I kissed him then, as long as I wanted to, touched him where I wanted to. I felt him watching me so closely, waiting for us to be in sync, as if he refused to go one step past me on the path, determined to ride the sweet wave together.

This felt like love to me, the closest I had ever come, like something I would do anything not to lose. Omar slept turned away from me with his arms around his pillow, one knee drawn up as he dreamed his jungle dreams. I stroked his shining black hair, pulled my body close to his. Why couldn’t we always stay like this, cocooned, motionless?

I lay there dreaming, wide awake, enjoying the peace before the tinny radios, the screaming babies, the clang and bluster of the market below his window, right up until the moment the night sky in the window blushed pink, soft and delicate, and I couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope for the world.

Omar was my home. I had no other.

By the end of the week, we had sorted through everything we owned—a task that took minutes for me, a day for him—to fit in the small bush plane we would fly to Ayachero. We bought cheap tin “wedding” rings at the market; he’d convinced me it was best to be considered a married couple where we were going. He sweetly explained all this to me, slipping my ring on my finger with words of love and commitment made up on the fly next to a stall where whole chickens roasted on a spit. I didn’t explain that I couldn’t care less about marriage—at the time I saw it as some bizarre ritual actual adults took part in, in lives marked by college degrees, full-time jobs, health insurance, and other foreign concepts. The approximation of a vow felt familiar and comfortable to me; perhaps at some profound level I felt I didn’t deserve the real thing. But none of that mattered to me then. If I needed a ring to smooth things over in his hometown, so be it.

I rushed to meet Molly and Britta for a goodbye beer at our favorite place, the restaurant where Omar had sent the little boy to tempt me with a bouquet of flowers a couple of months previous.

Molly sat by herself, wrapped in a ratty sweater and smoking a home-rolled cigarette to the nub, her crossed leg swinging nervously back and forth at the knee. She looked exhausted.

“Where’s Britta?” I asked.

“She had to work.”

“Seriously? She couldn’t even come to say goodbye—”

“She had a fucking date, okay?”

I felt sucker punched. My worthlessness reinforced in a way I never felt with Omar.

Molly wrapped her hands around her sweating beer and gave me her sternest look. “You don’t have to do this, Lily. Who is this guy, anyway, some motorcycle repair dude who can’t even speak English? And what the fuck is this Ayachero place? I’ve asked around. Nobody’s heard of it; it’s not on any maps.”