'So,' he said as we turned onto the main road, the muffler rattling, 'I've been thinking.' 'Yeah?' He nodded. 'You really need to go out with me.' I blinked. 'I'm sorry?' 'You know. You, me. A restaurant or movie. Together.' He glanced over, shifting gears. 'Maybe it's a new concept for you? If so, I'll be happy to walk you through it.' 'You want to take me to a movie?' I asked. 'Well, not really,' he said. 'What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I though saying that might scare you off.'

That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about.

I have boobs!" Chloe said again, a bit too loudly— she'd already had a couple of mini bottles at the Spot. "My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They're fantastic! My boobs are amazing.

But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.

If this was my instinct talking, I didn‟t want to hear what it was saying.

Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.