I kiss her and she finds the light switch and turns it off, and we're just lit in Pepsi-can colors and it's like we've finally found this other kind of conversation, this conversation in gestures and pulls and pushes and breaths and grasps and teases and glimmers and rubs and expectation.

How do you commemorate a year? A paper anniversary, but we are the words written down, not the paper.

You never let things go unanswered for too long. Emails. Phone calls. Questions. As if you know the waiting is the hardest part for me.

Then I go in the den and turn on Law & Order, since the only thing i can really count on in life is that whenever I turn on the TV, there will be a Law & Order episode.

You never get involved in the people's lives? The ones you're inhabiting?" I shake my head. "You try to leave the lives the way you found them." "Yeah." "But what about Justin? What made that so different?" "You," I say.

Let’s make plans,” I ventured. And Sofia smiled and said, “No, let’s leave it to chance.

It's the secret smile you get from knowing that, somewhere, there is someone who is yours. Not in the sense that you own her or control her. She is yours because you can say anything to her, whenever you need to. And she can do the same, whenever she needs to.