“Dreamers Learn to Steer by the Stars” by Michael Webb

I had found her on Facebook, one of those chance encounters you have in the 21st century- a friend of a friend had a name that rang a bell in my mind. A short note asking if she was the same Shari I remembered, and then a connection is made.

By chance, we were in the same city, briefly, and we agreed to meet for coffee. She was still gorgeous, warm and curvy with deep black hair, lovely eyes, and cute little glasses that made her look like a barrista or a sexy librarian. She sat there, her skirt revealing just the right amount of Stairmastered thigh, a high heel dangling from one toe.

She had tea, while I had coffee. We compared notes- industries, college, marriage, children- all the checkpoints from age 12 to the present. “I remember-”, I began, “the last night of camp, when we were all down by the lake. I was staring up at the stars, while we were singing all those songs, looking into all that eternal emptiness . You had your bathing suit on, with a sweatshirt over it, because it was getting cold. You sat next to me, near the back, and you reached over and took my hand, and I was so excited, so happy, because a girl had never held my hand before.”

She looked at me, her brown eyes warm behind her cat’s eye glasses, and said evenly, “No, I don’t remember that at all.”

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