Prompt: rare words meme - send in a word for a drabble or starter based on it.

Prompt word: retrouvaille - the joy of meeting or finding someone again after a long separation; rediscovery

Shelly is a freshman in college here. This focuses less on the joy and more on the rediscovery part of the definition.

Shelly yawned as she left her English Lit course. This was her last class of the day and she wanted nothing more than to crash in her dorm room for awhile.

She had been in college for a week now and had quickly discovered that it was a vast improvement over high school. She could make her own class schedule, eat whatever and whenever she wanted, and associate with whoever she chose for the most part.

And the guys were much, MUCH hotter.

"Excuse me? Are you Shelly Marsh?"

Shelly inwardly groaned. A lot of Park County High kids had ended up at Colorado State, with its eighty-four percent acceptance rate and in-state tuition fees. She should have known that she would bump into some turd from high school sooner or later.

Shelly turned around to find the poster child for tall, dark, and handsome standing behind her.

Holy shit, this guy is a fucking Adonis! she thought. There was also something vaguely familiar about him, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She was pretty sure that he didn't go to high school with her.

"Yeah?" Shelly replied cautiously

"Do you remember me? I'm Amir. We used to talk online? We met up that time in California?"

Shelly remembered him, alright. She was hopelessly, embarrassingly obsessed with Amir when she was thirteen. She cringed as she remembered her hysterics when the internet went down and she couldn't talk to him.

She also remembered going home after the internet was restored and waiting patiently to hear from him. She spent hours refreshing her browser, hoping for something, anything. She had eventually resigned herself to the fact that her hideous face had scared Amir away. She couldn't really blame him.

"Oh. Hey," Shelly said shortly. "Well, see you." She made her way down the corridor.

Amir followed her as she exited the building. "I saw your name on the attendance sheet. I was hoping that it was you. I remembered that you lived in Colorado. You look… different."

Shelly glowered at him. She hated being reminded about her awkward stage. "Aren't there any colleges in Montana?"

Amir seemingly didn't pick up on Shelly's frosty tone. "Colorado State was the farthest away from Park City that my parents could afford. So, how have you been?"

Shelly gaped at him. What fucking audacity! "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"

Confusion flashed across Amir's handsome face. "I- I'm sorry? Did I do something to offend you?"

"You dumped me without a word all of those years ago and you have the balls to come up to me like nothing happened? God, you're such a turd!"

"Wait, what?"

"Stay the fuck away from me!" Shelly flipped him off and stormed across the quad.

Amir effortlessly caught up with her. His legs were much longer. "What do you mean that I dumped you? You dumped me!"

Shelly angrily whirled around. "What the hell are you talking about, turd? You saw what I really looked like and ghosted me! And now that I've lost my headgear and gone up a couple of cup sizes, you're suddenly interested! You're just like the turds that I went to grade school with!"

"No, you're the one who dumped me!" Amir insisted. "And I get it. You're from a shithole small town, just like I am. Those places aren't exactly crawling with guys who look like me."

Shelly stopped in her tracks, incensed. "Are - are you calling me a racist?!" She was offended by Amir's insinuation. She might have been a bitch but she was no bigot!

Amir flushed at that. "No! I - it's just that growing up in Park City sucked, okay? I spent my entire life being called a terrorist. Girls avoided me like the plague. I guess I thought -"

"Well, you thought wrong, turd!" Shelly snapped. "I thought that you were super cute, for your information!" It was Shelly's turn to flush. Did she really just say that out loud?

"So then why did you stop e-mailing me?"

"I didn't! You stopped e-mailing me! And how the hell did you actually think that I stopped talking to you because you're Middle Eastern? Your name is fucking Amir! I wasn't exactly expecting you to be a WASP!"

Amir looked contrite. "Look, I didn't mean to hurt you. It was just awkward, you know? I told you all of this personal stuff. I guess I was just embarrassed. But you could have e-mailed me!"

"I did! Didn't I?" Shelly racked her brain. Surely she had contacted Amir after their meeting in California!

"No, you didn't. I used to check my e-mail ten times a day hoping to hear from you."

Shelly was at a loss for words. She had convinced herself that Amir wanted nothing to do with her after they met in person. She was so busy brooding about this that she failed to notice that she had inadvertently ghosted him.

"I guess that I could have contacted you," Shelly said gruffly. "I was embarrassed too. I told you stuff that nobody else knows about to this day."

The pair lapsed into silence as they continued their walk across campus.

"Look, let's just start out fresh, okay?" Amir spoke up after a couple of minutes. "Do you want to grab a coffee or something?"

Shelly considered this. Despite everything, Amir seemed like a nice guy. And it didn't hurt that he was smoking hot.

She smirked. "Okay. But you're buying, turd!"

Fun fact: Park City is a real small town in Montana.