The stranger seemed to recognize my fear.
“It’s not what you’re imagining.”
“Then who are you?”
He reached carefully into his jacket.
I stiffened.
But instead of a document or a phone, he took out a small photograph.
The paper was old.
Its corners were worn.
He placed it on the table and slid it toward me.
I looked down.
And felt as though the entire room had shifted.
In the photograph, a teenage girl stood in a blue satin dress.
Beside her was a boy wearing a rented tuxedo.
A school gymnasium decorated for prom filled the background.
I knew that photograph.
I hadn’t seen it in thirty years.
I looked up.
“How do you have this?”
The man gently touched the boy’s image.
“Because that’s me.”
He paused.
“I’m Peter.”
Lo miré.
Peter.
My first love.
The boy I’d dated in high school.
