She smiled, and it was that same bright, beautiful smile I remembered from high school, the two perfect dimples like punctuation on an exclamation of joy. My heart swelled; left to my own devices, I probably would have gawped at her for a while and then said something like, “Gosh, you sure are pretty.”

Instead, I smiled back just a little bit, letting my eyes twinkle in response, letting her have the big, uninhibited emotional display and opting to present a more controlled happiness.

Well, I say “opted.”

*I think I may drop dead of sheer excitement,* I thought. *I don’t know how my heart hasn’t just fallen out of my chest.*

*Calm down,* thought Megan back to me. *We’re not through yet, just a little longer. Try to keep the blood pressure under control.*

I focused on breathing, felt the blood flowing through my veins and the beat of my heart, visualized the heart beating slower, more calmly. Megan, meanwhile was piloting my facial expression and gestures and voice as I said, “Listen, I’m in town for another couple of days, you want to get dinner?”

Sarah, the love of my high-school life — not that she knew it, or even that I existed, because I only ever spoke to her once, and that to say ‘excuse me, you’re standing on my hand’ at an assembly and even then I almost died of embarrassment — Sarah did the flirty thing with her eyes that I had never, ever seen a woman actually do in my direction before, glancing down and then up at me with eyes wide, and she said, “Sure, I’d love to.”

There was a certain amount of fumbling around — we’d made a tactical decision not to have a notepad or anything to write on handy; I fumbled through my pockets for a second before “discovering” a ballpoint in one pocket, and then Sarah offered me her hand and I wrote my cell phone number on it.

With a suave nod — Megan had practiced that nod for like fifteen minutes in the mirror in the hotel room, getting the nuances of it into muscle memory — I turned and walked across to the bar, where I grabbed a glass of wine spritzer and a little pastry thing and then found a convenient place to stand for a second, collecting myself. Ourselves.

*See,* thought Megan, *Nothing to it.*

*You’re amazing,* I thought back. *Even being inside while you’re doing it, I’m not sure how you did it.*

*The secret is simply not to panic.* Megan sounded businesslike and professional, but I could sense a preening tone.

*Okay,* I thought. *We should go, before I throw up or something.*

*No,* thought Megan. *We are going to stay, and we’re going to mingle, and we are going to be situationally aware and we’re going to look for opportunities that present themselves and we are going to exploit those opportunities.*

I took a sip of my spritzer. This sounded like a version of hell; I am not good at mingling, or smalltalk, or any of the things everybody does at parties. It seems like everybody sees these as fun activities, but to me it’s always felt like having been forcefully signed up for a martial arts tournament five belts above your actual level; it’s all anxiety and getting punched in the emotions.

*Are you sure?* I thought, trying to keep the whine out of my mental tone. *We have what we came…* But we were already walking across the floor, heading for a knot of people around… Oh, shit.

*That’s Leland Cross,* I thought frantically. *Class clown, but also basketball star… he used to…* But then we were talking.

“Hey all,” said my mouth, Megan’s words. “How you re-you-ning?”

Leland turned toward me, a look on his face I remember distinctly from High School: target acquisition. Like he can’t believe his luck, my blundering across his crosshairs.

“Leland!” My hand shot out, looking like it was autonomously being drawn toward a handshake with Leland and I was just being pulled along; sort of adorably dorky, in fact. Leland took the hand, looking bemused. “Are you still at Hoffman?” Hoffman was the local industry; they processed and sold cotton.

I could almost hear Megan’s hands on the keyboard as she looked him up on the reunion Facebook group.

“Yeah,” said Leland. “Regional sales manager… what have you been up to?” Looking for material.

“Well,” Megan said through my lips, “After I graduated from Brown…”