Ruth and I had been together a year. Things were better, the best they’d ever been for me. I think that was the closest I’ve ever come to real happiness. She was my angel, my quintessential girl. It took me years of looking for the perfect girl, months of looking at her from a distance before I could call her mine. She drove me fucking crazy. The way there was always more room within her, like she had infinite depth.

The first time we made love I threw myself into her completely, and she welcomed me, whole. I never felt the need to push things much further in bed, like I had with Roxy and the others. I didn’t need to squeeze her or slap her or pull on her hair. With Ruth, these rituals of power felt obsolete. There was no doubt that she was all mine, my girlfriend: I’d never been so attracted to a girl before. Sometimes, when I watched her sleep, shut off from the world, her body felt like a substance heavier than water, a greenish-black oil, that exerted its own kind of gravity. I couldn’t stop touching her. I was in love with all the textures of her body, the way her narrow bones were close to the surface. At night the presence of her small darkness was enough to ward off greater evils. Ruth was the medicine: my vaccine, my reminder of where the boundaries lay. With her by my side, I thought I’d never need to sink into that great black again, would never emerge wanting to kill something, if only a little bit.