“Maybe we met out here and fell in love over bad barbecue.”

“You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.”

“Maybe we were together some other time.I can’t think when, I said.You tried not to look at me. Maybe five million years ago.People weren’t even people back then.”

“That must have been some serious Island voodoo: the ending I saw in the cave came true. The next day we went back to the United States. Five months later I got a letter from my ex-baby. I was dating someone new, but Magda’s handwriting still blasted every molecule of air out of my lungs.It turned out she was also going out with somebody else. A very nice guy she’d met. Dominican, like me. Except he loves me, she wrote.But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to finish by showing you what kind of fool I was.When I returned to the bungalow that night, Magda was waiting up for me. Was packed, looked like she’d been bawling.I’m going home tomorrow, she said.I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.”

“I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out —a place we down cats weren’t supposed to go. But love teaches you. Clears your head of any rules.”

“You whispered my full name and we fell asleep in each other's arms and I remember how the next morning you were gone, completely gone, and nothing in my bed or the house could have proven otherwise.”

“That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.”