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I scrunch my shoulders “Yeah, not sure about that I doubt anyone remembers me”

“Girl, stop” She patsstar of every theater production Whiskey Springs High ever put on I swear your personality entered the room before you did Reeoo? And that other ti study hall and you recited that ht or so so easily Are you still acting? I heard you ran off to acting school or so?”

Humbled, I press my lips into a firm line and nod “I am And I did”

“Have I seen you in anything?”

“Only if you’ve been to New York and gone to an off-Broadway play …”

“Oh So … adult films … but I told them there was absolutely no way”

“Wow Yeah, definitely not Gotta love those rumors …” Apparently I should’ve come home sooner to dispel some of those

Her phone vibrates and she lifts her hand to her tawny decolletage “Oh, this isyou and please, please, please coht but we’re pre-drinking at Raina’s at six I’ll text you all the info”

With a little wave, she sashays toward the checkout with her cart, gabbing with her husband about stopping at the feed store on the way home

I grab a few bananas, sorapefruit LaCroix, a box of white cheddarout myself

I take the roundabout way home—the way that winds and a up, I used to tease Wyatt about being neighbors While my house was technically in town, it was the last one on the street, just before the road that leads straight to Wyatt’s place ten miles down Given that there were no other homes between us, my father used to refer to him as “the boy next door”

By the ti white farmhouse with the wraparound porch co the wheel, I cruise past the ghost of what once was

Ifcoach were here, she’d probably ask me, “Where do you feel it? In which part of your body does this feeling live?”

Everywhere, I would tell her

I feel it everywhere