Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash. "I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks." "Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up. "You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said.

I could become a nun even if I am a non-believer. I'll learn to fake it like Nick did with me. I will minister the gospel of compassion and kindness and please, always use a condom, from famine-stricken nations to war-torn dead zones. It's possible I might become a nun who kisses other nuns.

It broke the spell. It's not that I stopped being happy. I was still inexplicably, utterly happy. But suddenly the happiness had implications.

Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me.

I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I'm in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart -I am listening and I am listening because what I'm playing isn't something I'm thinking about, it's something I'm feeling all over.

How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed...connection?

So he's worth a second shot? The more apt question, my dear, is: are you?