And Pete didn’t respond to Ginette’s weird laugh.

So she looked back out at the horizon. And felt her mouth dry up, as if all of her saliva was racing up into her eyeballs and becoming tears. No, no, no. No tears, Ginette pleaded with herself. No tears.

But it was too late. Tears were falling.

They were hot.

And her neck and her head were, too.

And she could hear her heartbeat loud in her ears. And she could hear the sound of her blood whooshing through her veins and arteries. And she felt prickly all over. And like she might start sweating. Even though she was cold.

She wished Pete would say something. Anything.

But he didn’t.

And Ginette’s heart suddenly got so heavy.

And it sank.

And sank.

And sank.

And she decided that she just needed to get out of there—and fast. But when she tried to get up to go, she couldn’t—because her body wouldn’t move. Because that strange lightness she had been feeling had been replaced by a strange heaviness. It made her feel like she had a black hole inside her—and it was going to suck her body inside of itself.

Oh, what had she done?

She wished she could unsay what she had said. But once something is said, it can’t be unsaid. And Pete had heard it. She knew he had heard it. And anything that’s heard can never be unheard. That’s one of the greatest tragedies of being human. Once something is heard, it lives inside the hearer’s head and heart and can do good or do damage for the rest of their life.

WHY ISN’T HE SAYING ANYTHING?!? screamed Ginette to herself.

Pete would have been able to answer that question had he been able to hear it.

And his answer would have been that he was simply shocked by Ginette’s confession. It was nowhere near anything even remotely close to what he was expecting her to say. So it was taking him a long time to process what she had said.

But after maybe a minute—the longest minute of Ginette’s life—Pete had finally processed what Ginette had said.

And had figured out how he felt about what she had said.

And that strange lightness he had been feeling filled up his insides and seemed to course through his body and made his heart swell and seemed to force four words—urgently and breathlessly—out of his mouth: “I love you, too.”

And everything stopped even more than it was already stopped.

And Ginette and Pete felt like they were suspended in time and space—not breathing, not thinking, not moving.

And then … Ginette felt like some sort of cosmic upshifting was setting the universe in motion again.

And Ginette and Pete were breathing and thinking and moving again.

And both of them were feeling that strange lightness fill up their insides again. And this time it was reconfiguring their chemical compositions and molecular structures. Which may have explained why they were both feeling tingly all over. And why they were feeling weak and powerful all at the same time. And more alive than they’d ever felt.