The first thing she noticed was how old he looked

The first thing she noticed was how old he looked: old mustard-colored windbreaker, old Peruvian ski cap, even the bits of grey in his eyebrows. It had only been a year ago but already he existed in the realm of the drunken anecdote: the half-incredulous "Can you believe it?" laughed with friends over drinks, the evidence produced in analytic conversations regarding modern romance. To see him drifting towards her on the sidewalk through the wind and sleet -- it was like passing through the frame of a foreign film whose language she had forgotten, a movie she had watched half-asleep and could barely remember.

He passed her on the street, and she looked away -- hiding her face from him in case he noticed that she had gotten older, too. Who knew what he would remember of her? She hoped nothing. Nothing was what came out of it, after all. But he gave her a hard look as they passed by one another, and her face felt hot with shame and embarrassment because she knew he remembered.