“In the end, there wasn’t a right thing to say, only a right thing to do. So I sat further up on the bed and put my hand on Manuelle’s cheek and our mouths did the rest, finding each other even though our eyes were closed. I ceased to care about anything that wasn’t her body or mine as we wrapped ourselves around each other on the flower patterned quilt and I was closer to her than I’d ever been before. It wasn’t that we left therest of the world behind; it was the opposite. I could feel the world turning underneath us, I could hear birds outside and people laughing, and I felt that I waspart of it at last. With no part of my skin not touching Manuelle’s, I was part of the world at last. Or maybe I’m romanticizing, and we were just two kids doing everything two kids can do in a cramped room at the back of a caravan.”

“I closed my eyes. “Seth—”"And when I was there and Erik sent me wherever he did, I felt…well, it was beyond anything I’d experienced. At first, I was so confused and disoriented. I didn’t get what they were saying about finding you. It seemed surreal. Then, it was the easiest thing in the world. I just looked for you, and there you were. In all that space and all that chaos, reaching you was like looking into myself. We were so close…it defied physics and every rule of nature I knew. It didn’t seem real that I could be together with anyone like that.And when it was over, it’s like I said—I wasn’t sure what I’d just been a part of. But I knew that I had never experienced any bond like that with any other woman. Maybe you’re the only one, maybe there’s another…but regardless, I didn’t have it with Maddie. She’s amazing. I do love her. But in that situation again? I would never find her. And I knew it wasn’t fair to lead her into a life without that connection. You and I…I don’t understand what’s between us, but I’d rather spend my life alone than with someone who isn’t you.”

“I rested my cheek against his back and closed my eyes, breathing in his scent. It reminded me of his apartment, and his sheets, and the way he smelled when he walked around with a towel around his waist. The city blurred past us, and I didn’t care how fast he was driving, or how cold the wind was as it whipped across my skin; I wasn’t even paying attention to where we were. The only thing I could think about was his body against mine. We had no destination or time frame, and we drove the streets long after they had been abandoned by everyone but us.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.”

“I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.”

“even the slow, soft telepathic connection between us- the sense of connectedness that linked us even when we were in the same room- the sense that we were not two people but rather one ecstatic and indivisible whole, had vanished. i couldnt even feel his pain. but i could feel mine. i felt as if a part of myself had been cut off, as if there was within my soul a hole so gaping and empty that the whole world could pass through it and still i would not feel a thing.”