It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

And I agreed, but still, she owed us an explanation. If she was up there, down there, out there, somewhere, maybe she would laugh.

She didn’t understand why it was happening,” he said. “I had to tell her she would die. Her social worker said I had to tell her. I had to tell her she would die, so I told her she was going to heaven. She asked if I would be there, and I said that I would not, not yet. But eventually, she said, and I promised that yes, of course, very soon. And I told her that in the meantime we had great family up there that would take care of her. And she asked me when I would be there, and I told her soon. Twenty-two years ago.

And then we were kissing.....The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I rally like my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle.

Is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in. It was more than that. I know it was more than that.

The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn't over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.

I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well—but never quite perfectly, you know?