was just as major: Life was short. Too short. I was surrounded by reminders of this as I packed up the remnants of Craig’s life. What was wrong with having a little fun with somebody familiar? I couldn’t keep reminding myself of past hurts and pushing him away because of that.

Even though he hurt you and you never came back partly because of him. My smile faded as I worked on my eye makeup. I watched my face fall. Was I kidding myself? There was too much between us for things to ever be casual. I was rationalizing our attraction because I wanted him so much. I had never stopped wanting him. But instead of putting on sweats and flipping on the TV and forgetting all about our would-be date, I continued with my makeup. And I reminded myself to be smart.

I was within walking distance of the school, so I told him I would meet him there. How many times had Craig and I walked there in the morning, or to his house from school in the afternoon? I could’ve done it in my sleep, no question. Nothing had changed, either. It was all the same. Same homes, practically the same cars, even. I was willing to bet the same families, too. Just older.

I wondered what would’ve happened if I had come back after college. If Dawson still wanted me. I would’ve come back, too. I would’ve done anything to be with him back then. He was the most real thing in my life. The only thing I had ever been completely sure of. I hadn’t even been that sure about Michael, and we were together for years.

That was what I had tried to get him to understand the night he pulled the rug out from under me. I had felt so stupid, thinking I would graduate and come home and get married when that wasn’t what he wanted. Yes, it was still important to me that I go to college—I had worked my ass off for four years to build my transcripts—but he was the single biggest dream in my life. I wanted us. He didn’t, and he wouldn’t tell me what had changed. Only that I needed to forget him.

I waved to Mrs. McGovern, who used to babysit me during the summer while Mom worked—at least until I was eight and deemed old enough to take care of myself. They couldn’t afford a babysitter in the first place, so as soon as I was tall enough to work the stove and reach the sink, I was in charge of the house. Still, she used to check in at least once a day. She always felt funny knowing I was on my own, or so she used to tell me.

Funny thing, memories. One of them could bring up so many others. As I walked, I remembered what it felt like to know I didn’t have the same sort of life the rest of the kids had. I was a pretty mature kid—that came from raising myself, or maybe I raised myself because I was mature. Either way, I figured it out pretty early on that my parents weren’t like other parents. None of the kids in town had it made, of course. We were all on the lower side of middle class, with a few exceptions. Only most of the other kids had two parents, and those who didn’t at least felt like the parent they had cared about them. I never felt that way—maybe it was because Mom was always so tired. The woman had worked two or three jobs for as long as I could remember. Maybe it was because she was so sad. She had lost so many babies. She had a husband who couldn’t be bothered to act like one. He couldn’t be bothered to be a father, either. That sort of life would’ve made anybody sad. I couldn’t even blame her.

I remembered meeting Craig in the third grade. He was sick a lot when he was very little—asthma, weak lungs. His mom had homeschooled him back when homeschooled kids were considered weirdos, until the doctor decided he was strong enough to go to school with other kids. I didn’t think he was a weirdo. I thought the sensitive, bright, compassionate boy who shared his apple slices with me at lunch that first day was the nicest boy I had ever met. Even nicer than Dawson, who I had known since kindergarten. I introduced them in the schoolyard on the first day, and that was it. The rest was history.

I used to wonder if it was that early childhood illness that drew Craig to medicine. He had especially loved working with kids. His explanation was that they never argued his diagnoses and very, very rarely had anything to do with their illness or injury. Sure, he’d get the tomboy or rough houser who had bounced off the bed or fallen out of a tree and broken something. But he didn’t meet the chronic smokers and drinkers who had done everything in their power to kill themselves. It wasn’t their fault. He could identify with the really sick ones, too. He never told me that part, but I knew him well enough to know he saw himself in them.

I shivered and noticed the way my breath hung in the air. It had been a fairly warm day for November, but once the sun set the air had turned cold. I pulled up the collar of my coat and walked a little faster. I couldn’t walk fast enough to escape the incessant pull of my past. It was like semi-set concrete, making my legs feel like lead as I strode purposefully toward the school. The lights were blazing, and there were a handful of people standing around the doors to the gym. I saw the little glowing dots of their cigarettes, saw the cloud of smoke hanging over their heads. There were a lot of smokers still living there, I’d noticed. I remembered how cool I’d felt as a kid, smoking outside of school when the teachers weren’t watching. Even when it made me feel sick, I’d do it anyway.

I walked the length of the chain link fence separating the sidewalk from the outdoor basketball court, then the parking lot, and finally came to the entrance. It was dark and getting darker all the time, but there was no missing Dawson in the crowd. He was a head taller than the rest of the men and had maybe fifty pounds of muscle on all of them, too. He was laughing over something with Jake, who scooped me up in a big hug as soon as he saw me coming.

“Girl, I was just tellin’ Shana today how good it would be to see you!” He put me on my feet and took two steps back, then looked me up and down. “Damn, honey; New York’s been good to you.”

I smacked his arm with a disapproving smirk. “I hope you say sweet things like that to your wife, Jake Jackson.”

