When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not yet completed.

There were so many levels to the unknown, from safe to dangerous to outright nebulous, scariest of all.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.

And so, while the rest of the world went on unaware, drinking their coffee, reading the sports page, and picking up their dry cleaning, I leaned forward and kissed Dexter, making a choice that would change everything. Maybe somewhere there was a ripple, a bit of jump, some small shift in the universe, barely noticeable. I didn’t feel it then. I felt only him kissing me back, easing me into the sunlight as I lost myself in the taste of him and felt the world go on, just as it always had, all around us.

There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.

Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible