You have to promise you won't fall in love with me.

If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

without music he felt aimless and adrift.

I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn't enough. It will never be enough, this I know; yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside.

That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Not that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone.

You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can.