Do you think I’ll ever get better at this? That my heart might someday stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me?

Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does.

As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried—late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses—that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them. Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.


Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.


I was laughing, actually laughing, and there wasn’t even anyone watching. I felt so weightless that I laughed again, just make the feeling last longer.


I threw my arms around him instinctively, wrapping them around his waist and pressing my face against his chest. He was so big, I felt like I was a child hugging a grown-up.