“I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.”

“We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.”

“We had so much to say to each other, like we’d been quiet our whole lives until we met. It was as if I had underestimated how hungry I was for a companion, how much I needed to be understood, to be pursued, to be seen and to be reflected in someone’s eyes.”

“He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.”

“I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.”

“If they were the jokes, I was the punch line.”

“That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.”