When a freelance job took me from my home in Seattle to San Francisco some time ago, I decided to stay on an extra day after the meetings and look up my old girlfriend, Jill. We hadn’t seen each other since I’d unceremoniously broken things off 11 years earlier. In the intervening decade, I had lost both my parents, my father just six months earlier. I’d had some critical success with a novel, while Jill, I’d heard, had married and become a successful Bay Area attorney. I wanted to catch up and to see how she had changed. Beyond my surface reasons for getting together, I had a deeper motive.

When a freelance job took me from my home in Seattle to San Francisco some time ago, I decided to stay on an extra day after the meetings and look up my old girlfriend…

When we first knew one another, Jill was a partner in a struggling, altruistic San Francisco law firm; I was a feast-or-famine book reviewer for an alternative Seattle tabloid. Neither of us had much money, and we saw each other whenever one of us could scrape together the airfare.

When the time came to start talking about a more permanent arrangement, I panicked. Something wasn’t right. Jill and I didn’t mesh. I felt like a fish out of water with her friends, and it terrified me that I would start to feel the same way with her. So, back home in Seattle, I simply stopped calling her.

I was old enough to know better than to end things in such an insulting way. Something told me a clean break was best, though deep down, I also knew there was no such thing when it came to love.

There was no fallout from Jill’s end; no rancorous letters, no hysterical midnight phone calls. I took her silence for tacit agreement: We were perfect guests in each other’s lives, and nothing more.

I had no regrets about my abrupt decision, though I knew it had hurt Jill terribly. The passing of time had not made me feel any better about that. In fact, I couldn’t seem to get it out of my mind, impossible both to forget and to forgive. I wanted to make things right, so I decided to take the opportunity of this San Francisco work trip to apologize.

“It’s Tom,” I said when I called her office from my hotel room. Jill had her own firm now where she mentored the same sort of principled young attorneys that she herself had once been. There was a pause at the other end. Then she said, “How are you, Tom?”

Her voice was still intimate and seductive, as smoky as a blues singer’s, yet I heard none of the welcome that I remembered. In fact, her tone was clipped and bone-dry.

Her voice was still intimate and seductive, as smoky as a blues singer’s, yet I heard none of the welcome that I remembered. In fact, her tone was clipped and bone-dry. Nervously, I explained that I was in town for a freelance job, and then cleared my throat and took the plunge. “I was hoping we could meet for a drink and catch up,” I said.

She hesitated, obviously guarded. I remembered she was always this way, hyper-cautious, over-scrupulous, too often bleeding the spontaneity out of seemingly simple decisions.

“You’ve caught me at kind of a busy time,” Jill said. “Can I call you back?”

“Sure,” I said, certain I was being blown off. Well, I thought, I had that coming. I wasn’t surprised and had hoped that at least this small effort would help ease my guilty feelings. That guilt, however, was compromised: I was relieved not to have to face her — I could well have saved myself from a tongue lashing.

My meetings went well — the client, a wealthy, nearly illiterate software developer, loved my proposal. By the time I got home there would be a hefty check waiting in my mailbox. Walking back to my hotel through Union Square that evening, my phone rang. It was Jill.

“How does 6 p.m. tomorrow night sound?” she asked.

Jill’s voice had the same unpleasant edge from our earlier call, a rumor of anger. Almost without thinking, after I’d agreed and hung up, I walked into Neiman Marcus. Though I hated to shop, I decided I needed something special to wear to meet Jill — looking my best might incline her to be kind. Luckily, I found the perfect thing, a shirt created by a young Asian designer. It was beautifully cut and carefully made, but what drew me to it was its deep, calming blue-green, the very color of serene meditation. The designer’s tag, in fact, called the shade “Buddha’s Dream.” No disgruntled former lover could let me have it with both barrels while I was wearing a prayer.

 The designer’s tag, in fact, called the shade “Buddha’s Dream.” No disgruntled former lover could let me have it with both barrels while I was wearing a prayer.

At Jake’s, a large, bustling North Beach restaurant, I scored a table in the bar and sat so that I could see the front door. Jill arrived at six exactly. She was as beautiful as ever. Her dark hair, still shoulder-length, was now shot dramatically with gray. Surprisingly, she glanced around the bar with a look of pleasant apprehension. That look, the last thing I expected, instantly sent me back to our time together. I felt I had done the right thing by arranging to meet. But it was more than that, much more than mere satisfaction — suddenly, here was an enormous flood of emotions and resurrected sensations that I couldn’t sort out or name.

When she saw me, she gave an unreserved smile, and those feelings welled up so powerfully that I thought I would weep. As she drew near, though, she seemed to falter and the smile faded. The abrupt change left me swamped, unable to think. And then she was in front of me, giving my cheek a quick kiss, looking away from our table and settling into her seat.

“Pretty shirt,” she said.

Her petulance was all too recognizable — she used to pout like this when a decision had been made without her. Why on earth, at this late date, should she care what kind of shirt I wore? It annoyed me enough to play my old patience role.

