Free Flying by Megan Hart

as well as information on their delivery and installation services. And then she went downstairs, hooked up the shop vac and started cleaning up all the mess.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The only real, true time travel occurs in the mind. Scents and music and flavors make memories so vivid it’s like being there all over again. This time, it was the sound of her name in a voice that had once been familiar but which she hadn’t heard in a really long time.
    “Stella?”
    It’s almost impossible not to turn around when someone says your name, kind of like the way most people will automatically take something if it’s thrust toward their hands. Stella wasn’t used to hearing her name shouted in a crowd, so she’d have turned even if it had been meant for someone else. Her heart was already pounding.
    “Craig. Hi.” Her mouth stretched into a smile she knew was too wide. “Wow.”
    He was smiling too. “Yeah. Wow. It’s been a really long time.”
    Stella could’ve counted the length of it in months, weeks, days. Hours and minutes, actually, though admitting it would probably freak him out. It had been too long. Or maybe not long enough. The way her pulse leaped and her stomach twisted, she couldn’t be sure if she was happy to see him or ready to run away.
    “Too long,” Craig said after a few seconds passed, Stella unable to speak.
    “Yes,” she managed, relieved her voice didn’t shake. “Way too long. How’ve you been?”
    “Good. I’ve been good. How are you? You look...great.”
    Her breath tried to catch in her throat, and she forced a swallow instead. Once upon a time, he’d said other things to her that had made it hard for her to breathe. Time had passed. They would pretend it hadn’t happened; they’d been good at that. But she remembered.
    “You too.”
    They stared for too long. Stood a little too close for long-lost strangers bumping into each other in front of the coffee shop. He wore the same cologne, and it still twisted her up tight and complicated inside.
    “Let’s go in,” Craig said. “Let me buy you a coffee.”
    Coffee. Lunch. That’s all it had ever been with them. And once, just once, a conversation in the rain.
    The day was bright and clear today with a perfect fall sky, blue and cloudless. Stella wore a short skirt with patterned tights and knee-high boots, a light jacket. She’d dressed this morning in anticipation of cooler weather, but all of a sudden she was far too warm. She had errands to run, places to be, things to do.
    “Let’s go,” she said.
    * * *
    It starts in the coffee shop in the next town, the one she started going to specifically so she could avoid her friends and get out of the house at the same time, away from anything that reminded her of her failing marriage. It’s where she goes with her laptop and notebook to sit for hours and make lists and submit her résumé to dozens of places she hopes won’t hire her. She sits and drinks cup after cup of coffee and makes herself look busy so she can convince herself she is.
    There’s a regular crowd in the coffee shop. There’s the woman who sits by the window, typing away and listening to her iPod—she writes books and is, if it’s possible, even more antisocial than Stella. There’s a man who stares at that woman when she’s not looking; Stella wonders how long it will take for him to work up the courage to talk to her. There’s a young mother who comes in every morning with her toddler son to drink a cup of coffee while he has some hot chocolate. Stella will never talk to her. The Bible club, its members in matching home-sewn dresses and prayer caps, would probably love to have her join them, but Stella’s so completely not religious she’s also certain she’d offend them all without even trying. There’s the salesguy who fills the orders for potato salad. He smiles and nods, but doesn’t linger. He, like the staff behind the counter, is friendly but too busy to make much conversation.
    Finally