He nodded. ‘Life is nothing but a series of relentless chasms left behind by people who have been loved.’

Prickled, pickled grief, so quick to turn to hostility.

I turned, hostile, ‘Why would you say that? How does that help me?’

But he was angrier than I was, his voice softer, his words harder.

‘Do you know what you did, Tara? When you wrote me that letter, do you know what you did? Do you?’

‘What—’

‘And I let it go along. Of course I did. How could I not?’ He stopped, and his sharp anger thawed into a spreading sadness. He closed his eyes and lay back, breaking his voice and my heart in one fell breath. ‘How could I have not, Tara? You were beautiful, and that was the least interesting thing about you.’

‘What’re you saying, Jay?’

‘You can’t do without pain, can you?’ He asked it slowly, so slowly that we both knew it wasn’t really even a question.

‘I want to be happy, Tara. I just want to be happy. White-picket-fence-with-a-big-fucking-dog happy.’

‘Do you?’

‘Dear girl, can you?’

He wasn’t asking and I didn’t want to know. My heart was pounding out of my chest, it was in my throat, it was blocking my voice so that everything sounded muffl ed and unclear when I said, ‘Who’s going to make you happier than me, Jay? Who’s going to try harder?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s the problem, my dear girl, isn’t it? They’re not the same thing.’ He moved closer to me, held my wet face up to his. ‘You’ll try so hard, you’ll break yourself.’

My face was in his hands and I knew the answer, but I asked him anyway. ‘Won’t you save me?’

I woke up with a start.

Frequencies.

It wasn’t just that he was standing what would be considered, by any reasonable measure of safety, dangerously close to the edge of the bridge. It was more the airlessness in his stance, his feet merely skimming the ground, like he could take flight at any moment.

The fall would be beautiful, a graceful arc ending in a brilliant spark as his body broke the still, dark water. Jay had a flair for the poetic that everything he did seemed bent in obedience to. Even the night sky was compliant to him, shrouding the moon in clouds, diffusing its tacky white light into a feathery glow.

If I let him, Jay would die. It would be the same world—but without Jay in it.

And I knew it would have been a certain sort of kindness to just let him go. If we are ever part of a greater struggle than fighting to stay alive, it is fighting to want to stay alive. But overcome by a loathsome, helpless selfishness, I could not be kind.

‘Please, won’t you stay?’

‘It would be such a relief, dear girl.’