“I sure do. How do you think we got those three kids of ours?” He winked at me, and I gave him another hug. He looked pretty much the same, except his blonde curls were thinning a little along the top of his head. He smelled like smoke, so I guessed he hadn’t kicked the habit. I had shared my first cigarette with him when we were twelve years old.

“Hey. I’m sorry about Craig.” For once, he was serious. He touched my arm and looked at the ground. “It’s a shame it took something like this to get you back to town. It would’ve been awesome to hang out again, all of us. He was always the funniest person I ever knew.”

“Me, too.” I managed to smile.

“And hey, he’s the one who talked me into going to nursing school. Imagine that. Me, a male nurse.”

“It’s the twenty-first century, Jake. Men can do almost all the things women can do now.” I stuck my tongue out when I saw the look on his face.

“Speaking of which, we better get back inside to my woman and kids. The game’ll be starting any minute now.” He took off in front of me, while I hung back to finally say hello to Dawson.

He leaned in to give me a one-arm hug. “Looking nice tonight,” he whispered, and I tried to ignore the way his breath tickled the hair on the back of my neck. It was a no use. My nerves sizzled at his nearness. We walked in together, and I tried to ignore the amused looks around us—the whole town thought they were playing matchmaker, it seemed.

There wasn’t any room on the same row with the Jacksons, so we waved and continued climbing until we reached the top row. There was plenty of room up there, but that was about all the empty space we could find. It shouldn’t have amazed me the way it did that so many people came out for the high school basketball game, since there was so little else to do. And it was nice; I admitted to myself as I sat down, seeing everybody banding together to support the kids. It was a way for everybody to get together, too. There was nothing wrong with that. I could just imagine the way my friends in New York would laugh if they knew what I was doing just then. What were they doing, my coworkers and brunch buddies? Probably eating sushi and drinking overpriced martinis somewhere. Just like I had been doing the night before Craig died at my so-called book club meeting.

And I didn’t miss them. That was the worst part. If I never saw any of them again, it wouldn’t matter. The thought startled me, maybe because it felt so sudden and true. Not one of them had reached out yet to see where I had disappeared to. What did that say? What did it say that I hadn’t reached out to them, either? I used to tell myself our careers kept us busy as an excuse for not seeing each other very frequently, but that wasn’t entirely true. Did I have any real friends there?

The game started, which gave me something else to focus on. I spotted Jake and Shana’s son, Jake Junior, out on the court. A freshman playing Varsity. I could see why as soon as the game really got moving. He was one of the tallest kids on the team, so that was a plus, and the second he got his hands on the ball it looked like he’d been practicing his entire life. If Shana’s obstetrician told me the kid had come out with a basketball in his hands, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“He’s amazing!” I said to Dawson over the roar of the crowd after Jake Junior scored his third three-point shot.

“He is. Loves it, too. You can tell.” He pointed to the boy with the big smile on his face. Yes, he loved it. I could just imagine how proud Jake and Shana were—especially Jake, since he was always athletic in spite of his smoking.

I looked around at the other people in the stands and saw too many familiar faces to count. Just being there in the gym was a blast from the past. But instead of Jake and Shana holding hands or making out, they were wrangling two of their kids while cheering for the third. And they weren’t the only ones. We were the older generation all of a sudden.

We went outside during halftime, at which point the home team was up twenty-seven points thanks in no small part to Jake Junior. “No wonder he plays Varsity already,” I said in amazement. Jake came out, all smiles, and lit a cigarette. We let him play the proud papa for a while.

I hardly noticed when Dawson took my hand. One second it wasn’t there, and the next it was. I didn’t pull away. It felt natural, like I had stepped into some parallel universe in which I hadn’t left town, and we were together as a couple watching our friend’s kid play basketball, the way we did every weekend during the season. Maybe we would have some kids of our own, too.

If anybody thought it was strange that we were holding hands, they didn’t give me any indication. It might have been that they didn’t dare, since it would mean challenging Dawson’s right to take my hand that way.

His touch was comforting and electric at the same time. I felt more alive than I had in years when my hand was in his. Every so often, his thumb would run over my knuckles. The most elementary and innocent of caresses, but one which made me glow from the inside out. My heart raced double time, even as I did my best to stay casual.

The game was about to start up again, and everybody filed back inside. There was talk of going out afterward to one of the bars nearby. I turned to Dawson with a smile. “Did you want to go hang out after the game?”

He surprised me by shaking his head. “Honestly, I would rather not even go back inside now. I spend all day surrounded by noise.”

I turned to him. “What do you want to do instead?”

We were alone. Everybody else was inside. My hand was still in his. He took my chin in his other hand and pulled me in for a slow, lingering kiss that left no question as to what he would rather be doing. I sighed a little and pulled his arm around my waist, our hands still clasped behind my back. He took the cue and held me close to him. I felt his heart racing just the way mine was.

Too soon, he pulled back. “Does that answer your question?” His forehead touched mine, and we stood there, breathing hard. “All I could think about in there was how bad I want to get you home and take your clothes off.”

“Yeah?” I whispered between gasps for air.

“Except the boots. The boots can stay.”

I giggled. “We’ll see what I can do about that.”