“want to see you, but I’m not sure if we should do that. I want to hear about what’s going on, but I’m afraid thatwill only start everything again. I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’realways going to leave me, A. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.”

“I love you-I do-but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you're always going to leave me, A. We can't deny it. You're always going to leave.”

“You said before that you were tired. Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of letting everything stay unsaid. We spend all our time together, and we do it because we want to, right? And I guess I think a lot about that, and about us. And about … well, more. Us having more. It’s not about lust or sex or whatever you want to call it. I mean, some of it is that. But mostly it’s about belonging. When I’m with you, I belong. It just naturally felt like that. And I think it felt like that for you. But I don’t know where that leaves us, or even what that is. I’m just tired of trying to figure it out myself. I need the other half of the equation.”

“I want you to spend the night,” you said. And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it. If you had said, “Let’s have sex,” or “Let’s go to my place,” or even “I really want you,” I’m not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did. But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it with you.”

“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.”

“You may not have noticed, but I’m not what you’d call conventionally beautiful. In fact, you might say that I’m the opposite of that. Say, you know - to vocalize, sometimes ad nauseam? Do you think that there’s any minute in any day when I’m not aware of how big I am? Do you think there’s a single minute that goes by when I’m not thinking about how other people see me? Even though I have no control whatsoever over that? Don’t get me wrong - I love my body. But I’m not so much of an idiot to think that everybody else loves it. What really gets to me- what really bothers me - is that it’s all people see.”

“At one point they'd repeated everything enough, and I wanted to tell them to stop showing the planes hitting the tower. We didn't need to see it again. And yet I didn't turn it off. Because I was hanging on every minute, wanting to be there when whatever was going to happen next actually happened.”