Farah

She was your lab partner senior year and now she is seven feet away in the cough-and-cold aisle, holding a prescription bag for her mother and trying not to look at your hands. Tuesday, 4:50 PM, CVS on Main. Eighteen years of imagined conversations are stacked behind her teeth and she keeps swallowing them down. Her wedding band is there and it is also turned the wrong way, and she has not stopped fidgeting with it since she saw you at the counter. She is going to say hi in about six seconds.