It is not desire. Instead it is something deeper. I don't want to be with him constantly and forever. I want to be with him for the moment, and I want the moments to go on forever.

lying awake beside you, these thoughts run through my head.

A sound waiting to be a word.

Ted is smart and good-looking, but he doesn't use it to good effect, like a rich person that never gives to charity.

And just like that, the universe goes wrong. Just like that, all the enormity seems to shrink into a ball and float away from my reach. I feel it, and she doesn't. Or I feel it, and she won't.

The thing about champagne,you say, unfoiling the cork, unwinding the wire restraint, is that is the ultimate associative object. Every time you open a bottle of champagne, it's a celebration, so there's no better way of starting a celebration than opening a bottle of champagne. Every time you sip it, you're sipping from all those other celebrations. The joy accumulates over time.

How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?