Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.

He was looking at me, jsut as I'd thought he would be, but like Bert's, his light was not what I expected. No pity, no sadness: nothing had changed. I realized all the times I'd felt people stare at me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, able to reflect back the expression I thought one I wore, the feelings only I felt.

The silence wasn't like the ones I'd known lately, though: it wasn't empty as much as chosen. There's a entirely different feel to quiet when you're with some-one else, and at any moment it could be broken. Like the difference between a pause and an ending.

What do you do when you finally hear everything you've always thought said aloud?

It took a lot of work to be perfect.

When someone starts to change, and it’s obvious, it's sort of natural to wonder why. Right?

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.