Alexia’s words haunted her. He had said it so many times to her, and she didn’t always understand it, at first, thinking it was a line on his part. But after he died, she understood it perfectly. She had to be pulled kicking and screaming by her father when he tried to make her leave the platform the night he died. She didn’t want to leave him. She needed to be where he was. She refused to leave until after they wheeled him away in the black zippered body bag, but that was after hours of photographs and police interviews. Her father let her stay because he had no choice. She had said then that if he didn’t let her stay, she’d kill herself. Her words had frightened her father so much he left her with a cop and ran to an upstairs bathroom, throwing up at the very thought.

“Anyway, so I’m here in the city, my first time ever in the famous Big Apple. I’m hanging out in Union Square Park, and a newspaper blows onto my feet. I mean, who the fuck reads newspapers anymore? But when I try to kick it away, I see the headline of ‘Tragic Teen Love Story, the Train of Doom,’ or some shit like that, and I pick it up because, hell, I’m eighteen and I have a tragic love story, too. So, I read this fucking nutso story, and I’m obsessed. And where I’ve been all, ‘Poor me, my boyfriend died from an accidental overdose like a dumbfuck,’ I really felt for this girl whose boo got run over by a train. By the way, even though I’m calling my dead bf a dumbfuck, I’m saying it with love. I fuckin’ loved that guy. Figures that the one guy who’s sweet to me, who actually really loved me, kicks the bucket right after he proposes.”

“He proposed to you?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, the dummy. I told him we were too young to get married, and we had to wait a few years, but I said yes. It was pretty romantic.”

“And you loved him,” Anna volunteered.

“And I loved him,” the girl agreed. “But he loved me more, which I know is bitchy of me to say, but it’s true. My mom always says it’s more important for the guy to love the girl more, because if it’s the other way around, then it always ends badly for the girl.”

“What do you mean?” Anna asked, genuinely interested now.