We didn’t talk long, just enough to catch up on the recent news: Karin’s new restaurant, Dan’s new dog. When her dinner arrived, she asked me to stay, but I decided I’d been there long enough. I figured I still owed it to my dead wife to despair a little this evening.

“But maybe I’ll see you around?” I said.

“Definitely,” she said. “I’m here until Monday.”

“I’m here until Monday, too,” I said, and hurriedly, as her plate steamed, we exchanged cell phone numbers and hugged one more time.

“I really can’t believe you’re here,” she said again.

“Your food’s getting cold,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“You better.”

That night, sitting in the cottage, drinking my whiskey and watching the moon, I found myself thinking not about Judy, but about Alissa Donegan. Seeing her had stirred something up in me.

I’d known Alissa a long time, almost as long as I’d known Judy. We’d all met through Jill, the former roommate of my former girlfriend Amy, and for a few bright years we had spent a lot of time together. We’d shared the same clique, gone to the same parties, passed the same gossip. Before Judy and I had finally committed, I’d sometimes even wondered if there might be something more between Alissa and me. I could still remember a few times when the line had almost been crossed: a late-night back porch after a birthday party; an afternoon riverbank, alone on the rocks. We’d always had other things going though, other commitments. And, I told myself, I had never wanted to play the game that getting her would have entailed.

Then the pairings had been set and the tribe had dispersed. Amy and Jud. Addie and Sean. Myself and Judy. Alissa and I had remained friendly, but over time we had drifted apart. The fact that we’d known each other over two decades now was hard to comprehend.

I sat in the bay window, reluctant to admit just how often I’d nursed thoughts of Alissa over the years. I used to imagine us together someday in an alternate life, in a house full of hanging ferns and succulents and at least one sumptuous Persian rug. I could remember nights when I’d thought of her with such longing that her name was like a bell gonging in my brain. I figured everyone had this kind of person in their heads. A phantom of missed possibility. An almost lover. We all lived with them, knowing they were just figments of our imagination, but never entirely getting rid of them either.