Had I known it would come to this? Perhaps. The faults along his mind had always been visible to me. But how could I not love them, how could I not love him? They were mirrors of mine, after all. And underneath it all, wasn’t he still the boy who had held my hand by the water and moved me to music only we could hear?

‘I want to give you something.’

Jay looked down at me nestled in the warm space between his shoulder and jawline, flashing a teenage grin. ‘I mean, if you insist . . .’

I laughed, realizing only then that I hadn’t done so in what felt like a very long time. ‘Such a pervyperv.’

He brushed his lips against my ear and whispered, ‘Oh, you’re going to pretend to be a good girl now, is it?’

‘Only for a minute. I really have to do this, Jay.’

He disentangled us and sat up against the headboard. ‘All right, all right. What is this terribly important thing that must delay me from having you?’

‘There’s this song. This beautiful, incredible song that not enough people have heard. I want you to know it. I need to know that you know that part of me.’

He pulled it up on his phone and, as he discovered it, I repeated the derived prayer inside myself like a litany.

We are the living. So relate us, to brand new words on yellowed pages, to ancient words from sharp-tongued sages. Form our words, form our phrases. It’s true; all we are, all the volumes, all the wisdom, are all just words we knew before. Blame is placed, punctuate it. And we’ll read the lines, we’ll mark the ages.

‘Great lyrics.’

‘The words are—’ I paused, looking for words. ‘The first line. Crack the spine. I—do you ever feel like that, Jay? Do you ever feel brittle, like you’re being opened up, like your skin is splintering at the spine?’

He looked at me, hard. Almost angry, a little scared. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You sound angry.’

‘Do I?’ He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Of course I do. Brittle. Of course. All the time.’

I nodded, satisfied. I knew he’d get it.

I always try to bear this. Every day is a struggle against this tremendous sense of loss. Every hour, every minute, everything lost is lost. It truly is lost. And as time passes, I count the minutes down, I lose the people and as I lose the people, I lose the places. ‘We start with a whole world to own, and then we lose it all, piece by painful piece.’

Say something, Jay. Help me.

‘What’s that people like to say? “Time heals everything.”’

I bit into his words with grateful venom. ‘That’s bullshit. Time just erases everything.’