And me? My relationships since her had been frank disasters. I was in the same apartment as when she knew me. My legal practice was limping along. When we were engaged I had two partners, both had deserted me, and now I was practicing alone.

“As in love as in law,” I said in that fancy hotel bar.

“Things haven’t quite worked out the way we had hoped,” she said.

“No, not really.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“So am I. But more and more I find that life is nothing but regrets.”

“That is so sad.”

“It is.”

“But I know what you mean.”

“And I guess you’re just one more on the list.”

We parted with a hug and a shrug, a wan good-bye and good luck. As if the purpose of the whole thing was to lance the boils of bitterness that had grown like goiters on our necks so we could both, separately, go forward with our lives. But that wasn’t the purpose, was it? And even as I stepped out of that bar, I knew that wasn’t it. Because about some regrets in this world there is nothing you can do, but this was not one of them.

She called.

It was late on a Sunday night. I had been lying on my pleather couch, my shoes off, my head resting on my hands, remembering the way her lips would part ever so slightly in the middle of sex.

And she called. On my cell phone.

“Victor,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“I’ve been thinking of you.”

“Where are you?”

“Victor?”

“Because wherever you are, I’m coming.”

“I’m parked outside your building,” she said.

And this is the thing about falling into bed with your old lover: it is the best of both worlds. It is new, spanking fresh, spontaneous in the way it only is the first time with someone who has your blood and your soul at fever pitch. But it is also old and familiar, as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans. The steps, the sounds, the scents, as familiar as hearth and home.