I tell him if things move smoothly with my surgeries, I might get out at a reasonable hour. There’s a frisson of excitement between us for the rest of the night as we make room for new possibilities.

I take the train home around nine o’clock. It’s too late to get a run in. I need to be up early so I’ll have time to review the scans before heading into the OR tomorrow morning. The subway car winds around a bend, torquing the passengers in one direction and then another.

The man to my left flips a newspaper open. I see a headline about a city council member with $2,000 of unpaid parking tickets.

What kind of world is Adam entering? Is it possible to steer clear of all that comes with public life? Will the spotlight fall on me too? I cross my legs and fold my arms over my bag. No one on the train notices my discomfort. People are too busy to notice me, I tell myself.

I cannot wait for the perfect moment to tell Adam what I’ve kept from him. I can start with my parents and my brother. I can begin in the years when tulips dotted the gardens and music floated from open windows. If I start there, maybe I can get through the rest.

But I already know I will leave out some details.

I cannot tell him that there are nights when I wish I hadn’t crept into the basement of Arg alone but instead floated in sacred company to the stars above.

Antonia and I moved back to the United States for my last two years of high school. By then, girls already had best friends and social circles. When a girl named Martine befriended me, I was grateful. She was similarly an outsider, though in her case it was because she suffered from allergies so severe that to be around her came with balls of wadded tissues and constant sniffling. Martine said we didn’t have to wait on a boy to give us permission to be part of prom and suggested we go together. I liked her reasoning and agreed to be her date.

We bought long, flowy dresses and heels we could barely walk in. Martine’s mother was a hairdresser, lucky for us. She tried different hairstyles and eyeshadow shades on us for an entire month leading up to that May weekend. Antonia was going to drive us there, and Martine’s father was going to pick us up. Three days before the prom, Martine walked up to my locker and told me that she’d been asked out to prom by a junior. When she didn’t say anything more, I realized she was waiting for me to be excited for her.