Ultimately, long before we even thought of breaking up, I decided my heart not going faster at the sight of someone didn’t mean I wasn’t in love. There was more to it than the way a heart beats, and it really wasn’t the only reason people fell in love. Love, after all, was basically a neurochemical con job, and as much as it might sound nice to claim a person could be responsible for irregular heartbeats, odds were there was as much a chance it was a faulty valve and time to see a physician, as there was a chance your brain had been fooled into believing it was something else.

*

Ethan and I kissed for the better part of two hours. I never knew kissing could be like that. In fact, everything that had happened during the past two hours was something I had no idea could be possible. I’d never been so conscious of it before either. So aware of everything I was feeling, so resolute about what I wanted to feel, and so amazed at how good another person could feel.

We were on the sofa, Ethan lying on his back, me on my side, with my head on his shoulder. As he held me, he lifted my right hand and brought it close to his left as if comparing the two, but all I could focus on was how strong his heartbeat was and how it sometimes beat faster, depending on whether or not I was kissing him.

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna fall asleep,” I told him, as he stroked my hair.

He didn’t stop.

“Are we talking about this?” he asked quietly, running his thumb along the scar on my wrist.

The thin, straight, pink line, slightly swollen still, went down about two inches from my wrist. Most people hardly noticed unless they looked hard enough. Ethan was looking hard enough. He’d been rubbing it gently for the last few minutes, and it seemed as though he’d finally decided to acknowledge it.

“We can, if you want to,” I said.

“I think I want to,” he said softly.

We were silent for a few moments. It was as if Ethan was choosing his wording with care, deciding what to ask and what not to get into.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

“No, not really.”

Please, don’t ask why. Please, don’t ask why.

“Why?”

Fuck me.

I considered lying, maybe even embellishing it, to not sound too sad, but decided against it when I thought about how much I didn’t want to lie—not to him.

So, I didn’t.

“It wasn’t the pain I was focusing on, to be honest,” I said, vague enough so it could be interpreted in a different way, but still remaining truthful.

“Which pain were you focusing on?”

He hadn’t interpreted it in a less sad way.

Shit.