Laura Nowlin

You think you deserve to be sad," he says. There is a moment of silence as we look at each other. "You think it is okay for you to be sad every day. But it's not okay. And you do not deserve it.

I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.

This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever.I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

Stay I whisper to him. Stay in the car. Stay in this moment. But of course he never does.