She was sitting in a corner of the café, her hair fanned out over her shoulders, nursing something hot in a large yellow mug and wearing a long emerald green turtle neck sweater with black leggings, the kind his daughter seemed to wear everyday.

Of course he recognized her the moment he walked in—a man does not forget his first love; no matter how many years have passed since last seen.

Well, the thing about first loves, first loves always look better in the mind, in the idyllic subjective land of memory, the place where things like pimply complexions and metal-filled mouths disappear, not that she had suffered either.

Still, memory is no match for time; the trick of time makes a first love all the more special when remembered. Yet now, even with him--a scientist, a man of reason--seeing her across the room, she was lovelier, more beautiful, and yes more precious than even he remembered. And the scene in his mind of a girl and a boy running across the sand made his vision blur.

"Give me your hand," he said.

"No," she said, smiling backing away from him.

"You don't come to the beach and not get in the water. Give me your hand."

"No," she said, laughing her hair whipping around in the wind.

"Natalie," he said, "Oh, come on! Give me your hand"

"No," and before he could say anything else she was running across the beach, but not to the surf--toward the rocks and the path leading away from the beach, away from him.

He called out her name, "Natalie!" But it was too late, she was gone.

He blinked and the vision disappeared. This time when he looked, she was no longer alone. He smiled, turned, and went on his way—she never saw him—and seeing her just then, for that fleeting moment, could last him another twenty years.

______

Trace Sheridan's prose, poetry, and photography have been published in the US and UK and can be found in online journals 55 Words, BluePrintReview, Nerve House, All Things Girl, Static Movement, Libbon, to name a few. She is the co-founding editor of 34thParallel a quarterly print magazine that features fiction, poetry, photography and interviews with new and emerging writers and artists. She lives in southern California with her husband and  young son.