“Is the shirt a mistake?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. It’s beautiful.”

The waiter interrupted, taking our drink order. Since things had suddenly taken an awkward plunge, I decided to make my apology immediately and maybe salvage the evening. We passed some small talk about the weather, bridge traffic, my flight down. When the waiter brought our drinks and we’d given each other a cheerless toast, I cleared my throat and started in.

“I asked you to meet me because I want to tell you how wonderful you are and how sorry I am for treating you so badly. I knew wonderful things would happen for you, and I am delighted to see that they have, because you deserve the best.”

Halfway through, I sensed disaster looming, but pushed on. The last sentence seemed to go on forever. When I finished, I glanced up quickly. Jill was looking off into the crowd, her brow in a knot.

“You know something,” she said, “I really appreciate that. It’s very big of you.”

Quickly, in case I had more to say, she began telling me about her husband, Gerald, and all the traveling they had done. My attention wandered until I heard her pause. In a respectful tone, she said:

“I heard that your father passed away a few months ago. I’m so sorry.”

“Dad had a good life,” I said. “He used his time very well. I wish I could say the same thing.”

Jill looked puzzled. “I read your book, Tom. It seems to me you used your time really well. Gerald loved it too. He wants to know if you’re working on another one.”

“Not really,” I said. “Freelance pays better.”

I was half joking, but Jill looked shocked. “You always said you loved writing novels, even when you couldn’t get anywhere with publishers. You used to say, ‘Writing is a cathedral; publishing is a single dust moat in that cathedral.’ I loved your priorities and your passion.”

“Priorities can’t buy you security,” I said, then added quickly, “Would you like another drink?” I wanted her to shut up.

Jill shook her head, that concerned look deepening.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you okay? Gerald thought you might be ill and visiting old friends for the last time.”

“Gerald this, Gerald that!” I snapped. “Can’t you just leave Gerald out of it?”

Jill looked horrified. I sighed heavily. “Look,” I said more calmly, “I’m sorry. I just came here to apologize. That’s it.”

“I don’t think you know why you’re here.” She paused. “When you started your apology speech, I thought, ‘This guy is making a play. He wants another chance.’”

“Someone’s got a high opinion of herself.”

“Tom, listen to yourself. You can’t stand hearing about my husband. And you bought a shirt the exact same color as the one I bought you years ago. How am I supposed to take that?” she demanded.

I blinked. She was obviously right about my attitude toward Gerald. She was also dead right about the shirt, the one she had given me. I had completely forgotten about it. She used to tell me the color, the cool, calming tones of a summer forest at dusk, made me beautiful, and yet she wore the shirt more than I did, mostly with nothing else on. Now, all I could think to do was repeat myself: “I’m sorry.”

“I should go,” I added after a long silence. When I stood, she stood with me, a troubled look on her face. She watched me drop money on the table for our drinks. I could see the cogs working. We left the restaurant together.

Out in the street, Jill said, “Why did you really want to get together?”

“Why did you say yes?” I asked impatiently. “On the phone, you sounded negative. Let me guess,” I said. “Gerald talked you into it.”

“He said it would be good for me. The jury is still out on that one. What are you doing here, Tom?”

“Oh give it up, for God sake.”

“You’re lost,” Jill said, almost in a whisper.

“It’s as if you’ve come back here to try to pick up the threads of an old life, one you understand and are comfortable with. You’re putting moves on your old girlfriend that you don’t acknowledge. Your parents have stranded you with your own mortality. Worst of all, you’ve given up on writing — real writing …”

“I’m leaving in the morning. You’ll never see me again.”

“You’re lost,” Jill said, almost in a whisper.

I felt my jaw tighten. ““Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” I said.

“You’re lost,” she repeated. “You’re trying to find something familiar, only it’s not yours anymore.”

“You’re talking like this to get even with me for the way I broke up with you,” I said.

Her face opened up with surprise, then relaxed. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing. When you left me, I never got to say my piece — you took that from me. I never got to say how great it all was and to tell you goodbye. Thank you for giving me the chance now, Tom.”

And before I could react, she put her arms around me and hugged me uncomfortably hard for a long time. At the moment when it became so intolerable that I wanted to squirm out of her grasp, she finally pulled away, her face streaming tears. Without another word, she turned, walked away, and disappeared in the dark.

I disappeared as well, or that’s what life felt like for a time, back in Seattle — hiding in plain sight while I figured things out. Eventually, I realized how foolish it was to apologize when what I really needed was a way to forgive myself for trying to abandon my life.

I haven’t seen or talked to Jill since our drink at Jake’s. And I’ve never worn the blue-green shirt again. When I brought it home from California I hung it in the back of my closet and forgot about it. Not long ago, when I discovered it there and realized that its soft, dense Buddha tones had turned from a dream into a gift, I packed it up in a shopping bag with some other old clothes and took it to Goodwill, sending it on its way with a prayer.