I stood in his living room and read the quote again. “It’s beautiful,” I said. And I vowed then that I would always do the same. I wanted to follow him into this world of trying to help people. Of consciously choosing good. Of that ideal being the motivating factor of my life. I know I said that Dr. West changed my life, and that’s true, but Ezra changed it, too.

We sat down on his couch then, and Ezra popped up to offer me a glass of water or wine. I took the wine. I hadn’t slept with anyone since your father. It had been years. Eight of them. And I’d been afraid—afraid that I’d do it again: break someone else’s heart, break my own. But I thought there was no one in this world I’d met who was better than Ezra. And the idea of losing him, of not having him in my life, overwhelmed my fear of getting hurt, of hurting someone else.

“Did you ever watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?” I asked him when he came back with the wine. “When you were a kid?”

He nodded as he sat back down next to me. “I loved the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. There was a guy who lived in a clock with no hands because make-believe was whatever time you wanted it to be. I tried to take the hands off the clock in our living room after I saw that.”

“Daniel Striped Tiger,” I said. “He’s the one who lived in the clock.”

Ezra’s eyes lit up. “You loved it, too!”

I smiled. “Maybe not as much as you did, but I always remembered the episode where Mr. Rogers said that if the news gets too scary, you should look for the helpers in the story. The police officers and firefighters and doctors and the regular people who reached out to give other people a hand. When I was older and my mom was sick, I remembered that. I looked for the helpers, and things felt a little more manageable.”

Ezra put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed.

“You’re one of the helpers,” I said to him. “You’re one of the people who makes life less scary.”

He put his wine down and kissed me. Then he whispered, “You are, too.”

I hadn’t thought about myself that way before. Ezra gave me a gift in that moment. He let me see myself through his eyes. And made me realize who I wanted to be. I wanted to be one of the helpers, just like he was.

I put my wineglass down and kissed him back, running my fingers over the soft button-down shirt he was wearing, first down his back, then down his chest.

“Do you want to see my bedroom?” he asked. “I mean, we can stay here if you want, but it might be more comfortable—”