And what if---what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you're nothing?

I told you we were meant to be," he says, still smiling, still so Finn, who was always here but who I just didn't see and now-- Well, now I kiss him.

He looks trapped, helpless and furious, and that’s a feeling I know too well. Know how much it hurts. Know how it holds you down, how every day there are a thousand little ways to see there is nothing you can do to change who or what you are.

I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue. Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.

Too late, too late, juice pouring does not a kind soul make, and I killed you.

The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.

..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.