My grandfather left me a watch, which, for a man’s watch, fit me pretty well, and I made an appointment with this jeweler to have it appraised, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get there, so I left a little too early, and rather than go into the shop, which was in this kind of high-end strip mall, I went into an upscale grocery, where I ran into Shane, whom I hadn’t seen since grade school. It took me a moment to recognize him. “Shane?” I said, and at first he didn’t know who I was. “Alina,” I said. “From McCollough. Second grade. We lived two houses away that year.”

“Wow,” he said, “Alina. Wow. What are you doing here?”

I told him about the watch and I showed it to him. “Very nice,” he said, taking my hand, and something about the way he held my hand or maybe the way his eyes stared into my eyes made my nipples tingle and my cunt clench. Blushing, I took my hand away.

“I come here to buy chocolates or cookies,” he said. “They’re expensive but good. The cookies. You have to try one. I like the white chocolate macadamia.” He put two in his sack. “And the oatmeal.” He selected two of those.

“Stop by after your watch thing and we’ll try them,” he said. “I live just around the corner.” He told me the address, and after the jeweler appraised my watch, not worth a small fortune, but I didn’t expect it would be, I went over to Shane’s. His apartment was on the second floor. I wouldn’t call it an upscale place but it wasn’t a slum. He welcomed me in. He had the cookies on a big plate.

I told him about the watch, that it wasn’t exceptionally valuable. “Well, there’s always sentimental value,” he said.

“I guess that’s right,” I said. “My grandfather was a good guy. We’d see him every summer in New York City. I used to watch him shaving. He had this bowl for the shaving cream and a brush, and he’d whip up the shaving cream, and sometimes he’d dot my nose with it. I tried to touch it with my tongue but I couldn’t reach. Just as well because I knew it wasn’t sweet like whipped cream. Maybe I could have reached it with my tongue but I pretended I couldn’t.”

Shane stuck out his tongue and tried to reach his nose. I did the same. We laughed.

Shane rubbed his face. “I guess I could use a shave,” he said. “Or a longer tongue.”

“Me too,” I said. “I mean the tongue, not the shave.”

By this time we were sharing the cookies.

“They are good,” I told him.

He said he likes them first thing in the morning with coffee. “I get up around three or four, make the coffee, and try to write a poem,” he said.

“So you’re a poet,” I said.

“Not published or anything,” he said.