“As we talked I thought about him being gone. I thought about washing my sheets. I thought about the likelihood of him wanting to see me again. Mostly I thought about organizing my books alphabetically and dancing by myself to George Harrison songs.”

“I thought... that we could at least talk about books.”

“Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that “words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again.”

“I remember you. You were like burning firelight in that cave, all shimmery, dancing color." I lean closer over the island, mesmerized by his words, his hand on my face. If he keeps talking this way, he's going to see me like that again. "Tell me you thought about me. That you think about me now." "I thought about you," I whisper, "I've never stopped thinking about you." Somehow I doubt I ever will.”

“At my disbelieving look he sighed again. I thought about offering him an inhaler, but he continued.”

“But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.”