I reached for Novo’s hand. “And what if I want to be outside things?” I said. “What if I’m not ready to leave?”

Novo said, “If,” and he stretched and smiled and held on to my hips with his hands. “Of course you’re not ready,” and he looked at me, the happiest I’d ever seen him. Our last moment of pure joy maybe, the peak of the climb before downhill began, and then a little light went out in his eyes. Only small, but I saw it flicker. We both witnessed it, that peak, and we moved on, because you can’t go back even if you want to. Not even Novo could go back.

“Your mother needs you,” Henry said.

“My mother? Why? What’s up? What’s happened?”

Henry looked at Novo, not at me. “Did you burn through it?” he said. “Did you use the time up already?”

“What time?” I said. “What does that mean?”

Henry looked hard at Novo when he said, “It’s time for answers.”

“We’re coming,” Novo said. “Go back downstairs. Two minutes. I promise. We’ll be there.”

When Henry shut the door behind him, I said, “What’s going on?” and Novo kissed me, hungry and fierce. He hid his face in my neck and he stroked my side, almost lazily, with the tips of his fingers, stroked my stomach and thighs. I felt him breathe in and steady himself, about to speak.

“On the beach,” he said. “When you met me, I gave you a choice. Remember?”

“I do. You did.”

“And you said yes.”

“And I would again.”

His mouth moved against my skin, warm and soft, so I felt the words he spoke as well as heard them.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

We stayed there, quietly breathing, and then he got up and moved away, as decisively, as definitively as the cliff drop, and I reached after him and said, “No, not yet. Come back,” but he shook his head and wouldn’t look at me then.

“I can’t,” he said. “I really can’t,” and he turned away. I watched the muscles of his shoulders flex and open as he pulled on a shirt. “We’ve got to go.”

“Tell me what Henry’s talking about. What’s going to happen when we get down there?”

Novo sighed. “Some things don’t live very long. A mayfly has one day. A bubble breaks in seconds. The Now I kept you in lasted as long as it lasted.”

“The Now?” I said. “And what? Downstairs time has carried on without me?”

He nodded, and he didn’t stop watching me.

“It wasn’t supposed to,” he said. “I didn’t think it would. That’s what Henry meant when he said something snapped. This changes things.”

“Changes them how? I’m so confused.”