I am in love with you', I responded. He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh. 'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.' It was my turn to laugh.

You were the vampire in my dream. My perfect one.

Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.

I am in love with you', I responded. He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh. 'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.' It was my turn to laugh.

And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.

We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?

Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.