THE WEEK AFTER SHE met Gavin in the Market Basket, Lily went to group. Or, rather, she went to the Eaglewood Presbyterian parking lot. All week, she thought about his invitation—about him in his entirety. It was as if he had spread to her when she placed her hand on his wrist, creating a new, buzzing layer of skin. And every time she imagined seeing him again, she felt that animal satisfaction of an itch properly, gloriously scratched.

So when the day came, she got herself to the church—leaving a note for Silas, an appropriate lie followed by a line of x’s—but she couldn’t get herself to go inside. She turned off the sedan in the parking lot and watched, sitting low, as people filtered in. She had put on a baseball cap, but it made her feel ridiculous. Like a teenager, or, worse, an unimaginative woman trying not to be recognized.

Twenty minutes after the meeting began, Lily, still in her car, turned the key in the ignition and told herself she was going home. She pulled out of her spot and drove the length of the church, thinking that if she got on Maple, she could stop by the dry cleaner’s. But that’s when she saw him through the large windows.

Gavin stood at the front of the room, behind a wooden podium. The audience, on plastic chairs in a semicircle, was small but rapt. Sunlight beamed through the old paned windows to fill the remaining space. His face was drawn, and after each of his sentences all the heads in the room nodded, so that together they created a rhythm. Even then, just her second time seeing him all grown up, his face hit like the sweetest of punches to her gut. She was caught off guard by the force with which she wanted to reach out and touch him, and she had to grip the steering wheel instead.

Lily pulled into a spot out of view and crossed the spit of manicured lawn to stand next to the open windows of the church. She leaned her back against the bricks warmed by the sun and closed her eyes.

“Almost two decades ago, my twin sister, Sarah, was murdered. I know that it’s been so long because of the calendar on my phone, and because when I look in the mirror, I am not the teenage boy I was on that day. Not nearly.”

The crowd chuckled kindly.