“No, It does. And if I left, you’d probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to put it on, because the whole time I’d be knowing how perfectly it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all fucked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club and say, ‘Hey, that’s my jacket’ and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me- even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can’t ruin the image of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I, or anyone else could. If I don’t owe it to you, and I don’t owe it to me, I at least owe it Salvatore.”

“composure, n.You told me anyway, even though I didn’t want to know. A stupid drunken fling while you were visiting Toby in Austin. Months ago. And the thing I hate the most is knowing how much hinges on my reaction, how your unburdening can only lead to me being burdened. If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.You wait for my response.”

“Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there’s a DON’T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there’s always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don’t continue moving, it will all be over. That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I know I’ll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming.”

“finances, n.You wanted to keep the list on the refrigerator."No," I said. "That's too public."What I meant was: Aren't you embarrassed by how much you owe me?”

“Tikkun olam.”Exactly. Basically, it says that the world has been broken into pieces. All this chaos, all this discord. And our job - everyone’s job - is to try to put the pieces back together. To make things whole again.”And you believe that?”I guess I do. I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there’s a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don’t you feel we’re becoming more and more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces - they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that.”Do you really think it’s getting worse? I mean, aren’t we better off than we were twenty years ago? Or a hundred?”We’re better off. But I don’t know if the world’s better off. I don’t know if the two are the same thing.”You’re right.”Excuse me?”I said, ‘You’re right.’”But nobody ever says, ‘You’re right.’ Just like that.”Really?”Really.”…Then it hits me.Maybe we’re the pieces,”What?”Maybe that’s it. With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces. Maybe, what we’re supposed to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking.”Tikkun olam.”

“I'm still upset with my mother, though. And scared.If you lose me, I remember her saying when I was little and we'd go to a department store, just let one of those salesladies know, and they will take you to where I can find you. Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true-- that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.”

“We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—”“Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?”“Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”“Nobody does,” I assure him.”